THE 'PHANTOM' AT TWENTY: THE MAESTRO OF A UNIVERSE!

Together again! George Lucas and John Williams.

With Lucas back in the writing/directing duties for EPISODE I, it was a given that his ultimate collaborator in bringing the sweeping musical scope to the Star Wars saga would also return in John Williams. Williams had seen a raw temporary cut of the movie, mixing live-action with animatics, by October the previous year, with recording of the composed music beginning from January 1999, and back in the UK.

Over the sessions period (normally at weekends), the unbeatable London Symphony Orchestra were reunited with Williams to bring the new Prequel saga to life, with music engineering duties once more be handled by Williams longtime friend and SW veteran Eric Tomlinson. Meanwhile, in the recording booth area, an impressed and enthused Ewan McGregor, as well as Anthony Daniels and other key production team members, would be guest visitors to the recordings, taking place at the prestigious Abbey Road Studios in London.

"The challenge for me was to write music as effective as in the first trilogy but that would also be wedded to the tapestry of the earlier films so that it would sound like a natural outgrowth."

John Williams - Empire magazine - 1999

Using the talents of the London Voices choir as part of the 'Duel of the Fates' theme for EPISODE I.

"My first impression upon watching these things that George comes up with is that it's always fantastic, but then I think about how difficult it's going to be. It's a phenomenal thing, the opportunity to create a whole glossary of musical themes, and keep adding them to the body of work of a much larger piece."

John Williams - Premiere magazine - 2002

"There is a stanza in the poem (Robert Graves' "The Battle of the Trees' - translated into Sanskrit for Williams epic 'Duel of the Fates') which is roughly translated as "Under the tongue root a fight most dread/Whilst another rages behind the head." And for no conscious or sensible reason, the idea of a fight, something more raging and imagined in the head more than anything else, seemed to be a good mystical, cryptic piece of business (for EPISODE I)."

John Williams - Empire magazine - 1999