John Williams vs Gustav Holst or Star Wars Vs The Planets

hi everyone I'm Rick Beato today's everything music is called John Williams versus Gustav Holst or Star Wars versus the planets John Williams was influenced by a number of composers such as vogner Stravinsky record Strauss era corn gold but especially Gustav Holst in today's episode I will show you the melodic and harmonic influences that Holst had on John Williams music and Star Wars that's coming up next you gustaf theater host was born on September 21st 1874 he was an English composer arranger and teacher but best known for his orchestral suite the planets his distinctive compositional style was the product of many influences like vogner Ricard Strauss Ravel Grieg Ray Vaughan Williams and so on the planets opus 32 is a seven movement orchestral suite written between 1914 and 1916 each movement of the suite is named after a planet of the solar system and its corresponding astrological character as defined by Holst the concept of the word is astrological rather than astronomical which is why there's no earth movement in the piece each movement is intended to convey ideas and emotions associated with the influences of the planets on the psyche not the group of twelve Roman deities from its premiere to the present day the suite has been enduringly popular influential and widely performed and recorded the one that we're going to talk about today is called Mars now there are a lot of elements of his music that John Williams was influenced by things like by tonality and poly tonality but Hulse greatest influence on John Williams was in his orchestration technique the planets truly is one of the cornerstones of all modern orchestration and for a developing Orchestrator his orchestrations are extremely difficult to comprehend his use of expanded orchestra for example an expanded woodwind section a typical woodwind section would have sixteen players versus the usual eight and in his string writing he liked to employ unusual types of bowing techniques such as : yo where you strike the strings with the stick of the bow rather than drying the hair of the bow across the strings he would employ things like two harps but in in the planets there are there are two heart parts you'll hear people say that Oh Star Wars was influenced by the planets well I want to talk about that and show you why people get that idea I'm gonna take a couple cues here and I'm gonna plan for you the first one is from the planets you notice that ostinato pattern where does that sound like it's from well your Star Wars this is a pattern in five it's called an ostinato we've talked about that some of the other videos where it's a repeated rhythmic figure uh many times on one note with a large section playing in unison they'll have a melody over to listen to it again well this is the Star Wars its uncannily similar now instead of having this more linear line over it he has a more articulated line with with a with another rhythm that goes against that ostinato in this in star wars but let's talk a little bit about what both these pieces are doing in this section okay let's take the ostinato section from the planets here and check it out okay so you have this big ostinato basically ng I don't have a fasten of articulation so that is played well this countermelody goes over what's cool about that is they start on the tonic so it goes G so the ostinato is on G and then the counter melody line starts and G that D C sharp so you have that tritone Oh which gives it a really ominous the the ostinato already makes an ominous but it gives it that really ominous fear listening and you hear that timpani rolling right along with it in the same pattern but against the he really can't do it that tritone is super-powerful there okay let's take a listen to Star Wars in the same area case of the hospital the ostinato already is on see in the Holst in the planets in Mars it's on G but this okay so right there we have ad flat major over C by tonal chord essentially a try it over bass note but there's a lot of this in star wars in this particular piece and right there is is emajor oversee which is in C Lydian augmented chord or a it's a by tonal chord when I say by tonal I mean to try it over bass note and so that's just moving of try it's a a flat a flat D boy so John Williams does a lot of that in Star Wars a lot of these major triads moving in a similar way but that notice the similarity between the ostinato patterns in the two pieces it's really a remarkable really listen this is Holst notice the timpani playing right aligned with the same rhythm listen exact same thing when John was looking for inspiration for Star Wars he like every other composer has his influences and the orchestration and the ostinato patterns are so remarkably similar it's it's impossible to think that there wasn't any influence here ok let's take this next spot in the planets okay right there we have a D flat Lydian triad in second inversion ok D flat Lydian try to be a flat is a flat and I hear the in the timpani if you have C and G the bass the tubas are playing C when the strings come in they're playing C they're playing C's and the upper strings are playing this Lydian triad but you hear this 5th and gemonese are divided there's two Dimity parts one is playing a see one is playing and what is playing a G I believe ya hear em but it's but it's a really great great sound really powerful Lydian triad if we take Star Wars here we have exact same cord essentially here your F in there as well so it's a D flat Lydian triad with an F in it over C so both these are overseas so you got D flat Lydian major we're talking about Lydian major in one of the other episodes recently B flat Lydian major would be D flat a flat but it's voice you hear the half down a little bit lower so John Williams added enough to his but it's the same here's what here is a Holst here's John Williams it's the same thing it's the same voicing and uh there it is the next part I want to talk about is from the planets now that is a very familiar sound that you hear in John Williams as well so what's going on here is you have planing between major chords and they're going in a specific pattern so you have a D Y D but you have a give a D in the base and you have an a-flat major major C major major f major and the f major D minor seven chord there but it's it's moving my major to see major major major F major all over deep a similar idea is also used by John Williams later on and the theme you okay these are just simply major chords G major - E major and uh Oh so that happens a lot in the Star Wars theme is this a movement of major triads like that you notice a similarity between both the planets and John Williams writing in a pieced by Ray Vaughan Williams is also British composer called Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis which was written in 1910 it's a piece for double string orchestra so once again it's an expanded orchestra like Holst is using these expanded orchestras as well I'm going to talk about that piece in the future I want to show you how that you'll see John Williams influences from that piece as well but it's really beautiful string writing a lot of triatic movement in the same way and I'm sure that Holst was influenced by that piece since it predates the planets the so Vaughan Williams piece was written in 1910 the plans in 1913 1915 both being in the same place I'm sure that that he was well aware of the piece one of the cool things about these two pieces is that they're both available in score form obviously the Holst is that's played all the time but the John Williams piece is unlike most film scores are available on in music you where you can buy the scores so you can actually do a comparative analysis between the two a lot of the other film scoring people that that I'm going to be talking about over the coming months their scores are not ready readily available so you actually have to go through the process of figuring them out and transcribing things or taking elements from them which is what I'm doing here right right as we're as we're talking here's some other interesting voicings on the tag of the Star Wars theme if I start from here augmented chord E flat augmented I get a flat G and then he adds dented uh to it so he plays it it's the D do it everything is kind of like like a B altered chord without the when he has a D to it you uh it resolves a c-minor it's really cool cool sound there so you got this augmented triad and then the last quarter Oh that's a good old G major seven chord you got GE I've got I have some doublings here in the sound but it's 2 G major 7 chord this is really fascinating you see the comparison between John Williams Star Wars theme and the movement of the planets called Mars you know some of the exact same uses of the same material and there are differences but there are many many similarities between the two he was heavily influenced by that you would have to say from looking at them that's all for now thanks for watching please subscribe here to my everything music YouTube channel I'm Rick Beato

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 462,442

Keywords: Rick Beato, Everything Music, Star Wars, John Williams, Holst the Planets, Gustav Holst, Film Scoring, music for films, star wars theme

Id: 8IX1jSVmaAs

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2016