Hi everyone and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be looking at 3m1 Rev The Princess Appears. As the name implies, this cue had an earlier revision, 3m1 The Princess Appears, which was scrapped before recording.
Both versions were orchestrated by Herbert Spencer. The original was 27 bars long, and the revision was 28 bars long.
Here's the top of the conductor's scores for the original and revised versions:
The main differences in the revision are as follows:
- new bar 4A is inserted between 4 and 5
- new bar 5A is inserted between 5 and 6
- new bar 6A is inserted between 6 and 7
- new bar 17A replaces bars 18-20
We'll discuss what these changes actually sounded like in a second, now let's listen to the revised cue together:
The cue starts with a sudden cello sting at 0:00 for Luke falling and the hologram appearing.
This leads into some string and flute material that lasts until 0:31, with small pauses in between. Curiously, these pauses are actually the main change in the revision. The pauses from 0:12-0:16, 0:21-0:25, and 0:29-0:33 didn't exist in the original cue, these are bars 4A, 5A, and 6A respectively.
These additions are very curious to me both from a musical perspective (they feel like a natural intended part of the cue and not like a later addition), but also from a footage perspective.
I don't believe that any picture edits accommodated this change, due to the removed bars later on. The original and revised cues would probably be about the same length, had they both been recorded. By removing 3 bars later on and adding 3 bars early in the cue, the main effect is that the big Leia's theme statement (the one from 0:33-1:13 in the revision) starts and ends 12 seconds later than it was originally intended to.
So why was this change made? I actually have no idea. My best guess is that they wanted to give the theme more of an emotional effect by building up to it more.
Anyway, back to the main analysis. As I sort of just spoiled, 0:33-1:13 features one big sweeping Leia's theme statement, as C-3PO describes what little he knows about her, and elaborates on the message's intended recipient.
Bar 17A starts around 1:13, as Luke stands up talking about Old Ben Kenobi. It's made up of some transitionary material on the cello, which leads straight into a second Leia's theme statement at 1:20. Everything from here to the end is the same in both versions.
The Leia's theme statement continues through Luke's attempts to play back the entire message, until the hologram ends at 1:49, and the music fades out shortly thereafter. Thus, the cue ends...
This cue was recorded on March 5, 1977, the first day of the recording sessions. It was the fifth and last cue recorded that day.
Three takes were recorded, 21-23. Of these, the 1997 take documentation claims that take 22 was used 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, 3m1 Rev The Princess Appears can be heard:
From 0:00-1:51 of track 14 "The Princess Appears" on the 1977/2018 albums
From 0:00-1:51 of disc 1 track 6 "The Princess Appears" on the 1993 album
From 0:00-1:53 of disc 1 track 6 "The Hologram/Binary Sunset" on the 1997 album.
All releases have clean openings, but only the 1997 release has a clean ending. The 1977 release is of course a remix.
Curiously enough, I discovered that all three albums with the film mix actually have the same wrong take. The take used in the film (heard in the video above) is completely unreleased.
This implies to me that the take documentation (which I've been using as my primary source for the take numbers used in the final performance edit) is wrong. It's not at all uncommon for this to be the case, archival soundtrack engineer Mike Matessino has said in interviews before that he's stopped relying on take documentation, and reconstructs the performance edits himself by ear, because the documentation is almost always wrong. So while my information on what takes were recorded is correct, I'd take any claims about "xyz take was used in the final performance edit" with a grain of salt on my previous posts, those claims are only according to the available documentation, which evidently has been wrong multiple times now.
As a consequence of this, I wouldn't actually recommend any of the official releases for this cue. Hopefully one day Disney will release a proper expansion and we'll get the correct film take on an official album.
That's all I've got for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
I'm super excited for next week, where we'll be diving into 3m2 Rev Lost R2. See you then!
