The Major and Minor of the Force: Sound design and Music in Star Wars

 

There is rarely a moment in the Star Wars films where sound is not present. The Empire Strikes Back alone runs 127 minutes, and of that, 117 minutes contain musical accompaniment (Kalinak). Watching the films would arguably not be as moving for the audience without John Williams’s iconic score or the blazing hums of the lightsaber. Williams had several influences for his composition, including Gustav Holst’s “The Planets,” and Richard Wagner’s “The Ring Cycle.” He was particularly inspired by Wagner’s concept of the leitmotif, or a musical idea that is linked to a specific character, location, or theme and is repeated throughout the work. Ben Burtt worked as the sound designer for the films who manufactured the many different sounds of the universe. In this essay, I will be discussing how and why sound and music in Star Wars strengthen and influence the audience’s perception of good, evil, and the force. 

Leitmotifs allow a composer to highlight or raise the importance of certain themes and give the listener a method for identifying them. In the original trilogy, Williams composed leitmotifs that can be associated with good and evil. Among the “good” leitmotifs are Luke’s theme, which is also Star Wars’s main theme; “Binary Sunset,” also known as the Force theme or Obi-Wan’s theme; Princess Leia’s theme; Yoda’s theme; Han Solo and Leia’s theme; and Luke and Leia’s theme. The “bad” leitmotifs include Darth Vader’s theme, also known as “The Imperial March”; Jabba the Hutt’s theme; the Imperial Theme; and the Emperor’s theme. 

As Irena Paulus points out in her paper “Williams versus Wagner or an Attempt at Linking Musical Epics,” Williams evidently composed fewer leitmotifs associated with the darkside than the lightside. This creates an apparent audible bias among the audience, favoring one side, in the case the light one, over the dark side. To support this, I will break down two leitmotifs and their variations: the Force Theme and Darth Vader’s Theme. Firstly, the names. According to Obi-Wan Kenobi, the force is “An energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together,” (Lucas, A New Hope, 00:34:40). It is supposed to be a neutral term that any living being can have if they are force-sensitive, whether or not they support the lightside or darkside of the force; however, right away, Williams creates a bias by naming this the “Force theme” and pinning it as one of the “good” leitmotifs.

The theme is first introduced after Luke’s uncle tells him he cannot join the Academy and must work another year on his home planet of Tatooine (00:24:24). It starts after Luke expresses his apparent need to start training for the Empire and essentially drives him to meet Obi-Wan, pushing him away from the dark side and reaffirming his connection with Obi-Wan. The theme is noticeably beautiful, and Williams provides it with an instrumentation that is light in tone, featuring a french horn in its high range, and strings backed by a full orchestra. The hopeful sound that this evokes assists the audience in relating to Luke’s troubles.

Darth Vader’s theme, however, includes a score that is full of deep and rich brass instruments, such as the trumpet and trombone, which play at the bottom of their range. It clearly overpowers the Force theme, especially considering the fact that although the Force theme is present in all movies in the original trilogy, Darth Vader’s theme is only first introduced in the second film of the trilogy Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. Vader’s thunderous theme was necessary to maintain the monstrous and heavy tone of his character due to the fact that he only received thirteen minutes of screentime in The Empire Strikes Back, compared to someone like Luke who had thirty four minutes. 

Variation allows these themes to represent something other than what they did previously. Generally, Vader’s theme is heavily connected to the “bad,” or dark side. It is played at times when Lucas wants the audience to be afraid of him and what he represents. In Return of the Jedi, Luke Skywalker fights Vader, who the audience learns in the previous film is his father, but neither of them defeat the other, rather Vader redeems himself by destroying Emperor Palpatine while he is gravely injured. In the scene after this, Luke carries him out, knowing what his father just did for the Rebellion (2:00:26). As this is happening, Vader’s theme opens, though this time it is not a striking melody with horns and percussion but a gentle one featuring flute and strings. It provokes the audience to sympathize with Luke and his dying father while also remembering what he stood for through when the theme played in other points. 

