Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue. Apologies for the late post this week, I had an extremely busy weekend.
Today we're going to be listening to 5m4-6m1 Solo and the Princess.
This cue is 61 bars long and was orchestrated by Fred Steiner.
Here's the tops of the sketch and orchestrated score:
A note before listening: This is another of those cues from this score for which there exist synth elements that were written and recorded with the cue, but which ended up mixed out in some releases. Due to some remnants of the synth even in the no-synth versions, I believe that it was recorded with the orchestra, but on a separate mic; and it was likely kept as a separate stem from the LCR mix so that it could be dialed out without requiring a ground-up remix.
The film uses the synth as intended, but I opted to also include the no-synth version as a bonus so you can compare them.
With that out of the way, let's listen to the cue together:
Synth (intended and film) version:
No Synth version:
At 0:00 the cue begins with a woodwind intro as Leia works.
A brass rendition of the love theme begins at 0:15 when Han steps into the room. At 0:43 the next phrase switches to woodwinds, which continues building for a while as Han leans into a kiss, climaxing at 1:18 before Threepio interrupts and the music fades to comical staccato strings.
Some final strings and woodwinds at 1:25 for Leia leaving builds into a harsh rendition of the Imperial March at 1:31 with some accentuations for the asteroids as we wipe back to the Imperial fleet.
The theme gets less harsh as we move inside and Vader speaks to the hologram. A quick spike in intensity at 1:51 for the end of Vader's dialogue is followed immediately by swirling strings along with the B section of the theme.
Back to a harsh rendition of the A theme at 2:06 as Vader walks away. This is one of my favorite renditions of the Imperial March in the entire score, I love the orchestration and particularly the percussion for the asteroids that returns in the second half.
The march fades away to a single held note at 2:17 as Vader enters his private room to speak to the Emperor.
Some woodwinds and percussion kick in at 2:21 as Vader kneels, joined by low backing strings and an ARP synth. This synth element is missing in the no synth version.
Atonal woodwinds, strings and synth continue under most of the conversation, before a final lowwwwwwww-high-lowwww brass statement at 3:06, covering the transition back to Dagobah with R2 looking in through the window in the rain. Thus, the cue ends...
The film appears to have undergone a couple minor visual changes after the scene was scored, which led to a couple minor music edits in the film. The picture edits are as follows:
1 second of footage was removed at 1:31. It's unclear what this footage was. Initially I might've speculated that the preceding shot of the Executor could've been shortened to help hide the foreground Star Destroyer that turns invisible - but the storyboard for this shot matches the frame count of the final film exactly. The script describes a shot immediately before the dialogue where Vader is looking out the window at the asteroids and then turns to face the holograms, but it doesn't seem like this trim was long enough to cover a shot like that.
The next shot change was the removal of 1 second of the Vader-Emperor conversation. It's not entirely clear where the edit was made, given half the dialogue is voiceover and no music edits were made - I ended up just looping 1 seconds worth of Vader footage around 2:31. I tried to break it up into multiple smaller loops so that it wouldn't be as obvious, hopefully that worked.
These changes led to the following music edits in the final theatrical cut:
0:00-1:34 = 5m4-6m1 Solo and the Princess 0:00-1:34
1:34-end = 5m4-6m1 Solo and the Princess 1:35-end
This looks like one edit because I'm rounding to the second but technically there are two snips in short succession around 1:34. No music edit was made for the second visual change listed above, instead the second half of the cue is allowed to play 1 second out of sync so that the final three notes play over the scene transition rather than lead into it.
The Special Edition of the film makes further visual changes, notably completely replacing the Emperor's part of the scene with all new lines recorded by Ian McDiarmid. As a result of the extended scene, this cue was looped, resulting in the following music edits in the Special Edition:
SE 0:00-1:34 = 5m4-6m1 Solo and the Princess 0:00-1:34
SE 1:34-2:20 = 5m4-6m1 Solo and the Princess 1:35-2:21
SE 2:20-2:57 = 5m4-6m1 Solo and the Princess 2:22-2:59
SE 2:57-end = 5m4-6m1 Solo and the Princess 2:36-end
Thanks to the date on the orchestrated sheet we know that this cue was recorded on December 29, 1979, the third day of the recording sessions. I'm unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses takes 82 and 83.
This cue has been officially released on four different albums:
1) In 1980 on RSO 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, 5m4-6m1 Solo and the Princess can be heard:
From 0:00-end of track 7 "Han Solo and the Princess" on the 1980/2018 albums
From 0:00-end of disc 2 track 11 "Han Solo and the Princess" on the 1993 album
From 0:00-end of disc 1 track 9 "Han Solo and the Princess" on the 1997 album.
All releases are complete and have the clean opening and ending, but only the 1993 release has the film mix - all the others have remixes.
Additionally, most releases of this cue play at the wrong pitch/speed, although this can easily be corrected in an audio editor:
1980: has to be sped up by 0.650 to match film
1993: has to be slowed down by -0.225 to match film
1997 has to be slowed down by -0.100 to match film
2018: speed is correct
For the synth version I just used a speed corrected version of the 1993 set.
For the no synth version I replaced the Emperor conversation portion from 2:21-end with the 2023 ATMOS release. We've never really discussed the 2023 ATMOS release before because its content is identical to the 2018 release, just presented in surround sound (meaning it's remixed), so it's usually irrelevant. However for this particular cue, for whatever reason, the ATMOS release is missing the synth layer, and it provides a fascinating look at what the cue sounds like without it. Since most people probably haven't heard this variant before, I figured it was worth including as a bonus in this post. I downmixed the surround track to stereo and then spliced it into the 1993 track, hopefully the different instrument panning isn't too noticeable.
The last thing to note here is that John Williams did write a concert suite somewhat based on this cue called "Han Solo and the Princess", which curiously seems not to have been recorded at the ESB sessions, but was recorded many times later by various conductors as it was published with the ESB concert suite program. I won't discuss this suite in much detail here, as much of it is original material and I felt it would be better to cover as a bonus at the end along with the other two original theme suites. Just mentioning it here so that you know I didn't forget about it.
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 6m2 Yoda's Teaching. See you then!
