Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 7m1 New Is It a Bird?
This might actually be my favorite cue in the entire score.
This cue is 44 bars long and was orchestrated by Arthur Morton.
Just like last week, the "New" in the cue number is an indication that it was rebalanced. And unlike last week, this is actually pretty easily visible on the sheet music:
As you can clearly see this cue was rebalanced from 6m3 to 7m1, just like how last week's cue was originally 6m2 and got rebalanced to 6m5.
One other funny thing about the title is that it's a reference to the infamous "It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Superman!" intro from the old 40s Superman cartoons. John Williams would go on to write the score for Superman only a year after Star Wars, in 1978. I'm curious if at the time this cue was written he was already in talks to score that film, or if it's just a coincidence.
Now it's time to listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 begins some ominous brass as the heroes first see the "small moon". I've always loved the tension built up by this. The melodic progression is interesting, sort of an ascending development of the Imperial theme.
This continues as the heroes discuss their approach, intensifying as they try and fail to turn around at 0:28.
The horns restart at a higher pitch at 0:39, as the Death Star starts to become fully visible, and the reality of the situation sets in.
This continues building up tension until 0:55, when the Rebel rhythm kicks in, followed quickly by the Rebel fanfare at 0:57. I always thought this was a really fascinating choice, the heroes get sucked into the maw of the beast, the domain of the villains, and rather than playing the villain theme Williams chose to play the most rousing rendition of the hero theme in the entire score.
I really want to call out the shot at 1:04 as well, it's always been super memorable to me, the Rebel fanfare against the Falcon slowly approaching the docking bay.
At 1:10 we get the final climactic Rebel fanfare statement as the Falcon fully enters the docking bay and lands.
This leads to some final percussion and brass figures as the stormtroopers run to the docking bay to greet the intruding ship at 1:22.
We get one final woodwinds notes at 1:30 for Tarkin receiving notice of the ship's arrival. Thus, the cue ends...
In the final cut this cue is mostly used as intended, however there is an extra shot of stormtroopers being commanded to go "to your stations" that features a looped section of 1:22-1:28. I believe this footage was reused from another section of the film (perhaps the escape from the Death Star or the final trench run). Wherever it came from, the extra footage is the exact same length as the looped section, and doesn't seem to fit the continuity of the sequence, so it seems to be what was added.
This cue was recorded on March 5, 1977, the first day of the recording sessions. Three takes were recorded, numbered 8-10. According to the 1997 take log, the performance edit used just take 10.
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, 7m1 New Is It a Bird? can be heard:
From 0:00-1:34 of track 8 "Inner City" on the 1977/2018 albums
From 0:00-1:35 of disc 1 track 9 "Inner City" on the 1993 album
From 0:00-1:39 of disc 2 track 4 "The Death Star/The Stormtroopers" on the 1997 album.
All sets have clean openings, however only the 1997 has the clean ending. As far as I can tell all sets have the same takes. The 1977 is of course a remix and should be avoided. The 1997 is also brickwalled. For this reason, I used the 1993 set for most of the cue except for the clean ending which came from the 1997 set.
One last thing to note is this is another one of those rare cues from this score to have had official sheet music published! The John Williams concert suite "The Battle" includes most of this cue as the first 39 bars of the suite, equivalent to bars 1-39 of the original cue.
Unfortunately this suite is no longer available, this is another one of those suites that was only made available to orchestras many years ago. You can still listen to recordings of it on youtube though (the part relevant to this cue is 0:00-1:22):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdiyYy1Eb6Y
![John Williams: The Battle [Star Wars]](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/45b923b4-3cb6-4c84-b98a-958a5b6ccdd5/scale-to-width/755)
That's all I have for today, thanks for reading! Feel free to leave any comments or questions.
Next week we'll be discussing 7m2 New The Hatch Opens. See you then!