This type of variation can also be seen in The Empire Strikes Back when Luke goes to Dagobah to train under Yoda. In this scene, he enters a cave that is heavily connected to the dark side, and Luke confronts who he thinks is Darth Vader and uses his lightsaber to decapitate his head. After this happens, Luke sees himself in Vader’s mask, followed by the start of his theme, or leitmotif (1:05:35). This time, when it plays however, it is not the grand score in a major key that audiences are used to but a soft minor version of it. Minor melodies after often heard when conflict is ensuing in a character, so this accompaniment allows the audiences to see Luke’s struggle with maintaining his allegiance to the light side rather than the dark. Additionally, this is immediately followed by the loud, crashing imperial march, juxtaposing Luke’s grapple with joining the dark side with the decisive imperial ship. This variation of leitmotifs allows Williams and Lucas to communicate with the audience and show the inner conflict of characters who are usually associated with it. 

In addition to the inclusion of music being necessary for the audience to feel the full effect of the dark side versus the light side, sound as a whole is very important. Included in sound is often a deliberate silence. In A New Hope, during the scene in which the Imperial military leaders meet in the Death Star conference room, Admiral Conan Antonio Motti and General Cassio Tagge are discussing Tagge’s opinion and what he thinks are the dangers of the rebellion, while Motti disagrees, as he believes the Death Star is the ultimate weapon of destruction. Darth Vader expresses his skepticism about the Death Star, who firmly tells Motti, “Don’t be too proud of this technological terror you’ve constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force” (00:38:11). While Motti opposes him, Vader clearly places his full trust in the force, and to prove this, he holds Motti in a force choke. During the entire length of this scene, no music is present, however, the audience can hear a subtle low humming noise in the background. Right when Vader starts using the force, the humming rises in volume and engulfs the listener’s ears. The force itself manifests in this humming, showing the audience how connected Darth Vader truly is to the dark side in this moment. It also substantiates Obi-Wan’s claim that the force is omnipresent and surrounds everything. In this case, the force not only shows itself as a symbol in this music but it is the music. 

The sounds of lightsabers and blasters are also significant in representing the lightside and darkside. I will use one instance of the lightsabers’s sounds in The Empire Strikes Back to compare the sound of a Jedi’s lightsaber, in this case Luke Skywalker’s, to the sound of a Sith Lord’s lightsaber, in this case Darth Vader’s. During their final battle of the film, they both ignite their lightsabers. I isolated both of their sounds and found their pitches: Luke’s lightsaber in this scene is a concert A flat, while Vader’s lightsaber is a lower F sharp (1:45:02). An A flat is higher in pitch, and higher pitches can often be interpreted as lighter and may generally sound nicer to the human ear, while deeper, bass-driven pitches may sound more sinister. What this means for the lightsaber is that Ben Burtt distinctly designed the pitches for different lightsabers to inherently represent good and evil. 

Burtt then plays with this notion during Vader and Luke’s battle in Return of the Jedi. While Luke is struggling to remain faithful to the light side of the force, his rage momentarily consumes him and prompts him to pursue Vader fiercely with his lightsaber (1:48:48). This time, however, his new green lightsaber constantly switches pitch from A flat to G, which is a note that is in between F sharp and A flat. This pitch represents Luke’s conflict, and being in the middle of the two opposing notes, it is almost a balance between the light and the dark. In addition, according to David Sonnenschein, Obiwan Kenobi’s is pitched to a C major key, while Darth Vader’s lightsaber is pitched to a minor key, leading us to believe that Burtt designed the Sith’s lightsaber to be associated with bad, or evil, and the Jedi’s lightsaber to be correlated with good (Sound Design: The Expressive Power of Music, Voice and Sound Effects in Cinema). 

This distinction in pitch can also be seen with the sound of blasters, specifically Han Solo’s versus the stormtroopers’. Solo’s blaster has a change in pitch in A New Hope. In the cantina scene, his blaster when he shoots Greedo is pitched at an E (00:50:08); however, in his shootout in the Death Star to escape the stormtroopers, the pitch of his blaster becomes a C (1:17:20). This shift in pitch from lower to higher represents Solo’s change from being someone who shoots for his own good to someone who is shooting for another’s. In addition, Han’s blaster sound is also pitched differently than stormtroopers’. In that same scene, the stormtroopers’ blasters are pitches at an A, lower than Han’s C. Although Han is using the same type of blaster as the stormtroopers, one that both he and Luke took off one of their dead bodies, their sounds are still pitched differently, again suggesting that Han’s higher sound is linked with the good lightside, whereas the stormtrooper’s blaster sound is associated with the bad dark side. 

