Hello and welcome to this week's installment of Cue by Cue. Apologies for the late post this week, I've been super busy.
Today we're going to be listening to 7m4-8m1 Vader's Command.
This cue is 27 bars long. Unfortunately, I don't know the orchestrator because this is the only cue from the score for which I'm missing a scan of the orchestrated sheet, I only have the sketch.
Here's what the top of the sketch looks like:
If you pay close attention you might notice that Williams misspelled Vader as "Vadar". Kind of a funny error and it happens more than once in this score, not really sure why.
With that out of the way, let's listen to the cue together:
At 0:00 the cue begins with a short brass intro followed by an Imperial March statement at 0:02.
The second phrase is played much quieter for the dialogue starting at 0:07. Some brass returns briefly at 0:18 and 0:21. followed by some stressed woodwinds for the Vader closeup.
A brief hint of the Imperial March rhythm plays on the brass as Vader departs at 0:26. Some surprise woodwinds at 0:32 for the reveal of the Falcon on the outside of the Star Destroyer, followed by one last Imperial March statement at 0:37 for the full Imperial fleet reveal shot.
Some brief cheerful woodwinds inside the Falcon cockpit at 0:47, followed by a descending line as Han mentions that the fleet is breaking up. Some low strings play as Chewie leaves the cockpit and Leia shuts off 3PO. Thus, the cue ends...
No picture edits appear to have been made between scoring and the final cut, however multiple music edits were made in the final cut to shorten the cue. As we've seen several times previously in this score, it appears that the filmmakers didn't like parts of this cue for whatever reason, and chose to replace them with silence.
In the final cut:
0:00-0:26 = silence
0:26-0:51 = 7m4-8m1 Vader's Command 0:26-0:51
0:51-end = silence
Despite not having a recording log, we know that this cue was recorded on either December 28 or 29, 1979 thanks to the takes provided by the sketch sandwiching it between two cues we have confirmed dates for. Unfortunately, I'm unsure how many takes were recorded, but according to the sketch the performance edit uses takes 52 and 55.
This cue has been officially released on one album:
3) In 1997 on RCA Victor's 2-CD Special Edition set
More specifically, 7m4-8m1 Vader's Command can be heard:
From 0:00-1:15 of disc 2 track 5 "Imperial Starfleet Deployed/City in the Clouds" on the 1997 album.
This release has the clean opening but not the clean ending. Fortunately it is not remixed. This cue appears to play at the correct speed compared to the film.
For my edit above I faked the clean ending by looping the last couple seconds and fading out. I attempted to rip a more accurate clean ending from the album using AI stem separation but the results didn't come out that great. Unfortunately the ending was never used in the radio drama so there was no better source.
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 8m2 City in the Clouds. See you then!