I LOVE your analyses on the Superman score!! Was humming the tune while reading. Your Star Wars score analysis too.

Hi Jenny. The strangest thing about this middle section of the main theme is that Williams didn’t actually write it for the main theme! Check out this interview he did with the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, in which the maestro himself states that he wrote the middle section for the Throne Room melody, then used that for the middle section of the main title: https://vocaroo.com/856a8uo8HcN. There are also some musical factors supporting this as well, most of all the use of the same, or very similar, motives in the B section as in the Throne Room’s A section. Long story short, any associations we have of this music suggesting the distant galaxies and build up of a threat you mention are more because of the visuals its placed with in the main theme rather than inherently musical properties. Even so, it does work enormously well and it’s incredible to think he didn’t actually write it for the film’s opening!

Hi Nils. That’s a great observation. I would say that, for themes in major keys, having the key turn minor is common just before an important arrival point, like the return of the main melody. Could you list some of the TV themes you have in mind? And actually, the Star Wars main title does this not only where you mention (I assume you mean in the B section just before the main theme comes back), but also just before the main theme enters for the first time. The scale flourish that leads into the theme is actually minor but when the theme comes in, it’s of course major.

This kind of minor-key preparation for a major-key theme happens all the time in classical music as well. It’s a bread and butter technique, whether it’s for moving from a slow introduction into the movement proper (very common) or preparing for an important theme in the movement itself, like before the so-called second theme in sonata form, or even more commonly, in the development section just before the return of the main theme at the start of the recapitulation.

Thank you, Manoel. Yes, I am aware of the influence of Holst’s Mars on the Star Wars score, but I don’t believe it has anything to do with the film’s main theme. It’s most evident at the end of the main title cue (not the theme itself) when the ships appear onscreen, and also at the end of the film in the lead-up to the destruction of the Death Star. But I respectfully disagree that Williams would be “nothing” without the Holst influence. Yes, there are several moments in the score that are heavily tied to other pieces but that’s because Lucas wanted it that way. And besides, these references we hear to other pieces are but short moments in a huge score. It would be impossible to claim that the score is “just a lift” from classical models as the vast majority of the score is composed without such references.

Yes, check out J. W. Rinzler’s The Making of Star Wars, which discusses some of the classical pieces and film cues that were used in the film’s temp track and ultimately had a large part in carrying over to many of the original film’s cues.