Star Wars Music is Getting Worse - Beyond The Last Jedi & John Williams - A Music Philosophy Review

[Music] prior to the release of the last Jedi a clear critical divide has emerged on the question of what the new Star Wars films should be on one side are those relieved by a return to material consistent with the original films and on the other are those frustrated by what seems like a reluctance to take chances to forge a new ground or just generally be creative after the force awakens was released this was still a legitimate debate we were only one film into the new Star Wars era and there was an understandable reluctance in the part of Disney to go too crazy with the multi-billion dollar franchise but regardless of where you stand on this it's undeniable that the Star Wars franchise is faced with a mounting creative problem that nearly everything about it is becoming a foregone conclusion from the hero on a journey narratives to the characters all the way down to the font it's harder and harder to be fresh when so much is demanded to be the same and with the release of the last Jedi it's pretty evident that this problem is not going to go away so we're going to be looking at one aspect of this problem in particular the music and rather than delving into a technical or theory based breakdown of how the music works which you can find anywhere else on the Internet we're instead going to investigate one of the most important concepts of musical and aesthetic philosophy the concept of reification in my opinion a firm grasp of this concept is as important to musical appreciation as any number of theory books or practical lessons it also has the added advantage of being accessible to non musicians too when I came into contact with this concept my perspective on music was changed forever and once we're done looking at reification in the abstract i'm going to provide practical examples of how it effects the music of Star Wars in the newer movies so to begin what is reification in the history of philosophy this term has been used in different ways to satisfy very different agendas but I'm not going to be delving too far into those and this video should not be looked at as a comprehensive account of the concept but rather is a basic introduction and we're only going to be focusing on how the term is used in music philosophy which means that there are some fascinating aspects relating to society and thinking in general that I won't be dealing with so let's get into it music is different to the spoken language in many ways but possibly the most important way is that it can communicate without pointing to something in the real world or having a precise meaning in other words it has a degree of non-conceptual 'ti who reification is the mental process of taking the non-conceptual and turning it into something conceptual a team a good example of a rarefied piece of music would be the u.s. national anthem so by describing this music is Raya fight we're saying firstly that its meaning is fixed when we hear it our mind does not go wandering on an interpretive adventure this music means USA consider for example Jimi Hendrix's famous use of the anthem at Woodstock in 1969 widely considered probably incorrectly to be an expression of anti-war sentiment this interpretation was only possible because there was no question about what the melody meant it wasn't an ad-lib selection of notes like a free jazz solo it was the national anthem a recognizable thing but we need to go a little further to come close to describing this phenomenon sufficiently let's think about language for a second think for a minute about what's going on when you speak words mean specific things and offer us a shortcut to communicating experience when we combine words to describe something we're constructing a very unsatisfactory representation of reality think of the difference between someone telling you about what it's like to be in a car crash or to kiss someone and the actual experience have been in a car crash or kissing someone if you have an experienced either of these things I'd recommend the kiss actual experience is almost nothing like hearing a first-hand account one of the reasons for this is because spoken language is itself reified used to construct an approximation of experience to work around the limitations of our senses and leaving out a whole world of information and doing so we're still there are more than likely aspects of experience that were not yet able to fully understand or communicate these things are often referred to a modern philosophy as the non conceptual music is often thought to have a strong link with a non conceptual for a few reasons it can provoke vague and difficult to define emotions it can exist without communicating anything specific it can mean different things to different people in fact many say that the allure of music is that you can say things with it that you could never say with the spoken language so if you're wondering where I'm going with this here it is when music is ray of fight it behaves a lot more like a spoken language it means something specific it can be described easily it is unable to change because its meaning is fixed the melody of the u.s. national anthem doesn't require me to engage with the non-conceptual I know what it is on a quick side note yet don't worry the Star Wars is