Classical music in STAR WARS!!!

If you are a STAR WARS fan, you must know the tune of STAR WARS well.
In the movie, when Darth Vader marches out with millions of Stormtroopers, the Imperial March (Darth Vader’s Theme) is played as the background music to show the dark fate of Anakin Skywalker(becomes Darth Vader) and the strong empire ruled by him. The music is always a clue to us that evil is afoot – Darth Vader is coming!



Actually, the Imperial March’s rhythmic pattern is taken from Gustav Holst’s “The Mars, the Bringer of War” of “The Planets” suite.(Start to listen from 4:24) So we can see that John Williams has borrowed the ideas from the “Mars”. Besides the rhythmic pattern, both pieces feature trombones playing  the main theme in order to show the strong and powerful atmosphere to the audience. I think “The Planets” suite is such an inspiration for John Williams as he has taken a lot of musical ideas (e.g. instrumentation, harmonic progression, rhythmic pattern) from it to compose orchestral music for STAR WARS. So we can see how classical music influences modern music, especially film music.