The “Farthest From”: Space-Form and Texture As explored earlier, the recording sessions for the Star Wars score produced a highfidelity sonic space, larger both vertically (i.e. dynamic range) and horizontally (i.e. stereo field) than earlier recordings. This expanded sonic space could be structurally filled or emptied with music, producing dramatic results. In the previous section I focused primarily on individual instrumental characteristics within this space, or gestural spaces; the following analyses will investigate how Williams combines these in ensemble space, using smaller or larger orchestral textures to achieve narrative ends. The first eight minutes and thirty seconds of Star Wars (including the title crawl) are physically set in another kind of space—that is, outer space.60 With one slight exception (a five-second silence to make way for an explosion sound effect), Williams covers this entire sequence with score. Large ensemble space subsumes intimate gestural space. Approximately five minutes of this music is devoted to full tutti scoring (or a slightly smaller subset: a “kind of a tutti,” as Williams might call it).61 One thing becomes certain to the viewer: outer space is a loud place, filled with explosions, blaster fire, and bold, brassy, percussive orchestral music.62 The other primary physical setting of Star Wars, Tatooine, is much less sonically intense. In the half-hour the film spends on the planet, ten minutes have no score. When music is present, intimate, chamber-style, gestural space scoring is the norm, accounting for
60
I am of course referring here to an imaginary physical space as depicted in the film.
61
In a BBC documentary, Williams is seen telling his chief orchestrator Herbert Spencer to score a passage from The Empire Strikes Back in “a kind of tutti.” David Buckton, Star Wars: Music by John Williams (BBC, 1980), 49:02-49:12. 62
…which drives more scientifically-minded viewers crazy…sound cannot travel through space’s vacuum.
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