Brian Tibbs Music

The Imperial March first appeared in the second Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, and was not heard in the preceding original movie. Indeed, not only is the march absent from A New Hope, there's no theme in that movie that sounds sufficiently similar to serve as a direct or obvious precursor.

However, I think John Williams is too thoughtful a composer to simply come up with a new theme without deriving it in some way from existing musical material. After diving a bit more into the score for A New Hope, I believe I have identified that germinal material, the essential musical ideas Williams drew from in composing The Imperial March.

A few notes:

• The music cues and times referenced below are from the album Star Wars: A New Hope (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack).
• The simple musical examples below have been transcribed by ear, so I can’t guarantee accuracy. They are purely to illustrate the ideas in this article.
• All musical examples are presented in the key of C for easy comparison.

First I’ll focus on the insistent military rhythm of the march. The bass consists of four on-the-beat pulses, with triplet figures between beats that provide urgency and momentum. This rhythm lays the foundation for the main melodic theme, which is also mostly on the beat, with little syncopation. It can be reduced to three beats/stabs followed by a figure of lower, then upper “neighbors” (thirds), as described in my article Vader Variations.

I think the relentless rhythm of The Imperial March is derived from a rhythmic figure we hear several times throughout A New Hope. This motif is composed in the triple meter of 3/2 and consists of three strong pulses on the beats, decorated with an on-the-beat triplet figure:

This rhythm is heard distinctly in several places throughout the film, including:

• in the first part of the opening scene showing the Star Destroyer pursuing the Tantive IV (Main Title, 1:56),
• onboard the Tantive IV as the rebels prepare to be boarded (Imperial Attack, 0:00),
• when the Millenium Falcon is captured by the Death Star (Inner City, 0:55), and
• when the Falcon escapes from the Death Star after Ben Kenobi is killed (Ben’s Death and TIE Fighter Attack, 0:37).

The on-the-beat insistence of the rhythm expresses the brutal relentlessness of the empire in very much the same way as The Imperial March in The Empire Strikes Back.

We hear a variant of this rhythm when Han and Luke, disguised as Stormtroopers, take Chewie to the Death Star detention block (Mouse Robot and Blasting Off, 0:54). In this instance, the motif clearly expresses the mournful, deathly descent to the submediant in minor that is so essential to The Imperial March (also described in Vader Variations):

That Phrygian “death harmony” is often heard throughout the Star Wars movies.

Next is Williams’ use of parallel minor triads to represent the empire, versus parallel major triads representing the rebels, in the opening scene of A New Hope (Imperial Attack, 0:00). Over the rhythm discussed above, we hear these parallel major triads:

Compare this to the parallel minor chords heard:

• as the Tantive IV is taken up into the belly of the Star Destroyer (Imperial Attack, 0:43),
• when the rebels are attempting to defend themselves against the Stormtroopers (Imperial Attack, 1:04),
• or in the dark imperial fanfare heard, for example, in the final battle scene (The Last Battle, 8:14).

As a continuation of that concept, the fundamental harmonic character of The Imperial March is also one of parallel minor triads:

Then there’s the striking “general imperial theme” from A New Hope, which expresses a Phrygian quality in an aggressive ascending figure that ends in dissonant bitonality. This theme represents the dark and destructive power of the empire. We hear at least five definitive statements of this general imperial theme:

• at the end of the opening scene as the star destroyer departs from Tatooine (Imperial Attack, 5:53),
• after Luke finds the corpses of his aunt and uncle and we cut to the Death Star (The Return Home, 1:49),
• after the Millenium Falcon jumps to hyperspace when escaping Tatooine and we again cut to the Death Star (Mouse Robot and Blasting Off, 3:41),
• at the climax of the scene when Han and Luke destroy the TIE fighters while escaping the Death Star (Ben’s Death and TIE Fighter Attack, 3:29), and
• during the final battle scene (The Last Battle, 6:41).

This theme outlines either a major seventh or diminished octave, depending on spelling, which is a characteristic feature of The Imperial March's flat tonic/leading tone.

Another essential harmonic aspect of this general imperial theme are the chromatic inflections of scale degrees 3 and 6, and the use of flat scale degree 2. This may be a tenuous connection, but Williams uses these same chromaticisms in the central section of The Imperial March melody:

However, as a precursor to those statements of the general imperial theme, we hear a condensed version of the theme when Darth Vader first appears, striding aboard the Tantive IV (Imperial Attack, 1:53). This sets up the strong musical association between Vader and the empire:

Finally, I believe we hear a musical precursor to The Imperial March at the very end of The Last Battle, after the Death Star has exploded and Vader’s TIE fighter is spinning away into space. The opening of this passage is composed of "heroic" parallel major triads, as described above, before being decorated with another motif. This second motif is itself a variant on a hero/rebel theme and is heard throughout A New Hope. However, here it expresses the Phrygian minor 6 and leading tone/flat tonic, and the minor scale degree 3 that are all so characteristic of The Imperial March (also described in Vader Variations):

The analysis offered above is, at least to some degree, a matter of interpretation, but I do believe these are the likely musical source materials that informed composition of The Imperial March.

Written by Brian Tibbs