There is no discussion about Star Wars as a genuinely trans-generation phenomenon, unavoidable part of the sociocultural fibers in the World of the last three decades. It is such its reach that its cosmogony has generated a "new religion" that has millions of followers around the globe; not by chance, Francis Ford Coppola suggested his friend George Lucas to wrote a kind of Bible or Talmud based on the precepts of the Force. Therefore, I don't believe that it is exaggerated and unfounded to affirm that we are in front of the angular stone of the popular cultural myth of the end of the century. John Williams's score impact was also enormous, revitalizing the classic spirit of the Austrian and German masters of the Golden Time of Hollywood, and waking up the interest for the film music in an unusual way. Now, after twenty-two years, Williams has the opportunity to conclude his masterpiece, a symphonic work of historical proportions: practically ten hours of music once it concludes the new trilogy (around 2005). Under my criteria it became comic the critics that question the sublimity of Williams' last work: ninety nine minutes of music of profuse orchestral and stylistic wealth, from the dense passages for feminine choir and woods that compose the imaginative chromatic fantasy dedicated to the world of the Gungans, where we find the instrumentally more complex pieces of the score, until that colossal pagan mass where Williams prepares an epic battle (a sacred text in Sanskrit and a belligerent poli-rhytmic orgy), sort of mystic ritual, a brief rapsodic Cantata. In between, fanfares and rozsian marches for the prelude of the race; beautiful music for the sequence of the farewell (not included in the disk), comparable to the that in Superman (1978); exciting declamations of the London Symphony Orchestra for the Princess's rescue, in a breakthrough ode to Korngold; symphonic miniatures for the revelation of Shmi (of evident Gregorian inspiration), the repair of Annakin's ship or the one that is constituted in the theme of Jar Jar Binks; the exotic and dark music of Darth Maul, based on the percussion and the choir, and that becames fundamental in the atmosphere suggested in the final duel; the circumspect music for the sequences of the political intrigue, with excellent pages for solo flute or small groups of winds; Annakin's theme, deconstructed from the Imperial March, of a masterful harmonic elegance whose last three notes coincide with those proper of Darth Vader's theme, in a very skilled touch by Williams that settles down, this way, the necessary continuity among his work. A perfect masterpiece that should not only be judged by the very incomplete (and very commercial) record edition available, but for its audition in company of the images that it grants its force. I suppose that in ten years, when Michael Mattesino, Lukas Kendall or any other one will publish the complete music, with the cues prepared in order and integrity, in some beautiful boxes, the historical perspective allows the sceptic to admire this score like a work comparable to its galactic predecesors, so much at musical level as at film. D.R.C.
/ SONY CLASSICAL SK61816 / 74'