coming when I mentioned the non-conceptual I'm opening a massive can of philosophical worms this is one of those terms that requires a gigantic amount of qualification cuz it brings us to existing contentions in wider philosophical debate for the purpose of a YouTube video I'm gonna have to move on however if you're interested in thrusting yourself into this confusing world then I've left some helpful links in the video description now one of the problems of reification is that it can cause harm to musical communication here's a pretty amusing example I discovered in a TED talk about banjo playing during the introduction the player Howard Goldthwait points out how the iconic banjo duel scene in the movie deliverance causes a powerful association with his instrument that is overpowered how audiences listen to it ever since may not realize this but the movie deliverance came out in 1972 and even now 42 years later I still can't carry a banjo case down the sidewalk that somebody going in this case it's not any particular melody or song that's reified but the instrument itself and it's also worth noting that it's happening against the musicians will here's one last example of a slightly different type of reification which is symptomatic of recording technology don't worry Star Wars is coming it's a thought experiment which of these versions of smells like teen spirit feels like the right one to you studio version [Applause] how about the first-ever life performance years earlier the song is called smells like teen spirit or how about this version played by a thousand people in Italy in 2016 [Music] surely they're all equally as valid right well that might be true but I'm guessing that many of you like me instinctively feel that the first clip is studio version is the definitive one that smells like teen spirit and if you know this song as well as I do then you'll know every moment of guitar feedback and every vocal nuance by heart they're almost hardened in place in the history of music this is a relatively recent phenomenon if you think about classical music there's no concept of a definitive version the tempo of performances have sped up and the instruments have been improved over the centuries allowing pieces like Beethoven's fifth a degree of adaptability and interpretability smells like teen spirit however is forever etched in its moment every interpretation will be compared to it every difference would be considered a deviation so in all of these examples the music is burdened with tininess smells like teen spirit is a literal thing a recording that only sounds one way in the example of the banjo it's no longer free to communicate musically instead becoming a humorous short hand for backwardness and the u.s. national anthem represents it's country so strongly that it can't possibly be mistaken for anything else in all these examples interpretation is resisted and the music is unable to change they have all in different ways become a thing unknown musical object this is of concern to composers because we recognize the value of the abstract nature of music which allows us to communicate in a way that the spoken language is often unable to do and there are so many other ways that music can be rarefied I promise Star Wars is nearly here rules can lead to reification for example the idea that chorus must always follow verse or that the opening movement of a symphony must use Sonata form over reliance on rules or traditions or trends can produce predictable musical objects that do not engage the listener but only remind them of things they've already heard lyrics are a type of reification especially in music by people like Taylor Swift who used them to explain to the listener what they should be feeling lest they turn on their brains to interpret meaning for more than five seconds don't like you and with that explanation out of the way it's time hello [Music] - anyways so let's talk about John Williams and how his music borrows from other composers I should say at the outset that it's impossible for a piece of music to avoid doing this composers don't really begin each new work with completely blank canvas because they carry with them with the philosopher Theodor Adorno calls the handed-down musical materials of history which are the genres tonalities structures and other musical traditions that we all grow up with things that already have meanings rules and associations tied to them some music is always rarefied to a certain degree while writing the music for a new hope John Williams drew from a large range of well-known sources there's heavy referencing of Stravinsky [Music] [Music] there's a famous reference to the opening music from kings rope [Music] the Han and Leia team is quite similar to Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto [Music] and it's pretty easy to spot the influence of Gustav Holst on the marshal things [Music] but I'm not saying that John Williams is a plagiarist or hack because the artistry in his music is in combining musical ideas that have pre-existing meanings to form new meaning breathing life into the original films and conjuring a sense of other worldliness and fantastical adventure like all music there's a certain degree of reification going on but it's very creative so the problem then is one of degrees in other words there comes a point where the piece