 

Originally a film, Star Wars relies heavily on its visual components. In my experience, sound design is often overlooked, and the audience first sees a movie, and then hears it. Star Wars, however, would not be complete without its original score and sound design. Visuals often deceive the viewer, as shown in the Cantina scene in A New Hope, in which fans widely argue about whether or not Han Solo or Greedo pulled the trigger first. Sound often makes things clear that the audience does not consider. Clearly, sound and music in the original trilogy are designed to favor the light side over the dark with more “good” leitmotifs and “nicer” sounds associated with in-world objects used by the Rebellion. 

We can learn about the implications of John Williams’s music in Star Wars when we view it through a Gothic lens. One of the elements of Gothicism is that of the “other.” In this universe it would be those who are not human: Biths, Ewoks, Jawas, Sand People, Hutts, and Wookies to name a few. In his paper about the psychoanalysis of sound in Star Wars, Andrew Gresko introduces the fact that the only diegetic music (source music that is part of in-world setting) in A New Hope is found in the cantina scene, which takes place in an establishment filled with aliens, or the “others,” that are clearly portrayed as criminals. This music is played by the Biths, a race that is barely represented in the Star Wars universe apart from this scene and in the novel From a Certain Point of View, which demystifies their species and others. The style of music they play is derived from the swing era of Jazz music and includes instruments that look like saxophones, clarinets, and a standard drum set. As Gresko points out, “It is heard at precisely the point at which Luke is first exposed to a diverse array of alien life, or the other of his world,” (Gresko 8).

What does this suggest outside of the film? In a musical context, the “exotic” genre of music that played during this scene largely came from a marginalized group in our own world. Now, we have to ask ourselves why the non-diegetic music, consisting of Williams’s score from soundtrack, is derived from the classical music mainly composed by white people, and why the in-film music, mostly shown when the “other” is present, is from marginalized groups, also seen during Return of the Jedi in Jabba the Hutts’ palace and with the Ewoks after their victory. What we learn from the sound and music reinforces these gothic elements of the film and introduces to us a new question: was Star Wars created for a white audience? Take this thought into consideration the next time you listen to Star Wars; remember, listening to a film is just as important as watching it. 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Gresko, Andrew J. Sound, Spectator, and Psychoanalysis in Star Wars: Episode IV New Hope, Tufts University, Ann Arbor, 2019. ProQuest, http://libproxy.vassar.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/2240049305?accountid=14824.

This source introduced the point of “exoticism” related to music in Star Wars.

Kershner, Irvin, director. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back. Twentieth Century Fox, 1980.

I used this film for Darth Vader’s Theme, Luke’s training on Dagobah, and Luke Skywalker’s and Darth Vader’s lightsaber sounds in their final battle.

Kalinak, Kathryn. “John Williams and “The Empire” Strike Back.” The Eighties and Beyond: Classical Meets Contemporary, http://web.archive.org/web/19970516041818/http://citd.scar.utoronto.ca/VPAB93/course/readings/kalinak.html

I used this source for information on the amount of screentime William’s score is featured in The Empire Strikes Back.

Lucas, George, director. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. Twentieth Century Fox, 1977. 

This film was used for Obi-wan Kenobi’s description of the force, and for the significance of the Imperial conference room scene and the Cantina scene.

Marquand, Richard, director. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. Twentieth Century Fox, 1983.

This film was used to support my evidence about the sound of lightsabers. It used Luke and Vader’s final battle, Jabba the Hutt’s palace scene, and the Ewok’s theme.

Molina, Juanjo. “The music of Star Wars – The Leitmotif and its use in ‘The Empire Strikes Back’.” SoundTrackFest, https://soundtrackfest.com/en/articles/the-music-of-star-wars-the-leitmotif-and-its-use-in-the-empire-strikes-back/  

I used this source to help track and analyze the leitmotifs that are present in The Empire Strikes Back.

Paulus, Irena. “Williams versus Wagner or an Attempt at Linking Musical Epics.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, vol. 31, no. 2, 2000, pp. 153–184. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3108403.

This source analyzed the Williams’ leitmotifs in the context of good and evil.

ninewheels0. “Screen Time Breakdown: Star Wars” IMDB, https://m.imdb.com/list/ls027631145/.

This source broke down when each leitmotif was present in the films.