Hi everyone, welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Apologies for the delay, I was busy last weekend and wasn't able to type this up.
Today we're going to be listening to 2m2 Desert Song. This cue is just 12 bars long, and was orchestrated by Herbert Spencer.
Here's what the top of the first page of the conductor's score looks like:
Interestingly, it looks like they rebalanced this cue a couple times back and forth, like they couldn't decide between 1m5-2m1 and 2m2. The sheet scans I have show that 1m5-2m1 appears to have won, however the final cuesheet lists this as 2m2. It also makes more logical sense as 2m2, since 2m1 was covered by the last cue we looked at. So why were they so indecisive on this cue's number? I honestly have no idea, it's one of a few curious unsolved mysteries regarding the cue numbers of this score.
Before discussing anymore, let's listen to this cue together:
This entire piece is made of hesitant strings and woodwinds while Threepio wanders the desert by himself. There aren't really any clear sync points, it's pretty surprising how little of what's on-screen is acknowledged by the music - for example, there's no change in the music for when the bones appear on the screen, or for when Threepio sees the Sandcrawler. The cue simply continues being hesitant strings from its beginning through to its conclusion.
One potential explanation for this is that Williams may have been asked to closely follow the temp track for this scene - the rough cut is known to have used a snippet of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring here, and Williams' cue copies it pretty closely. Here's the Stravinsky piece for comparison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aJITLFLM30
The opening of this is almost identical to the WIlliams cue in some parts. This is probably the most extreme example of temp track influence in the entire saga.
This cue is used exactly as intended in the final cut, no edits were made between writing/recording and the final film.
The cue was recorded on March 12, 1977, the sixth day of the recording sessions. It was the third cue recorded that day. Six takes were recorded, numbered 144-149.
Of these six takes, take 149 was the one selected for the performance edit.
This cue has been officially released on four different albums:
1) In 1977 on 20th Century Records' OST album
2) In 1993 on Arista Records' 4-CD Anthology box set
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
4) In 2018 on Walt Disney Records' Remastered album (remastered OST rebuilt from scratch from the session masters)
More specifically, 2m2 Desert Song can be heard:
From 0:00-0:52 of track 4 "The Desert and The Robot Auction" on the 1977/2018 albums
From 0:00-0:52 of disc 1 track 4 "The Desert and The Robot Auction" on the 1993 album
From 0:00-0:57 of disc 1 track 4 "The Dune Sea of Tatooine/Jawa Sandcrawler" on the 1997 album.
All releases have clean openings, although only the 1997 set has a clean ending. The 1977 set is of course a remix. The 1993 set does appear to use the correct take for this cue, and the 2018 set doesn't seem to have any obvious issues.
However, due to the clean ending, I would recommend listening to this cue with the 1997 release, which is also used by the above video.
That's all I've got for today, thanks for reading! Sorry again for the delay. Feel free to leave any questions or comments.
Next week we'll be analyzing 2m3 The Little People.
