Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 12m1 The Last Battle, the third and final Battle of Yavin cue.
This cue is 167 bars long and was orchestrated by Angela Morley.
Unfortunately, I don't have any scans of the production used sheet music for this cue. The bar count total comes from the Live-to-Projection concert sheets, which should be accurate to the production score since this cue wasn't edited at all in the film. The orchestrator credit actually comes directly from a 1997 interview with Angela Morley: http://www.jazzprofessional.com/profiles/morley.htm
Now with that out of the way, let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 the cue begins with some sad brass for a shocked Luke witnessing Red Leader's crash into the Death Star.
This leads into some quiet woodwinds at 0:05 as we check in on the Imperials and Rebels watching the countdowns, before returning to Luke at 0:13.
Some action starts to build up as Luke and Wedge enter the trench at 0:15. This leads into a loud brass fanfare from 0:20-0:25 for the dive, followed immediately by some driving rhythms for the second half of the very cool POV dive shot.
At 0:28 the music quiets down a little bit underneath some cockpit dialogue, still maintaining an action rhythm. This builds into a short statement of the Imperial theme at 0:35, as they're shot at by Imperial turrets. This continues into some ascending brass at 0:40.
More ascending brass at 0:43. "You worry about those fighters, I'll worry about the tower!". It almost seems like this was a missed sync mark, the ascending brass seems to start a second before the shot change. It's how it is in the final cut though, and there's no obvious late insert footage that could have caused it.
At 0:47, some determined action brass as Luke speeds down the trench, and R2 tries to lock down the stabilizers. This climaxes at 1:01, leading into the start of some tense chase music as we get our first shot of Vader and his two wingmen.
This continues to build as Wedge is shot at and pulls out, and the chase narrows. "Stay on the leader." Even more intensity on 1:22 as we get a zoom in shot on Luke's fighter. Biggs mentions that they're following even closer and Luke begs R2 for more power. Biggs starts to panic, and the music finally quiets as he is shot down by Vader at 1:43.
A short funeral melody at 1:45 covers the reactions of Leia, Luke and Tarkin, before a determined Luke theme statement comes in at 1:55 for the Luke flyby shot. This peaks at 2:03 as Luke starts to look down the targeting computer.
Some ascending brass, and then some stacatto brass to build tension as Vader is about to fire. Suddenly at 2:13 we get a mystical sounding statement of Ben's theme, as Luke hears his voice through the Force. "Use the Force, Luke! Let go, Luke!"
Suddenly the music switches up at 2:28, building some rhythm before we get the most determined Luke theme statement yet at 2:35. Another more worried statement at 2:48 as Vader starts to fire, and actually hits R2.
This transitions into some percussion at 3:03 as the Death Star prepares to fire on Yavin IV. At 3:10 we return to Luke's theme, each statement louder and more strained to build tension before the station fires. Curiously, this section of the music chooses to ignore a lot of the events on screen including Han's heroic reappearance and Vader getting knocked out of the trench, instead choosing to focus on building tension for Luke's final attempt at the proton torpedoes.
Staccato brass returns at 3:32, somewhat reminiscent of that which we heard just before Alderaan's destruction. This section is heavily based off of the ending of Mars, the Bringer of War by Gustav Holst. We previously saw a different cue based off this piece, the ending of 1m2 Star Wars when we first see the Tantive IV and Vader's star destroyer above Tatooine. I don't believe that there's any compositional intent behind the similarities of these two cues other than that Mars was probably used in the temp track in both places.
The staccato brass finally ends at 3:51 with the station's destruction, and we get some soft woodwinds. It's over, it's finally over...
A heroic melody at 4:03 ("The Force will be with you, always"), and then the Rebel fanfare joins in at 4:11 for the shot of the survivors returning to Yavin IV.
Some soft harp as Luke exits his fighter, and the orchestra slowly fades....
This cue is used almost exactly as intended in the final cut. No changes to the music were made, but one visual edit occurred after scoring - the last minute addition of Vader flying away from the Death Star at 4:10. This had the unfortunate side effect of making the Rebel fanfare play under Vader's escape instead of the heroes flying home. Between this and the Rebel fanfare at the Death Star arrival earlier in the film, fans in 1977 could be forgiven for thinking that the Rebel fanfare might've been an Imperial theme.
This cue was recorded on March 15, 1977, the seventh day of the recording sessions. It was the first cue recorded that day. Five takes were recorded, numbered 176-180. According to the 1997 take log, the performance edit used takes 178 and 180.
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, 12m1 The Last Battle can be heard:
From 7:38-end of track 15 "The Last Battle" on the 1977/2018 albums
From 7:42-end of disc 1 track 15 "The Last Battle" on the 1993 album
From 4:43-end 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 features the complete ending, but none of them have a clean opening. The 1997 set features the cleanest opening of the official releases, but it still overlaps with the previous cue. The 1993 and 1997 sets both feature incorrect takes, and are also both brickwalled.
For my edit above I primarily used the 2018 set, but I used the film audio to get a clean opening.
The last thing to note about this cue is that it's one of those rare cues with official sheet music available. Bars 103-end of the John Williams concert suite "The Battle" are loosely based on this cue, the exact bars copied are as follows, with a few minor note/rhythm alterations:
Bars 103-141 of the suite (3:28-4:21 in the recording below) = bars 35-73 of the original cue
Bar 142 is a new transitional bar
Bars 143-148 of the suite (4:21-4:31 below) = bars 80-86 of the original cue
Bars 149-178 of the suite (4:31-5:25 below) = bars 94-123 of the original cue
Bars 179-200 of the suite (5:25-6:03 below) = bars 127-148 of the original cue
Bars 201-207 of the suite (6:03-6:21 below) = bars 68-74 of 10m2 Here They Come
Bars 208-222 of the suite (6:21-end below) = bars 153-167 of the original cue
Bar 223 of the suite isn't in the LTP, but it's just to hold the last note a little longer. This is either an alteration for the suite or is a note that's cut off early in the LTP. In other words the production sheets may actually be 168 bars instead of 167.
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 3:28-end):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1mOecPQElg
Note: it seems there are multiple versions of this suite available, the recording I previously was linking to was a shorter version that was missing bars 103-143.
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 12m2 End Titles. See you then!