John Williams’ Star Wars score owes a lot to the heroic symphonies of his favorite nineteenth century German composers, from Beethoven through Wagner. The main title theme is as Germanic as it gets, a straightforward military march on the B-flat major scale.
Like all great pop hooks, this one is simple, but it isn’t dumb. It’s a four-bar phrase, three of which are almost identical.
Bar one is the simplest: the first and fifth scale degrees of B-flat major, B-flat and F. This interval, a perfect fifth, has a primal power to it. The natural overtone series of B-flat contains an audible F, and reinforcing that overtone feels right and obvious. Many world cultures use perfect fifths, not just ours.
Bars two and three begin with a quick walk down the scale from E-flat to C on eighth note triplets, meaning there are three notes crammed into the space of two. The rest of the bar is sort of an inversion of the two notes in the first bar: a high B-flat and another F.
Bar four is same rhythm as the previous two bars, just with different pitches: E-flat, D, E-flat, then a long C that sets up the beginning of the next phrase. But there’s a big difference here: the underlying chord. It’s F7, the dominant chord in B-flat. Let’s unpack what that means.
Start the B-flat major scale on F. Build a chord by jumping to every alternating scale tone. This will give you the notes F, A, C, and E-flat, which make F7, the dominant chord in B-flat.
The interval between A and E-flat is called a tritone. In Western tonal theory, the tritone is regarded as severely dissonant, and hearing it makes you urgently want it to resolve. Specifically, you want A to resolve up to B-flat, and you want E-flat to resolve down to D. Speaking more broadly, you want the F7 chord to resolve to a B-flat chord. This process of resolution is called a cadence, and it’s the core structural element in all of European-descended harmony.
Let’s look at the fourth bar of the simple again in the new context of the F7 chord. The notes E-flat, C, and F are three of the four notes in F7. It resolves strongly on the B-flat that starts the next phrase.
Read a very good analysis of this piece on Film Music Notes. Also, enjoy Bill Murray’s rendition.
While the main title music is the most durable earworm in John Williams’ Star Wars score, the real high point is the lovely “Force Theme.” As a YouTube commenter puts it: all of the feels.
Finally: apparently they’re making some new Star Wars movies? Anyone heard anything about this?
Update: a commenter pointed out that John Williams may have lifted this melody almost note-for-note from Puccini.
The theme is also a type of mirror re-writing of Born Free.
Actually, if you are looking for a possible inspiration behind John Williams’ Star Wars scores, you might look to Puccini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jzVtm4nRwQ. Start around 3:17, right at the tail end of the Intermezzo.
I used to teach a music history course, and it was interesting to see the lightbulbs switch on in my students’ heads as I would play this, and then again when I would talk about the general storyline and the use of Leitmotivs in Wagner’s Ring Cycle (more Star Wars connections).
Holy cow, that is incredible similarity. I didn’t know about this piece. Thanks for linking!
(Also note that, as Richards points out and the blurry images of the orchestral score I can find online appear to confirm, Williams actually scored the main theme in 2/2, not 4/4. Which is actually a point in favor of calling it a march.)
I don’t know that I’d call that Main Title a “straightforward military march.” The punched half-notes, three measures in a row, on beat *two*; the less-emphasized triplet runs that begin on (and serve to muddle) putative downbeats; and, perhaps especially, the low-instrument accompaniment to the tune, which (at least on the first time through the section you’ve transcribed here) hits eighth-note off-beats in off-kilter staccato patterns… there just is no feeling at all of the “left, right, left, right” thump on the downbeats (1 and 3, in 4/4 time) that is the fundamental point of a military march. Outside of the first two half-notes, beats 2 and 4 are far more emphasized than 1 and 3; I think a good portion of your army is going to have tripped and fallen over by measure 4.
Also note that the visual accompaniment to this music is an “opening crawl” (“STAR WARS” and then Lucas’s gleefully serious prose) that is depicted *flying through space*, rather than, say, advancing on a Russian artillery battery outside Balaclava.
Consider, by contrast, the *closing* number on the soundtrack—”The Throne Room.” *There* is your straightforward military march, perfectly suitable for all of the “Triumph of the Will” references Lucas could cut together.
True, the rhythm isn’t very march-like. But the whole thing feels so martial to me, I can’t help but imagine armies marching.