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Review of Original 1999 Album, by Christian Clemmensen
That said, on to the music itself! Don't let your anticipation for the score spoil it for you; The Phantom Menace stands alone as an excellent score, integrating the best of the original trilogy scores with bold new themes. Williams uses the London Symphony Orchestra to its fullest capacity, and intersperses the massive choral accompaniment throughout the score. Since only about 72 minutes of music is included on this album, there is a mass of music that cannot be heard outside of the film yet. It is possible that Sony will release a follow-up album a later this year, so don't despair if your favorite cue isn't on the CD. The highlight of this score is Williams' extremely complex and often amazing use of old themes and foreshadowing of themes perhaps to come in the upcoming films. He juggles many of the themes from the original trilogy (to a more delicate extent than he did in Return of the Jedi), and adds two dominant new themes. A track by track analysis of the score follows, and I'll emphasize the use of these themes strictly as an "on album" analysis. The score opens the same way the other three did. The Star Wars fanfare is presented in almost an identical form --the only difference is an emphasis on seemingly heavier snare drums. As the theme fades out, we are hear the first cinematic vista climax cue. These massively orchestral fanfares with trumpets out front are plentiful in The Phantom Menace. As usual, Williams has arranged the album to fit the best "listening experience," so the following track is the concert piece from the score. "Duel of the Fates" was released to radio stations a week before the official release of the entire album, and it features the main Phantom Menace theme weaving in and out of huge choral chants. The brass carries the main theme in the momentous sections and woodwinds take stage in the interludes. The brass performances of the theme are true magic, with a heroic and yet tragic thematic mystique. The chorus itself is perhaps overblown --I can't imagine how the piece would function without it though. The chorus doesn't actually perform the main theme; instead, it augments the theme with a steady counter sub-theme. Its sound is very similar to that of Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom. The piece has two false endings --those during which the orchestra comes to one symphony blast on key, and then halts for a few seconds before building up to yet another climax --I find that it makes the piece as a whole difficult to listen to. It is best heard as integrated into other sections of the score. I feel the same way about the Luke and Leia theme in Return of the Jedi; its use throughout that film was excellent, but the concert version was overextended. The second concert suite immediately follows, in the form of young "Anakin's Theme." Although the boisterous Phantom Menace theme has more raw orchestral power, the beauty of the score resides in Anakin's Theme. Ever so carefully crafted, it has a tender, floating quality on the one side, and a morbid sense of doom on the other. Halfway into the piece, we are introduced to the subtle and haunting foreshadowing of the Imperial March; the theme, while starting each segment with hope and loftiness, always returns to the Imperial March for its final four notes. This masterful touch is one of the best uses of theme I have heard from Williams in years, and its continuous, brooding truth returns at regular intervals in the score. I can only imagine how that singular minor key in this theme will eventually grow to a measure, then a cue, and then the full, mature Imperial March through the next two scores... and I look forward to it immensely. The fourth track establishes the first "light character" motif, bouncing around with strings and woodwinds in a similar fashion to the Ewok march. After about a minute into the track, though, the chorus returns in whimsical fashion, performing a theme that vaguely resembles John Ottman's theme for Snow White. One of the sub-themes here has elements of SpaceCamp's perkiness, which will be expanded upon later in the album. The "Sith Spacecraft and the Droid Battle" track features the first kick-ass, whooping action cue. The brass progresses at an extremely fast rate, with an abundance of triplets with a hint of the Imperial March's minor "Sith" key reference and a portion of the noble Phantom Menace theme. The track builds to a heroic and pulsating climax, with one final blast from the full orchestra. The track resembles the "Into the Trap" track from Return of the Jedi, albeit more complex. The "Naboo Temple" arrival track again reminds me of Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom, with its noble strength and slightly exotic tendencies. The track continues with pleasant middle string performances and a few slightly elevated string waves near the end. There are portions of this score that can best