Sith Score Closes John Williams' Six-Episode Star Wars Cycle with Style, Brilliance

Over the past 28 years, composer/conductor John Williams has collaborated with Star Wars' creator, writer/director/executive producer George Lucas, providing the six Episode saga about the Skywalker family and its pivotal role in the history of "a galaxy far, far away" with a symphonic score that not only provides the films' characters, settings and situations with much needed emotional depth and weight, but also stands alone as beautiful orchestral music. 

Starting with the phenomenal best-selling two-record album of music from 1977's Star Wars (a.k.a. Episode IV: A New Hope), Williams' then-daring use of 19th Century Romantic era symphonic styles not only introduced a generation to instrumental music that wasn't rock or disco, but also reinvigorated the moribund art of film scoring and inspired many new composers - Michael Kamen, Joel McNeeley, Danny Elfman, Cliff Eidelman, and James Horner - to follow in his footsteps.

Because the Star Wars saga is essentially a 1930s "Saturday afternoon adventure serial" with, as Han Solo might have put it, "special modifications," composer Williams has to use musical themes that act as a unifying thread in the two-trilogy tapestry. All six Episodes, therefore, begin with the familiar Star Wars Main Title that underscores the title crawl that sets up the storylines. Also present in some form are The Rebel Fanfare and The Force Theme, which doubled as both Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi's theme and the mystical energy field from which both the Jedi and the Sith draw their amazing powers.

Each Episode also introduced new major themes and action cues as the story expanded and new characters were added. Some action motifs were unique to a specific movie; The Forest Battle from Return of the Jedi and Landspeeder Search from A New Hope never recurred in any other Star Wars film. On the other hand, The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme), Yoda's Theme from The Empire Strikes Back, and The Emperor's Theme are quoted in all the subsequent Episodes in various guises, since those three characters are major players in both the Prequel and Classic Star Wars trilogies.