Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue. Apologies for not posting last week, but I had a lot to write for this cue and I wanted to make sure it would be comprehensive.
Today we're going to be listening to 11m2 Rev. Approaching the Target, the middle of the Battle of Yavin cues, and also my favorite of the three. This is a revision of an earlier cue, 11m2 Approaching the Target, which went unrecorded.
Both versions were orchestrated by Arthur Morton. The original is 105 bars long and the revision is 113 bars long.
One small note about the orchestrator for this cue: Professor Frank Lehman's thematic document claims that Angela Morley also worked on this cue, presumably implying that she worked on the revisions, however her name is written nowhere on the sheet music and I couldn't find any conclusive evidence that she worked on it. The handwriting on the revisions does look plausibly different than Arthur Morton's, but it doesn't look like what I've seen of Angela Morley's work.
Here are the tops of the conductor's scores of both versions:
As you can see in the helpful summary in the top right of the revised conductor's score, the following changes were made in the revision:
- bar 22 was replaced with bar N22
- bars 43 and 44 were replaced with new bars N43, N44, 44A, 44B, 44C
- new bar 57A was added between bars 57 and 58
- new bars 77A, 77B, 77C, 77D were added between bars 77 and 78
- bar 90 was replaced by bar N90
I'll go into more detail on these changes later.
Now, let's listen to the revised cue together:
At 0:00 the cue opens with an abbreviated brass statement of the Force theme, flowing straight into exciting chaotic brass action music at 0:06 for the X-Wings dodging the laser fire.
At 0:15 a rhythm starts - Frank Lehman's thematic document calls this the "Heroic Descending Tetrachords", but Faleel's JWFan thematic project refers to this by the much more memorable name "Rolling Thunder".
Then at 0:18 it is joined by an action variant of the Force theme, climaxing at 0:31 after the POV shot of Luke shooting the Death Star surface.
This leads into some more chaotic brass, which ascends to a peak at 0:38 as the X-Wings fly past the camera.
We see chaos in the hallway as stormtroopers start to mobilize, and get a low woodwinds Imperial Theme for the officer seeking instructions from Vader. At 0:44 it is accompanied by a brief return of the rhythm that previously ended 9m2 Ben Creeps Around.
At 0:51, a return to the exciting, chaotic brass as we return to the battle. This doesn't score the action that closely, although there are a few clear sync points: we get some brass figures for the explosions at 1:03 and 1:04, and the intercutting of the lasers with Porkins' cockpit from 1:07 to 1:10.
Some more ascending brass at 1:11. climaxing as Porkins dies at 1:14. It's interesting that this isn't scored more somberly, instead we cut immediately to hesitant woodwinds at 1:15 to score the countdown timer, reminiscent of the hesitant woodwinds from 6m5 New The Destruction of Alderon.
The horns start to build some excitement on the Tarkin shot at 1:19, followed by a blast of ascending brass at 1:21 as we return to Luke's X-Wing.
Another round of brass at 1:25 as Luke shoots some gunners, and then a simplified Rolling Thunder at 1:36 as a rebel operator calls in to say that more fighters are arriving.
Tension slowly builds, and then a sudden brass figure at 1:45 as we finally see the new group. This is probably one of the most memorable sections of the entire cue for me, it shows the brilliance of Williams' original action cue melody writing.
From 1:49 to 1:57, some coordinated brass builds up as John D gets killed by a TIE Fighter. Some additional ascending brass at 1:57 for Luke's "You've picked one up, watch it!"
Then some aggressively nervous strings as Biggs is pursued, which build in intensity as Luke follows to try and save him. Some ascending strings begin at 2:13, soon joined by brass, peaking after the target is locked and destroyed.
This leads into more chaotic brass, which scores Vader grabbing some pilots to come with him.
A short brass stinger at 2:26 for the shot of the war room, and then some Force theme starts at 2:29 as Luke is chased by a TIE Fighter.
It builds in desperation once Luke gets shot at 2:40, with some percussion for the war room shots at 2:45, and an increase in pitch at 2:50. Finally it ends at 3:06 once Wedge destroys the TIE Fighter.
Some repeating brass figures at 3:06 as the action cools down, ending with one final held note at 3:12. Thus, the cue fades.....
The revised cue is used exactly as intended in the final cut - however there is evidence that the original cue scored a very different cut. In fact, most of the revisions appear to have been made due to changing visuals.
- The first change, replacing Bar 22 with Bar N22 simply shortened the length of the two notes at 0:36-0:38. Given that the revised syncs exactly with the footage in the final cut, I can only assume that this flyby shot was originally shorter/different.
- The second change, the replacement of Bars 43 and 44 with five new bars, covers the addition of the countdown shot from 1:15-1:19. The original cue skipped the woodwinds entirely, and went straight into the rhythm that starts on the Tarkin shot in the final cut, but played on all instrument groups instead of just horns. It doesn't make much sense to me that the Tarkin shot would be here and not the countdown shot, but I suppose it's possible. If not, it's possible that that rhythm was originally meant to score a completely different shot that got replaced by the countdown+Tarkin shot.
- The third change, the addition of new Bar 57A, covers the strings over the Biggs shot from 1:43-1:45. Presumably this shot wasn't in the scored rough cut.
- The fourth change, the addition of four bars between Bar 77 and 78, covers the exciting music from 2:19 to 2:25 as Vader grabs some pilots. Presumably, this shot was also not here during the originally scored rough cut. I do almost wonder if the shot here in the final cut is also different than the one Williams scored when the revision was written, because the music doesn't quite match the action on screen, it moreso matches what I'd expect from space battle footage.
- The fifth and last change, the replacement of Bar 90 with Bar N90, covers the music from 2:43 to 2:46. Presumably the war room insert footage was not here in the original cut, although the added music slightly precedes the new footage, so perhaps some other shots were shuffled around too.
If you want to listen to the unrevised cue, ThePenitantMan1 over on JWFan did an excellent synth mockup of the unrecorded original:
This cue was recorded on March 11, 1977, the fifth day of the recording sessions. It was the first cue recorded that day. Four takes were recorded, numbered 83-86. According to the 1997 take log, the performance edit used takes 85 and 86.
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, 11m2 Rev. Approaching the Target can be heard:
From 4:29-7:38 of track 15 "The Last Battle" on the 1977/2018 albums
From 4:29-7:42 of disc 1 track 15 "The Last Battle" on the 1993 album
From 1:11-4:43 of disc 2 track 10 "The Battle of Yavin (Launch From The Fourth Moon/X-Wings Draw Fire/Use The Force)" on the 1997 album.
Every set but the 1997 has a mostly clean opening, technically it includes some quiet woodwinds from the end of 9m2 Ben Creeps Around but it's trivial to remove with Audacity's noise reduction feature. Only the 1997 features most of the ending, but it's still cut off by the next cue, 12m1 The Last Battle. The 2018 and 1997 sets both have the correct film takes, but the 1993 set has some incorrect takes at a couple points. The 1997 set is also brickwalled.
For my edit above, I primarily used the 2018 set (with that noise reduction trick for the opening), and I used the film audio for the clean ending with the long fadeout.
The last thing to note about this cue is that it's one of those rare cues with official sheet music available. The John Williams concert suite "The Battle" includes an excerpt of this cue as bars 72-102 of the suite, equivalent to bars 51-77D 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 2:24-3:10):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdiyYy1Eb6Y
![John Williams: The Battle [Star Wars]](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/09a07c4c-7b8e-46ee-921f-35c274f6f672/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 listening to 12m1 The Last Battle. See you then!