music sounds in the final orchestration, because he’s really done that for himself.”17 Ian Sapiro cites several other of Williams’ orchestrators who corroborate Henning’s claim.18
“A Long Time Ago”: Recording Technology And Space-Form in the Star Wars Score In a nostalgic nod to Golden Age Hollywood, Williams and Lucas insisted on accompanying the opening Fox logo with Alfred Newman’s “20th Century Fox Fanfare” from 1933, a practice that had fallen out of favor in the 1970s. Newman’s fanfare was not rerecorded for Star Wars—a version made in 1954 for the CinemaScope release of River of No Return was used.19 After the Fox fanfare, the famous introductory phrase “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” is silently presented. Then suddenly, at the Star Wars title card, with a quarter-century’s improvement in recording technology, we snap back to 1977 and hear the brilliant opening chord of Williams’s score in the same key as Newman’s fanfare, Bflat. The recording and mixing techniques used had a significantly expanded dynamic range, stereo soundfield, and timbral spectrum. In theaters using Dolby SVA systems capable of faithful reproduction, “audiences would be in for an aural treat.” 20 Aural fidelity establishes timbre as a vectoring agent from the very opening of Star Wars. Mirroring the fantastic and
17
Sapiro, “Star Scores: Orchestration and the Sound of John Williams’s Film Music, 195.
18
Ibid.
19
A stereo recording of the fanfare was sought, and this was the only one they could find. Chris Malone, “Recording the Star Wars Saga: A Musical Journey from Scoring Stage to DVD,” Recording the Star Wars Saga: A Musical Journey from Scoring Stage to DVD, March 2012, 12, http://www.malonedigital.com/starwars.htm 20
Star Wars was one of the first films to be released in Dolby Stereo, a system used with optical sound tracks on 35mm film introduced in 1975. “SVA” stands for “stereo variable-area.” Dolby SVA could be used in either 2-channel stereo or 4-channel quadraphonic configurations. Malone, “Recording the Star Wars Saga: A Musical Journey from Scoring Stage to DVD,” 12.
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