John Williams Forbidden Planet Analysis

Another way in which Williams’ film scores achieved this was through their evocation of a Neoclassical style. Williams applies a lot of the conventions of Classical and Romantic era music—especially Teutonic characteristics—in his film scoring. Specifically he was interested in reworking the musical style of composers like Igor Stravinsky, Gustav Holst, Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner. Williams’ accomplishes this through his use of intertextuality. Williams’ scores are littered with allusions and quotations towards these composers and in many ways they define the musical style of his scores. An outcome of this, is that it brings a level of familiarity into his work, and into the science fiction score. Using classical music plays on certain

Star Wars in many ways offers a counteraction to the film scoring techniques used in Forbidden Planet. The strange unfamiliar score for Forbidden Planet is replaced with a very nostalgic, familiar symphonic score, that draws on many of the traditions and techniques of the past. This is particularly evident in its Steiner and Korngold like approach to scoring. Star Wars clearly establishes this from the start, with its bombastic and epic opening theme. This opening theme is very reminiscent of Korngold in its conception, which was a decision both John Williams and director George Lucas are astutely aware of. This is made clear in the comparison with the opening of Williams’ Star Wars theme with Korngold’s theme for Kings Row (1942). The first five notes of the Star Wars theme are a clear quotation, of the opening five notes from Kings Row. The impact of this decision is that it completely establishes our expectations for the film. By conjuring up images of Korngold’s score, Williams’ construes the film as an epic, swashbuckling, heroic adventure that was typical of Classical Hollywood cinema. Furthermore, the use of Steiner and Korngold, creates a sense of grandeur and importance to the film which reminds one more of the acclaimed cinematic epics of films like Gone With the Wind (1939). This clearly establishes Star Wars as a film congruent with the

Although it is true that there are important aesthetic and filmmaking differences between these two sets of films, that does not underplay the large role that film scores had in creating this difference. In particular it was the different approach that John Williams took to scoring science fiction, compared to the typical approach of science fiction cinema. The key difference is that while the science fiction scores of the 1950s and 1960s were for the most past defined by their incongruity towards the established styles and techniques of Classical Hollywood cinema, John Williams instead embraced that kind of scoring. Many Science Fiction films of the era, sought to experiment with established techniques through uses of non traditional instruments and electronic scores, that did not employ a classical tonal structure. This modernist and progressive use of atonality, gave the scores a sound quality that sounded so