Music from the Star Wars Trilogy - Special Edition

by John Williams (Composer), Jerry Hey (Contribution by)

(Easy Piano Songbook). Music from some of the most popular films of all time. This book contains rare full-color photos from the revised editions of all three films. Titles: Cantina Band * Princess Leia's Theme * Star Wars (Main Theme) * The Throne Room * The Imperial March * Ewok Celebration * Luke and Leia * Victory Celebration.

Genres: Music

60 pages, Paperback

Published February 1, 2006

About the author

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John Towner Williams is an American composer and conductor. In a career that has spanned seven decades, he has composed some of the most popular, recognizable, and critically acclaimed film scores in cinema history. He has a very distinct sound that mixes romanticism, impressionism, and atonal music with complex orchestration. He is best known for his collaborations with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas and has received numerous accolades including 26 Grammy Awards, five Academy Awards, seven BAFTA Awards, three Emmy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards. With 54 Academy Award nominations, he is the second-most nominated person, after Walt Disney, and is the oldest Oscar nominee in any category, at 91 years old.
Williams's early work as a film composer includes Valley of the Dolls (1967), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969), Images (1972), and The Long Goodbye (1973). He has collaborated with Spielberg since The Sugarland Express (1974), composing music for all but five of his feature films. He received five Academy Awards for Best Original Score for Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (1982), and Schindler's List (1993). Other memorable collaborations with Spielberg include Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the Indiana Jones franchise (1981–2023), Jurassic Park (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Catch Me If You Can (2002), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), and The Fabelmans (2022). He also scored Superman (1978), the first two Home Alone films (1990–1992), and the first three Harry Potter films (2001–2004).
Williams has also composed numerous classical concertos and other works for orchestral ensembles and solo instruments. He served as the Boston Pops' principal conductor from 1980 to 1993 and is its laureate conductor. Other works by Williams include theme music for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, NBC Sunday Night Football, "The Mission" theme used by NBC News and Seven News in Australia, the television series Lost in Space and Land of the Giants, and the incidental music for the first season of Gilligan's Island. Williams announced but then rescinded his intention to retire from film score composing after the release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in 2023.
He has received numerous honors, including the Kennedy Center Honor in 2004, the National Medal of the Arts in 2009, and the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2016. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1998, the Hollywood Bowl's Hall of Fame in 2000, and the American Classical Music Hall of Fame in 2004. He has composed the score for nine of the top 25 highest-grossing films at the U.S. box office. In 2022, Williams was appointed an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II, "for services to film music". In 2005, the American Film Institute placed Williams's score to Star Wars first on its list AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores; his scores for Jaws and E. T. also made the list. The Library of Congress entered the Star Wars soundtrack into the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Reviews

[Julien · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm in the mood for some Star Wars' Music!

My personal favorite, among all the pieces, is May The Force Be With You (the theme they used on the trailer of The Force Awakens). This also includes the song that was played by the band in a Cantina in Mos Eisley. The arrangements are fairly for mid-intermediate to late intermediate levels, in my opinion.

Definitely worth checking out for any Star Wars fan (or not) who would love to learn the themes featured on the Original Trilogy. :)

[Silas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would agree with some other reviewers that this is not suitable for a relatively new piano player, despite claiming to be "Easy Piano." I have only recently taken up the piano after being a guitar player for a very long time. I finished Alfred's Adult Piano Book 1, and this seemed like a fun diversion before Book 2, since it would have more songs that I know. While the arrangements are clearly simplified a bit, and they stick to some easier keys to read for the most part, there is just a bit too much going on for a beginner to sight read. I suppose a beginner could simply ignore the bass clef and play through the melody on the treble clef. I am trying to sharpen my skills, though, so I trudged through all of the arrangements, often doing a bit better on subsequent playthroughs. The book sticks to the original trilogy, which is what I expected, and fills pages out with pictures from the films. There are only 8 songs here, I believe. The order isn't the best, either. It begins with the Cantina song, which is one of the more challenging songs in the book. I can understand that it is a pretty popular one, but the Imperial March is quite popular as well, and is considerably easier. For the most part, I liked the songs included, though the final two might not have been the strongest choices. They were the Ewok celebration from the end of Return of the Jedi and the outro music for the special edition version of Return of the Jedi, and though they make sense as the final songs in the original trilogy, they weren't the best suited songs from the Star Wars trilogy for the piano. Overall, despite the challenge, I enjoyed playing through some of these songs, and hope to revisit a few of them when I get a bit more sight reading under my belt.

[Victor Orozco · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had no idea when I bought this that it was for piano. All I saw was Star Wars. B