be described as "sounding similar to the droid music in Star Wars." "The Arrival at Tatooine" begins with some of this jolly music before presenting a grand burst of orchestral might, leading eventually to the "Flag Parade" sequence that provides a glimpse of the Star Wars theme and finally a pronounced performance of the middle portion of the "Duel of the Fates" suite. It makes for a substantial brass and percussion display, and the heart-pounding pace continues for a few whole minutes. These pompous moments are spectacular in scope, but could lead to a headache if listened to repeatedly. On the other hand, "He is the Chosen One" is a superb return to the simmering, force-inspired music --providing several hints of the "Force theme" from Star Wars before finally presenting it in full. The track delicately and incredibly balances the "Force theme," a few notes of "Yoda's theme," and Anakin's original theme. The track finishes with yet another heroic fanfare... The ninth track starts this score really cooking, with some outstanding re-statements of familiar Star Wars themes. It features the first full statement of the Force theme, which builds into a massively impressive performance of Jabba the Hutt's theme --it's almost unrecognizable with so many tubas and other brass performing it instead of a singular tuba. The track continues to mount an enormous amount of suspense, resulting in a rigorous action cue much like "Den of the Rancor" in Return of the Jedi. The victorious tone at the end is announced by a few bold timpani notes. Turning to the eerie effect of wavering strings and a singular flute, "Passage Through the Planet Core" is creepy underscore, with a very alienating quality. Then, about half-way through comes a singular statement of the secondary theme from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade --this score does that; there are many, many references to other Williams works, and not just the Star Wars ones. He's pulled them all out of the hat this time. The track builds in mystery by adding a female chorus before finally finishing with a bold stroke of timpani (again --that's the Star Wars trademark, after all!). Next comes another very close and personal character track; "Watto's Deal" is unremarkable, but the second half of the track is once again magic. The "Force theme" makes a full and unadulterated performance similar to the one high among the Endor trees, and offers some playful manipulations of Anakin's theme. "Panaka and the Queen's Protectors" returns us to a full swing of a very fast-paced adventure cue and, for the first time since the main theme on the album, includes the original Star Wars theme. The Phantom Menace theme takes over until a gong and various solo drums offer a brief rest before the action resumes. Beginning with a sense of agony, "Queen Amidala and the Naboo Palace" turns sinister and forbidding. Anakin's theme rescues the cue and leads into yet another massive fanfare for the Naboo Palace. The sweeping strings seem constantly at battle with the militaristic percussion that boils underneath the surface at all times. For the third time, the track ends abruptly with a singular orchestral note (which happened often in Empire), which probably means that the cue --in the film-- leads directly into another. The invasion of the droids provides some excellent pulsating action music, with muted trombones and relentless, charged strings. The music almost falls into chaos at points, before the second section begins ("Appearance of Darth Maul"). Williams, to a great effect, uses a sort of howling woodwind instrument like a lone wolf to signify coming evil. The silence gives away to a full, deep choral statement of the Emperor's (Senator Palpatine's) theme. Although brief, it is extremely enjoyable... and pure evil! The distant female chorus returns, finishing a very diverse track. Qui-Gon's death scene is scored with a final blast of the noble theme, before resorting to a quick and pounding array of percussion and timpani, with constantly jumping strings and blasting brass. As exotic action music, it is undeniably effective; the strings create a solitary and lost pause in the middle, before a final "realization" cue alerts us that something horrible and tragic has just occurred. The pace slows to a complete, agonizing halt. The pounding of native drums signifies the end. The Jedi meeting and funeral sequence is another interesting collection of themes interpolated very well. Yoda's theme makes one brief, but noble appearance, with one longer and subtle performance of the Imperial March. The funeral scene incorporates the chorus again, with the Force theme providing one last tribute to Qui-Gon. What follows is the only disappointing part of the entire album. Williams (and Lucas, I am sure) insert yet another "cute and fuzzy" theme --right out of the Ewok book-- for a celebratory finale. The music is absolutely hideous, complete with a children's "la-la" choir (and I'm not talking about the romantic