Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue.
Today we're going to be listening to 2m2 Ben's Instruction.
This cue is 69 bars long and was orchestrated by Al Woodbury.
Here's what the sketch and orchestrated conductor's scores look like:
Let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 the cue begins with sad strings and brass as the Rebel troopers discuss how Han and Luke are still missing in front of the princess.
Then at 0:05 we get a somber rendition of Luke's theme as C-3PO and the troopers inform Leia that there's been no sign of her friends and that they need to close the doors for the night. This leads into a held brass note at 0:22 as Chewie rests his head on the X-Wing ladder.
At 0:26 is my favorite section of the entire cue, the closing doors are accompanied by an impending march that builds in speed and intensity as the camera shows all of the main characters' reactions, ending with a zoom into Leia's face.
At 0:37 the march finally fizzles out as the doors seal and Chewbacca yells. We get one more extended somber statement of Luke's theme at 0:41 for C-3PO's final words, and then another held brass note at 1:00 as Chewie puts his head down on the ladder again.
At 1:03 the music changes completely with the scene change to some atonal high pitched woodwinds for Luke in the snow. At 1:16, some woodwind trills as the ghost of Ben appears.
When Luke begins to recognize him at 1:23, the woodwinds are accompanied by a brass statement of the Force theme. The Force theme climaxes with some woodwinds at 1:44, as Ben turns into Han's tauntaun.
Another held brass note at 1:47 as Luke's face falls forward into the snow. This is almost immediately followed by desperate ascending strings as Han runs to help his friend.
Some woodwinds for the vitals check at 2:02, and then the first two notes of Luke's theme at 2:06 for the Tauntaun before quickly fading away as it falls, succumbing to the cold.
Some determined brass begins at 2:12 as Han sees the tauntaun has died, and comes up with an idea.
The music builds as he drags Luke over to the tauntaun, and the woodwinds return at 2:34 as he splits open the tauntaun's body with Luke's lightsaber. The brass and woodwinds climax at 2:52, and are replaced with piccolo as Han takes a break.
At 3:14 some strings join in, teasing a repeating rhythm that is meant to segue into the next cue. Thus, the cue ends...
The first third of this cue (0:00-1:03) went totally unused in the final cut, although there appear to have been no picture changes between the scored cut and the final. I think this is really unfortunate because the first third of this cue is probably my favorite section, I especially love the march from 0:26-0:37. I guess the filmmakers felt that these sad Hoth scenes worked better with no music.
Since I don't have a recording log I'm unsure what day this cue was recorded, but based on the take numbers written in the sketch it was likely recorded in mid-late January. I'm also unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses takes 213 and 214.
This cue has been officially released on just one album:
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
More specifically, 2m2 Ben's Instruction can be heard:
From 3:35-7:05 of disc 1 track 3 "The Wampa's Lair/Vision of Obi-Wan/Snowspeeders Take Flight" on the 1997 album.
The 1997 release has a clean ending but not a clean opening - however, thanks to the 1993 and 1997 releases of 1m3-2m1 Luke's Escape being the same, you can actually use phase inversion to recover the completely clean opening.
Additionally the 1997 set plays at the wrong speed, though this can easily be corrected in an audio editor: speed up by 0.77 to match film.
For the video above I used a speed-corrected copy of the 1997 set with the clean opening recovered via the trick I described above.
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 2m3 Luke's Rescue. See you then!