of music is so rare fight that it's glued up completely where its meaning is so obvious that there's no room for manoeuvre this can be illustrated by looking at the newer movies the force awakens and rogue one which for me sit here on the reification meter and just to put that in perspective I put the Phantom Menace here why because as bad as that film is it's filled with memorable original themes in the case of the force awakens John Williams is no longer really drawing from different musical inspirations to create new experiences he's largely drawing from himself to create the same experience probably the most unique piece of music in the film is Ray's theme it's okay although I'm not completely sold on it I understood her character to be tragically lonely but with the fiery ambitious temperament this sounds to me like music you'd give to a pixie in a fairy tale movie I don't consider this even close to Williams's best work and that's a problem because most of the strongest musical moments in this film are as a result of direct quotations of the original material especially the forced theme how about the scene where ray uses the force to catch a lightsaber then again in the same scene during the turning point in the fight then again when or 2dt wakes up in one of the last parts of the movie and again during the climactic final scene I think it's safe to say that the soundtrack here isn't particularly strong since so many big moments rely on pre-existing material and the problem with the reusing pre-existing material is one of diminishing returns at its worst rehash music can descend into meaninglessness to give an example of what I mean but let's look at the use of vogner's right of the valkyries in film when used in Apocalypse Now it was a deliberate artistic juxtaposition drawing from the original meaning of the music to provide a subtext of false glory and horror it was done to make us think now let's look at its reuse in the film Watchmen directed by Zack Snyder [Music] the music here isn't appropriate at all because the intention of this part of the story written by the fantastic Alan Moore was to illustrate the complicated inner struggles and regrets of one of the main characters but Snyder as always employs the lowest common denominator approach since Apocalypse Niro takes place in Vietnam and this scene takes place in Vietnam let's just use the Apocalypse Now music no need to think any further this is a technique called incompetence no sorry that's not it this is a technique called Snyder in the music is now super reified right of the valkyries isn't being used for any deeper meaning it just means Vietnam but also remember Apocalypse Now hmm you might say hmm hold on there a second maybe the purpose of this reference was to provide a shorthand for the location to avoid clunky expository dialogue nope let's get forward about 40 seconds now the musical reference is a hundred percent pointless and it's this type of meaninglessness that Star Wars is in danger of going towards if mishandled we're all gone is a big step in that direction where possibly due to an extremely tight deadline the composer Michael Giacchino lifted the well-worn themes we've heard a million times and plays them at strategic moments to achieve maximum cliche whenever there's an x-wing we have to hear the rebel fanfare the Imperial March pops up whenever we see Darth Vader and this wouldn't be so bad if it was in service of a larger musical idea but no all we get is well-worn references linked together with forgettable filler a big-budget Greatest Hits medley and then there's the use of the force team again to achieve a sense of wonder that's completely unearned by the movie and if I do it oh look it's a guy I recognize walking slowly how affecting so now what's possibly the most reflective and powerful theme in Star Wars is just being thrown around to give way to a moment that would otherwise feel pretty silly this I think gets to the root of the problem the original use of the force team had enormous power because of how it was structured in the original film when Lucas being restrained by his uncle from following his dreams he looks up at the binary sunset and the music seems to reveal his inner longing and sadness [Music] this music is new to us and we now associate it with Luke and his plight later on when it's aunt and uncle are killed the same team emerges more powerfully it's been structured in this way to carry more weight it's now tragic because Luke's wish has been granted in the most horrible possible way [Music] [Applause] [Music] then at the climax of the movie the team reappears one more time to mark the moment that Luke overcomes his self-doubt thereby completing his character arc in a meaningful and satisfying way the team develops as the story develops this is how you tell a story with music now look again at rogue one oh look it's that guy the uninteresting prequel guy except the music is now telling you what to feel it isn't earned it's cashing in that check written by the original film but it's not a blank check eventually this team will lose its potency completely it will become a known artifact that disallows interpretation that leads us then to the problem of audience expectation I'm gonna call this the I know what that is conundrum c-3po and r2d2 showed up and I clapped I clapped when I saw