Elfman style la-la choir) and funky, if not totally bizarre electronics. To its credit, the theme the children are performing is a light-hearted version of Senator Palpatine's (The Emperor's) Theme. It's not as harsh as Lapti Nek from Return of the Jedi, but is serves to the same effect. What makes it even more unfortunate is the fact that is doesn't even mesh well with the opening of the end credit sequence. The end title format is the same as it has been in all of the other Star Wars scores. But the key that the celebration was in didn't at all match the sudden burst of the Star Wars theme! Oh, well... The end credits provide us with the concert suite version of "Duel of the Fates" and "Anakin's theme." Interestingly, Williams leaves the score off on a very dark note. Instead of one final statement of the Star Wars fanfare --like at the end of all the other end title suites-- he allows the dark undertones of Anakin's theme to take us to the very end. We are left to contemplate the fact that Williams has allowed the Imperial March --not Anakin's theme or the title theme-- to finish the score. Surely, a sign of things to come... In conclusion, the album is a delight. There is a huge mass of music recorded for this film that did not make it onto this album, and I am sure those thus-far unreleased sequences will feature even more interesting versions of themes past and present. Williams' hand at manipulating these themes into seamless cues is simply amazing, and the diversity of themes in The Phantom Menace makes it an incredible effort. From the false tenderness of Anakin's theme to the religiously haunting funeral scene, and from the wondrously eerie female vocals to the bold brass and timpani of the Phantom Menace theme, this score has all the elements of a Star Wars score... and more. The sound quality is excellent, and I tip my hat to Williams for a production that not only met my expectations, but exceeded them as well. A new saga has begun! *****
Review of the 2000 Expanded Set, by Christian Clemmensen
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: (John Williams) With millions of copies of the original, 1999 album, sold after Sony paid countless millions for the rights to release it, this expanded, 2-CD "ultimate edition" of The Phantom Menace hits the shelves sooner than expected. I was always one of the people who thought it would be a few more years before an expanded edition would ever be released, given the 10 - 16 year wait we Star Wars fans had to endure for the expanded versions of the first three scores. The timing of this release for Sony is more curious than ever. First, there is yet no DVD release of any of the films, and the VHS release was many months ago, meaning that there is no tie-in for this album to accompany. Second, there are endless thousands of copies of the original 1999 album still in stores, and this expanded release will certainly cause those originals to either be returned to Sony at a great monetary loss, or they'll simply collect dust on the store shelves. At any rate, November, 2000, seemed like an odd time to release the expanded album for this film. On the other hand, die-hard fans of the music wanted it as soon as possible, so its existence on two CDs was welcomed at the earliest convenience. It was likely brought to the attention of Sony that bootlegs of the "complete" score had been floating around the internet market for over a year already, and perhaps a legitimate expanded release, they might have figured, would shift that demand to a consumer product. Fans disappointed by the single CD status of the original album first praised the news of an expanded release, but soon after the first promotional copies of this 2-CD set became available, a new controversy erupted. The packaging, as well as press releases from Sony, indicated that every single note of Williams' score for the film would be included in sequence on the album. At first, this recipe sounded much like expanded, final releases of the first three Star Wars scores. But Sony decided to do something odd with this release. Instead of taking the master tapes of Williams' music --in its raw form-- and providing those original performances on this set, fans are instead presented with what is essentially an "isolated score" track of edited music from the film itself. Therefore, the cues mostly run together and are pulled slightly out of sequence as we had been used to hearing them on the original "suite-format" album. The volume is consistent, but the sharp edits on some of the cues make this album very different from the typically fine-crafted Williams affair. Williams himself was not particularly happy with the final film edit of many of his cues, claiming that a certain amount of injustice was done to them in the last days of frantic editing of the film by George Lucas. Both will admit, however, that it was too late to rescore the film by that point. But even yet, this doesn't necessarily mean that Sony had to abandon the original master