Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 6m5 New The Destruction of Alderon.
The cue number might make you think this cue was completely replaced from scratch, like with 3m2 New. However, I don't believe this to be the case.
Rather, as evidenced by the way it's written on a couple other cues we'll look at in the coming weeks, I believe 6m5 New is labelled as "New" in order to indicate that it was rebalanced. Just like last week's cue was originally 6m1 and got rebalanced to 6m4, this week's cue was originally 6m2 and got rebalanced to 6m5.
This cue is 32 bars long and was orchestrated by Al Woodbury.
One other thing you've probably noticed is that the name Alderaan is spelled wrong in this cue title. Unfortunately since I don't have the sketch I have no idea if this error was introduced by John Williams or by Al Woodbury. I don't believe this spelling was intentional because all of George Lucas' scripts even going back to the first treatment used the spelling "Alderaan". Also, as we'll see as this series continues, this is far from the only JW cue to have a name spelled incorrectly.
Okay with that out of the way, let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 there's some initial low brass followed immediately by some hesitant woodwind figures at 0:02 for the reveal of Alderaan. These almost sound like the dies irae material from earlier in the score except they're two repeating notes instead of four.
The tension builds at 0:13 as Tarkin approaches Leia. "I grow tired of asking this, so it'll be the last time. Where is the rebel base?" The ascending brass leads into a more direct dies irae quote at 0:23, as Leia looks upon her homeworld, carefully considering her options.
Then at 0:26, some sad strings, as Leia defeatedly says they're on Dantooine, and Tarkin announces that Alderaan will be destroyed anyway.
At 0:36 we get some ascending strings as Tarkin's lie is revealed, which build tension before the demonstration. At 0:46, the tension builds to its highest point with loud repeating lower brass, and the return of the dies irae material on the upper brass. This continues as the operators pull levers until the beam fires at 0:58.
At 0:58, we get a short four note sad string melody as the planet explodes, variations of which repeat throughout the rest of the cue. There crop up at 1:02, 1:06, and 1:11. The last two of these occur as we switch to the interior of the Millennium Falcon, where Ben sense the planet's destruction through the Force. Thus, the cue ends...
In the final cut the cue is mostly used as intended, however the section from 1:00-1:11 is dialed out due to the overwhelming presence of the sound effects. Interestingly, this is the only cue in the entire score that was intended to play when a lightsaber was onscreen, and that section was muted in the film in favor of the lightsaber sfx.
David Collins mentions at 58:24 of Star Wars Oxygen episode 5, that on this first film they were afraid that the lighsaber sfx was too tonal and that it would clash with the music. My guess is that this fear was established during the spotting sessions, because every section involving a lightsaber in the film (Ben's hut, training ball on the Falcon, Ben vs Vader) went unscored with the exception of the 4 seconds of this cue where Luke's lightsaber was still on.
I assume that at spotting they decided that either the quiet strings wouldn't conflict, or that they'd skip lightsaber sfx here, or that the segment was so short that it didn't matter; but on the editing stage they ultimately decided to drop the music instead.
This cue was recorded on March 12, 1977, the sixth day of the recording sessions. Five takes were recorded, numbered 168-172. According to the 1997 take log, the performance edit used just take 172.
This cue has been officially released on two different albums:
2) In 1993 on Arista Records' 4-CD Anthology box set
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
More specifically, 6m5 New The Destruction of Alderon can be heard:
From 0:00-end of disc 4 track 5 "Destruction of Alderaan" on the 1993 album.
From 0:00-end of disc 2 track 3 "Destruction of Alderaan" on the 1997 album.
Both sets have clean openings and endings, and they both share the same takes. However, the 1997 set is brickwalled, and for that reason I used the 1993 set for the above video.
That's all I have for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
Next week we'll be discussing one of my favorite cues, 7m1 New Is It A Bird?. See you then!