them to mic left because I know Star Wars I know because we're all familiar with the Star Wars musical language composers are faced with the choice of either referencing that language or abandoning it to create new music with the latter they're opening themselves up to criticism by not doing what people expect and run the risk of their creative experiments failing by quoting established material that guaranteed some degree of acceptance while avoiding the possibility of misinterpretation audiences are often very insistent on seeing and hearing things that they recognize and the compulsion to give in to this demand is very powerful remember this iconic musical moment from the Phantom Menace [Music] well it nearly didn't happen watch this clip of John Williams suggesting to George Lucas during the recording sessions that the choir be removed from this particular part and my concern that one might have is that you may want a version without the chorus but I don't of you even wanna think of content I love the part the kids at that church eat now that's surprising you just saw John Williams second-guessing himself because of a worried that the music sounded new for me this is ridiculous removing the best thing about it being different is dangerous but it's also the only way to achieve new heights this leads me to a quick aside about Star Wars as a consumer product many thinkers use the concept of reification to attack aspects of modern capitalism one famous argument again from the philosopher Theodor Adorno is that art and capitalist societies has a tendency towards intellectual stagnation due to the financial interests involved because complicated and thought-provoking art is less likely to appeal to mass audiences it'll therefore not satisfy the hallmark of capitalism which of course is mass production motivated by profit now it's not hard to see how the Star Wars franchise can be used as an example to back up this argument with Disney being too afraid to deviate from customer expectation and constantly choosing directors who are happy to turn out very similar material over and over again it's up to you to decide to what extent this is happening but it seems to me pretty obvious that it is at least happening this is an idea I'll most likely be returning to many times in the future if you're curious to see those videos you might want to press that button down there let's talk about structure for a second if we step away from smaller detail we can see that there are big structural features of Star Wars that suffer from pronounced reification - this is most obvious in the introduction which seems to be completely ring fenced from change or interpretation how can you establish the unique character of your movie if you have to use exactly this now composers are often restricted by structural conventions or to put it another way concrete things that the audience expect but this intro isn't concrete its reinforced steel and to illustrate what a problem this is let's look at a famous historical example of a composer overcoming structural expectations in the past the composer in question is Tchaikovsky who in 1877 was working on this first movement of his fourth symphony however he was faced with the problem at that time the first movement of a symphony was always structured according to something called not reform a detailed process where two very small musical ideas are weaved together to form a musical journey this is a very analytical and abstract way of writing where the goal is a sense of musical resolution at the end however this formula didn't sit well with some romantic composers at the time because it resisted their more modern interest in storytelling and biographical self-expression in this case Tchaikovsky was in the middle of a personal crisis he had recently married a move generally considered to have been a smokescreen to hide his homosexuality from the public and it had ended in acrimonious disaster after only a couple of months leaving him with feelings of depression and alienation so going into its fourth symphony it was these emotions that he wanted to express but the highly technical framework of the Sonata form was a problem feelings related to an identity crisis are difficult to express when following a tried and tested formula however due to audience expectation Tchaikovsky didn't feel that he could simply discard Sonata form altogether and so decided to make some now very famous alterations it would take a whole video to do this piece justice so I'll just mention one of these alterations the insertion of an unexpected waltz in the first movement [Music] by today's standards that sounds almost laughably unravel Usha nari but consider the social function of the waltz at the time it was found at events where young men and women of the elite would dance form connections and generally have a good time Tchaikovsky's use of the waltz shoved into a structure it was never intended for reflected his own feelings of social failure and inability to dance in step with everyone else and the emotional quality of the music was unique too for all the attempts of the waltz to sound light-hearted and frivolous it was being knocked about by dark and turbulent symphonic forces a hopeless display of frivolity that reflected the futile charade of his own marriage in other words Tchaikovsky took structural