Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 1m2 Insert Bar 80, the second of three inserts written for the opening cue of the film.
I mentioned in my post two weeks ago on 1m2 The Imperial Probe how in the final cut the middle chunk of the cue (between Han's arrival at Echo base and Han and Leia's argument) went unused in the final cut.
Normally an editing decision like this would be made after scoring, essentially since Han's arrival at Echo Base in the final cut is scored by reused music from 5m1 Crash Landing.
However, there is actually evidence that the decision to drop the intended music for these scenes was made during the recording sessions. For one thing, the sketch for 1m2 The Imperial Probe has some notes indicating that bars 80-108 are not to be used in the final cut. And then there is the existence of this and next week's inserts, which were written to cover the two ends of the silence, as simple fades wouldn't sound very good.
This week's insert was written to cover the early ending at bar 80. It's just five bars long and was orchestrated by Angela Morley. Along with last week's and next week's inserts it was likely written during the recording sessions after the originally intended cue was partially rejected.
Here's what the tops of the sketch and the conductor's score look like:
With all the background out of the way, let's listen to the insert together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcqCCchiHfQ
At 0:00 the insert begins with ascending harp intended to be crossfaded with the ascending harp transition from the original cue (around 2:18 in the original).
Then at 0:02 we get one statement of a heroic brass fanfare as Han rides into the base. This ends on a long sustained note, with one additional ascending harp as Han gets off at 0:10. The sustained note fades out over the next 10 seconds. Thus, the insert ends....
This is the first bit of recorded music we've looked at from this score to have gone completely unused. Evidently the insert got rejected, and in its place the final cut tracks the ending of 5m1 Crash Landing.
Since I don't have a recording log, I'm unsure what day this cue was recorded. Unfortunately the take number is cut off in the sketch scan I have, all that's visible is the last digit ("8"). My best guess for when this insert was recorded is in late January, perhaps in the gap right between 5m3 End Fix and 1m2 Insert Bar 109. This would make the used take number 268. Keep in mind this is purely a guess and I could be completely wrong about the exact placement, but I wouldn't expect it to have been recorded much earlier since it had to have been written during scoring.
This insert has been officially released on one album:
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
More specifically, 1m2 Insert Bar 80 can be heard:
From 0:55-1:15 of disc 1 track 4 "The Imperial Probe/Aboard the Executor" on the 1997 album.
The 1997 set has a clean ending but no clean opening. Just like last week's insert, the 1997 set has much more treble and much less bass than the film recording. Even though it wasn't used in the film - we know what the film recording sounds like thanks to the 1983 Empire Strikes Back radio drama.
As a result, the edit above doesn't use any soundtrack albums at all, instead it uses a rip of the cue from the radio drama, specifically its two uses from 17:10-17:31 in episode 1 and from 9:33-9:52 in episode 4.
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 the third and final insert for the opening, 1m2 Insert Bar 109. See you then!