D’Un nouvel espoir (1977) à La Revanche des Sith (2005) : écriture musicale et traitement de la partition au sein du complexe audio-visuel dans la saga Star Wars
The singularity of the Star Wars saga stems from a paradox: the order of the trilogies’ film-making and the real chronology of the plot do not coincide. Lucas’s second trilogy (1999- 2005) was created “in reverse” from the first one (1977-1983), in a process of origins’ foundation and return to the roots of the saga. The scores of this gigantic dischronic cycle spanning over a long period of twenty-eight years are all composed by John Williams, a unique configuration in cinema history. This compositional consistency should theoretically establish the two trilogies as a coherent and unified whole, especially as George Lucas considers the six episodes as one single entity. Nevertheless, the hexalogy’s musical unity and the existence of a Star Wars music signature are far from self-evident, instead taking the form of an ideal devoid of real, solid foundations. By adopting a comparative cross-disciplinary approach and by resorting to different scales of analysis (episode, trilogy, saga), this dissertation aims to show in which ways the musical material, Williams’ compositional practice as well as the use and integration of the score within the audiovisual complex are subjected to profound transformations between the two trilogies. This research also questions how and to what extent these changes in Williams’s writing and the score’s treatment in the different episodes are related to the mutations of film techniques, especially those of the digital age. This dissertation implements a firm interdisciplinarity at the intersection of musical analysis, cinema and technology history, necessary to provide an in-depth analysis of such an object and to comprehend all its specific features with sharpness. Drawing on unreleased hand- written sources and personal interviews conducted with Williams’ main orchestrator, Conrad Pope, and his music editor, Kenneth Wannberg, our comparative approach is organized in three complementary lines of research: an examination of the evolution of Williams’ writing, a study of the treatment of his scores in the editing process, and an analysis of the relationship between music, dialogue and sound effects in the two trilogies.
Star Wars John Williams George Lucas Ben Burtt Sound design Saga Musical analysis Film music Cinema Editing Technology Digital age