expectation and used it as a way to communicate something completely unique about his own experience so why do I mention this example well because I think Star Wars faces a similar problem of rigid expectation think of how important to the opening of a movie is the moment where you can get across the entire tone and let's look at how rogue one began burdened as it was by the expectation of a classic Star Wars opening [Music] so they pretended the title crawl was coming and then just didn't do it oh come on that's how you introduce a movie is this what passes for creativity multiple millions of dollars spent and the first emotion I feel is what oh I guess they're just not going to do this thing they led me to believe they were going to do Lucasfilm logo a long time ago in a galaxy far far away but no title crawl oh wow I applauded it for being different it broke new ground yeah and it's only gonna get worse from here what do these one-off Star Wars stories do in the future continue to pretend to do the title crawl and then just not do it not particularly fertile ground is it this is worse than not taking a chance this is a bureaucratic misfire the irony here is that despite being unshackled from some of the Star Wars conventions Roebourne was much much less original and creative than the force awakens here's hoping the next one off movie displays a bit more bravery another notable musical feature of Star Wars I think future composers should consider abandoning is the use of light motif most commonly associated with the upper as of Richard Wagner light motif is the technique of assigning recurring musical phrases to characters and situations Luke has a teen the rebellion has a theme Leia has a theme etc in the force awakens John Williams's instinct was to yet again write a bunch of teams to represent the characters however the reuse of this technique ended up sounding a bit stale and predictable Ray's team as I mentioned earlier sounds like something discarded from the Harry Potter soundtrack [Music] please happy dr. must say he's not going back to school I don't Hogwarts is my home and then there's the admittedly amusingly titled at skirt so 4x wings [Music] [Applause] well not much to say about this is there as for color ends team [Music] I mean sorry it just feels a bit dull and say me over all the themes of the force awakens feel like a bargain bin version of the originals my problem here is that things are being done because that's the way they were done before not because it's appropriate with the music for the last Jedi trailer we can hear Ray's team mixed with kylo ren's team which then morphs into yet again the force team I'm not really musically impressed by this the combination of these teams seems almost pre musical like Jon said to himself gotta have that Ray theme and gotta have that force team despite it not really communicating much the only emotional response I have to this is yeah I recognize those things I know that's for the actual movie the last Jedi I struggled to identifying music that contained anything unique it mainly comprised of the teams already established in the force awakens I did feel that the music was at least allowed a little bit more room to be heard this time around which made it a bit more effective in the force awakens very little time was allowed for the music to take over without dialogue or Foley getting in the way that aside I do have one major criticism you guessed it the force team again this time I counted eight prominent uses of a key stages throughout the development of the story and this excludes the subtly uses which when added together amount to about 21 and total this is very uninspired artistic decision-making there was never a moment where I felt it was being used as a storytelling device as much as a dog whistle it didn't provide any kind of deeper meaning or allow me to ponder or interpret what was going on its sole function was to point out when something force related was happening which I already knew about because I was watching the movie this is extreme reification that just hurts the film's ability to communicate perhaps it's time to consider organizing the soundtrack in a different way feather music doesn't have to be based on light motif for that matter it also doesn't have to be played by a nineteenth-century orchestra either especially when most movies copy this type of setup today and all you hear are horns blasting all the time so in short Star Wars needs to change we should not as an audience expect to be pander to by relentless reference to stuff we know it will never satisfy us the original movies were well original and that's the only thing originality that is any hope of delivering a truly breathtaking new Star Wars experience and if that entails throwing away things like the title crawl or the force team then so what it's a price worth pane familiarity and recognition are nice but they can never replace the filling of a completely novel experience come on Disney you're throwing how many multiple millions of dollars of these things can you not take a chance on just one of them I'm free if you need me so I'll leave you with this message if you love it set it free may the general sense of artistic curiosity be with you goodbye if you like my diatribe subscribe [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Tantacrul

