Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 12m2 End Titles. Despite the title this is not actually the last cue of the score - at least not as recorded.
The music for the medal ceremony and end credits was originally written as one cue but was split into two before recording. This week we'll be looking at the first half, which only covers the medal ceremony.
As recorded, this cue is 51 bars long, covering bars 1-51 of the cue as written. This cue was orchestrated by Herbert Spencer.
Here's the top of the conductor's score:
Now let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 the cue begins with a heroic ascending brass fanfare over an establishing shot of Yavin. This helps to establish that a ceremony is about to begin. The ascending brass climaxes from 0:12-0:17, as the door opens and our heroes descend the steps into the giant ceremony room.
At 0:17 the shot change is met with a heroic rendition of the Force theme, as the heroes walk past the assembled crowd of Rebels. Another, slightly more powerful, Force theme at 0:33 for ascending the final set of stairs.
Then at 0:49 the ascending brass returns briefly as Han is given his medal.
At 0:56 we finally get our first statement of the Medal Ceremony melody, as Luke awaits and is given his medal.
Then at 1:11, a heroic statement of Luke's theme, which builds into what sounds like it should be another statement at 1:29, but instead is the Medal Ceremony melody again. This statement ends with one final brass note at 1:46, intended to segue into the next cue...
This cue was recorded on March 12, 1977, the sixth day of the recording sessions. It was the first cue recorded that day. Seven takes were recorded, numbered 127-133. According to the 1997 take log, the performance edit used takes 132 and 133.
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, 12m2 End Titles can be heard:
From 0:00-1:46 of track 16 "The Throne Room and End Title" on the 1977/2018 albums
From 0:00-1:46 of disc 1 track 16 "The Throne Room/End Titles" on the 1993 album
From 0:00-1:46 of disc 2 track 11 "The Throne Room/End Title" on the 1997 album.
All releases feature the clean opening, but no release has the clean ending. The 1977 set is of course a remix and should be avoided. The 1997 set is brickwalled. The 1993 set features incorrect takes.
For my edit above I primarily used the 2018 set, with a clean ending taken from 25:53-25:55 of episode 13 of the 1981 Radio Drama.
The Radio Drama's sound editing was done by Tom Voegeli, who was given access to the raw session tapes from the film. As a result, the Radio Drama has music that isn't available on any of the commercially released albums.
The last thing to note about this cue is that it's one of those rare cues with official sheet music available. Bars 1-51 of the John Williams concert suite "Throne Room & End Title" are copied from this cue.
This suite is still available from Hal Leonard as part of their Signature Edition line. There are also recordings on youtube, here's one conducted by Gustavo Dudamel (the part relevant to this cue is 0:00-2:02):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vG_zkLFkIs
Interestingly it appears that this suite includes an extension to this cue from 2:02-4:31. This isn't directly adapted from any part of the score, it's simply a further development of some of the themes,
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 12m2a End Titles, the actual end credits music. See you then!