Star Wars: How John Williams Composes a Theme

Learn how John Williams composes his themes for the famous Star Wars movies. This video looks at the music of Star Wars (the Original Trilogy), and examines how John Williams structures some of his greatest themes and leitmotifs. It also looks at the music that influenced the score, and compares the soundtrack with others, including Holst, Stravinsky, and Rey’s Theme from The Force Awakens, and The Last Jedi. We’ll look at the difference between long, well-structured melodies over the shorter, motivic themes of much modern film music. The film footage and music is taken from Star Wars: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and The Force Awakens. Other music is taken from Holst: The Planets, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, and Wagner: Das Rheingold. We go behind the film score and look closer at analysing how the composer thinks about writing music for film with orchestra.