Views: 453,590

Rating: 4.7001791 out of 5

Keywords: Star Wars Music, The Last Jedi Music, The Last Jedi Soundtrack, Music Philosophy, John Williams, Disney, The Last Jedi, The Force Awakens, Star Wars Score, Star Wars Soundtrack, Michael Giacchino, The Force Awakens Music, rogue one music, star wars composer, star wars composition, star wars theory composer, the last jedi music score, the last jedi soundtrack luke vs kylo, classical music philosophy, philosophy music mix, john williams music, the last jedi review

Id: gB4lULC87Oo

Length: 27min 31sec (1651 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 08 2018

Reddit Comments

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[u/chavalitos4life]

The way these films are written and cut there's literally no breathing space for any themes and melodies to attach to characters. It's just an endless 90 minute medley of the hits.

Hearing the force theme in disney Wars is like hearing Christmas music at best buy on black friday. It's not genuine, it's just there to remind you to spend money.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/menimex]

I love stuff like this. Great post, even if it deosn't have mass appeal.

[u/IcarusGoodman]

Dang, never thought I'd find myself defending the ST, but I have to generally disagree with this.

To be sure, there are problems with the music in the ST and it is overall rather uninspired, especially everything outside of TFA which at least has a few decent themes.

But the problem isn't the use of Leitmotif or the opening crawl. If anything the problem is that didn't use them enough. Outside of Rey and Kylo's theme, there aren't any memorable character themes for any of the other new characters. Nor are there any new characters worth having a decent theme in the first place.

It seems like this guy just want Star Wars music to become something not "Star Warsy", but you can be original and creative while still working within the established framework of the films, just as the PT still had leitmotif, title crawls etc, yet was able to expand the musical vocabulary with exciting new sounds and styles.

[u/Zeitfallen]

Interesting analysis. I gotta say...the Force Theme is never going to lose its potency, not for me. They could play it in a Transformers movie and I'd probably get a little teared up.

Its like the Adagio in D Minor from the movie Sunshine. Its been in like 10 movies now, and every time I hear it, I think of the epic scene in Sunshine when...well, I don't want to spoil it, one of the best movies I've ever seen (third act gets a little odd, but the defining moments are all incredible). Captain America is in it for all you MCU fans.

The Sequel songs haven't really landed for me because they aren't being connected to, for lack of a better term, 'deep' moments. Most of the big moments in the Sequels feel contrived, forced, or just plain shallow. Force download overcoming adversity? Kind of absurd. Luke getting his lightsaber back? Chucks it. Leia's death? Jk, she's fine now, she can fly back to the ship. That one actually had me choked up for a second, but when she went Mary Poppins, I laughed out loud. Fuck. Holdo's sacrifice? She was such a petty, unlikable character, I couldn't give a shit if she went down.

[u/hypnotronica]

The Jedi Steps, for me personally is up there with the best of Star Wars compositions. A truly epic, emotional monster of a piece of music.

JJ knew he had something special there and used it as perfectly as you could hope. But Rian Johnson, after being handed what could have been the defining theme of the ST badly misused it, it ended up being the leitmotif for some small stone huts.

It is also a piece of music that shows how different the vision of the two directors was. No way is that theme anything other than representative of the awesome abilities Luke has mastered over the 30 years since ROTJ in the hands of JJ. In the hands of Johnson however it’s an anticlimax, much like the entire movie.

[u/-jake-skywalker-]

many moments in the OT and PT were driven primarily by the music.

Think of duel of the fates, your first image is of Darth Maul igniting his second blade and anakin and Obi locking blades on mustafar.

Imperial March you imagine Darth Vader storming down a hallway with a squad of stormtroopers

Leia and Hans theme: you imagine “someone who loves you” and Han being unfrozen from carbonite

The ST has nothing like this. The closest thing is smokes throne room theme

[u/DarkIntrovertedBlob]

One thing I will credit the ST and John Williams on, are how all the themes are connected. Like the PT connected The Imperial March from the OT into Anakin’s Theme.

But what’s clever about Rey's theme in the ST, is that the first three notes are the last three notes in Kylo Ren's theme.

And what’s more interesting is that these same three notes in reverse are the notes from Across the Stars, Padme and Anakin's love theme in the PT.

Which I know is pretty divisive here, but I think it’s very fascinating. Even with the Reylo.

But there’s a whole video that I’d recommend here going more in depth into this.