performances and instead just suck the music track right out of the film. In the end, this means that the 2-CD set contains few fade-ins and fade-outs, and the suite performances are not heard at all. If you prefer Williams' delicate and masterful talent for creating smooth suite-like albums of his music, then you might be better off with the original. There are many people, however, who believe that Sony took the cheap route in producing the album, and those people are therefore up in arms about it. I, however, am not one of those disgruntled citizens. When the original album came out, it was missing two vital and stunning Williams cues that played obvious roles in the film. Both of those tracks are now provided on this release. First, the scene in which Anakin is set free and then prepares to (and does) leave his mother is scored with a rousing and memorable performance of "The Force Theme." This five-minute track is presented in full. Second, the scene in which Anakin single-handedly destroys the federation station contains a heroic combination of the "force theme" and the duel of the fates interlude. This 3+ minute track is also included. So therefore, I'm happy with the album. The second CD contains the mass of really good unreleased music, from the two tracks above to the funky "Gungan March" complete with native horns. The second CD, though, is plagued by the mutilation edit of "Duel of the Fates" for every cut between the space battle, droid battle, and the lightsabre duel. These sharp fades, such as the jarring ones between tracks 22, 23, and 24, are a great detriment to the album even though such cuts weren't noticed with all the sound effects during the film. Of the 68 tracks on the two CDs, only 20 of them have pleasant fade-ins and fade-outs. And yet, if you're a person like me, who wants to take twenty or so minutes of the best music from the film and record them onto an edit of your own, then this album has all the necessary indegients to do that. The listening experience over then entire 68 tracks is a bit more difficult if you want to enjoy all the music from end-to-end, but if you're only seeking key omissions from the first album, then this set will suffice. The packaging is phenomenal, with beautiful colorful screen shots for each track and a holographic kind of outer casing. Two flaws, however, distinguish this set from previous "complete" Star Wars albums: First, there are no track listings on the outside, and no track times anywhere. Second, the album contains no in-depth notes about the scoring of the film or production of the music. The album does include two extra bonus tracks. The first is a source "native song" track on the first CD which is barely of any interest. The second is an edit of "Duel of the Fates" with various dialogue that runs chronologically through the film... serving almost as a audio trailer for the film. It's not, as previously reported, the full audio track from one scene in the film. It's a fun, though frivolous, end to the album. For me, the album contains everything I wanted which had been missing from the original. But for Star Wars and John Williams enthusiasts, you might find the logic behind the album to be a bit confusing and you'll wonder why there are still ten or so minutes of music entirely missing (music that was recorded, but not used in the film). Make no mistake about it; this album is the equivilent to a heavily edited isolated DVD score track, not a traditional suite edit of the original masters by Williams himself. You can take it or leave it. **** Donated Review of Original 1999 Album, by Todd China
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace: (John Williams) In Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, John Williams makes a successful return to the Star Wars saga with a score that works brilliantly as Star Wars music while reflecting recent changes in his style. Although the score to The Phantom Menace contains no truly memorable themes, such as the force theme and "The Imperial March," that the general public will recognize ten years from now, it works extremely well in the film as an operatic accompaniment for the action. What Williams has produced is a score that, on film and on CD, is musically fresh and complex, a worthy addition to the Star Wars canon. True to the leit-motivic nature of the Star Wars film scores, bits and pieces of Emperor Palpatine's theme, Yoda's theme, the force theme, and Darth Vader's theme all make brief appearances. Anakin Skywalker's theme, while not as distinguished as its successor, "The Imperial March," nonetheless conveys the emotional complexity of Anakin's character; the youthful innocence and naivete are present as well as a foreshadowing of his dark future. Williams' juxtaposition of innocence and darkness is reminiscent of his main title theme to 1996's Sleepers. The true highlight of the album, however, is "Duel of the Fates," an amazingly dark and fast-moving piece that draws a little from elements of Nixon's "The 1960's: The Turbulent Years" as well as Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana." In my opinion, "Duel of the Fates" is more dramatic and entertaining than either of those pieces. In "Duel of the Fates," the two "false endings" suggest the changing rhythm of the climactic light saber duel. The furious clashing of light sabers, alternated with momentary lulls in the fighting, is followed stepwise by the rising and falling tide of Williams' music, and the cue is doubly appropriate for a scene with such epic and far-reaching implications for future events. Throughout the rest of the score, Williams always provides the right musical commentary for the film. "The Flag Parade," "Panaka and the Queen's Protectors," and "Qui-Gon's Funeral," respectively, convey all the pomp and bombast, the high adventure, and the mournful, tremendous sense of loss in the scenes they are attached to. Even the much-reviled "Augie's Great Municipal Band" is strangely rousing in the film's finale. On CD, the opening synth effects and choral "ya-ya's" are downright embarrassing, yet in the film, the celebration scene is so wild, giddy with cheerfulness, and intoxicated that Williams' music is completely appropriate. In terms of originality, The Phantom Menace bears some similarities to previous Williams scores but rarely approaches the blatant derivation that some critics have charged. "The Droid Invasion" motif, however, is a pretty obvious descendant of "Belly of the Steel Beast" from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There are also some stylistic similarities to Hook and Jurassic Park; specifically, Williams' liberal use of high woodwind runs in "The Droid Battle" harks back to his action music in Jurassic Park. Like the original Polydor release of Star Wars: A New Hope, The Phantom Menace has been sequenced all out of order, with unrelated cues hacked and pasted together in a bewildering arrangement. Some cues have even been mislabelled; "The Arrival at Naboo" is actually used during the arrival at Coruscant. Part of the problem for the album lies in film's story and editing, especially for the final sequences. Since there are so many cuts between the scenes involving the Jedi, Anakin, Amidala, and Jar Jar at the end, it was almost necessary that the soundtrack have a concert version of "Duel of the Fates," given the sparse amount of time allowed for any sustained, uninterrupted development of action cues. As with the original Star Wars release, there have been complaints about the incompleteness of the soundtrack ever since the 74-minute length Sony album was announced. Most of the music worth having is already on the CD; an expanded release, given the history of the Star Wars scores, is likely but not completely necessary. Notable cues that did not make it onto the CD include the emotional farewell scene between Anakin and his mother and the bombastic rendition of the force theme when Anakin destroys the droid mother ship. Interestingly, whenever Darth Maul appears on screen in Tatooine, one can hear sinister whisperings of, presumably, the lyrics to "Duel of the Fates." The end titles piece has many alleged "flaws": the stilted transition to the Star Wars theme, the "lazy," verbatim repetition of "Duel of the Fates" and "Anakin's Theme," and the lack of a brassy fanfare at the end. Lost in all of this is the fact that, in the film, at the very end of the credits, one can hear the sound of Darth Vader breathing. Now why the hell is this not on the CD? Failure to include this amusing sound effect is a great loss indeed; I won't rest easy at night until this disturbing lack of vision is rectified. Bring on the expanded edition! *****
Williams and Boston Pops Perform The Phantom Menace: The new schedule released by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Boston Pops announces three concerts conducted by Williams in May that will include music from the upcoming Star Wars: The Phantom Menace soundtrack. The dates of the performances are Wed - Fri, May 26th through May 28th, at 8:00pm each evening. The concert will feature a collection of "Classic Film Music" as well as the highly anticipated Phantom Menace music. The Thursday, May 27th, performance will also include a special appearance by Schindler's List guest Itzhak Perlman at the violin. More information, and the opportunity to reserve your tickets today, is available at the website of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Pops. All performances will take place at the Boston Symphony Hall, on the Avenue of the Arts in Boston, Mass. For an excellent look at the Star Wars/John Williams collaboration, check out the official Star Wars site's crew page for Williams at http://www.starwars.com/crew/williams/. For general John Williams information, visit Scott Hanson's great "Unofficial Williams Site" at http://www.classicalrecordings.com/johnwilliams/. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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