SPECULATION Is John Williams answering Rey's origin in TFA's soundtrack?

Hi! Been lurking here since this fantastic site started, and, after a few listens to the Soundtrack, I thought I could summon the Nerd in me and have some fun while analyzing some stuff that caught my ear...

And...I think John Williams might have been giving more answers than "meets the ear"... at least when it comes to Rey's origin.

What do you guys think?

Attention, possible spoilers for Episode VIII

 

Thanks for the warm welcome! Much appreciated

 

Thank you everybody! There's a great enthusiasm in this forum!!

I have also been reading about Darth Plagueis, so here's my 2c on everything...

Film composers work pretty differently when it comes to creating music, depending on many aspects of the film itself (genre, aesthetics and function of music).

Composers like Williams tend to be more than just "composers", and they act more like filmmakers than scene fillers. In that sense, music is usually crafted around themes that are written around the script, that aren'tnecessary featured musically in every scene.
It can be a mood, a longing, something that moves "internally" the film and music.

In Star Wars, he has crafted themes around leitmotivs, just like Wagner's Operas or like The LOTR trilogy (theme of the ring, etc).
There is an "apparent" lack of themes in TFA, which makes people wonder 2 things:
a. That Williams has "lost" it.
b. That All the answers would likely come in the next chapters.

I would personally add a
c. The Filmmaker and writers don't have a clue...yet.

If we look at the book "The Art of TFA", it seems clear that they started production without really knowing how the characters were really going to be related one another.

In the case of Snoke, there are reports that they thought of it as a woman. So, the Plagueis option, while plausible, was a bit elusive at the time of production.

BUT...Rey's Theme is the one theme that is the most elaborate in the soundtrack and in the Film, with not only the "Vader cadence" attached to it, but also the Force and other bits.

Also, Kylo Ren is slightly elusive, but a little more clear than the rest.

So, my opinion (which is just a personal one, not science based or supported by musical analysis) is that the only outline of the story that had for sure, for the next installments, was the story of these two characters. That would explain why the themes are somehow in an infant state...as if they need to "awake" (pun intented ).

That's why my theory of hidden message is there. Music supports that, and the fact that these themes are much more carefully crafted than the others.

So, why the others aren't? Because they might not know yet, or at the moment of initial production (they might even be waiting for reports on what made good TFA and what not to change things in the next ones...major studios DO that everytime with Franchises).

The Prequels themes (specially Anakin and everything surrounding Palpatine) was meticously crafted, because Williams had already all the answers, that's why the prequels score are much more complex than the OT.

So...back to Plagueis / Snoke...

It is obvious that the aesthetics are the same as the ROTS Palpatine-Anakin Opera Scene.
But Snoke's theme is no more than a drone in TFA, without any musical implication other than filling the scene and using a sort of "macabre" male choir sounding to a bad guy, something that has been featured in all the Star Wars Trilogies. But it doesn't seem to explain anything more.

Andy Serkis even said he didn't have a clue on the character he was playing...besides a bad guy sitting on a podium. That would support my theory that Williams didn't have an answer either and could only play it safe...it was the perfect moment to depict a bad guy (think Voldemort's theme in the 1st Harry Potter movie...the bad guy had a backstory, and so had the music). If Williams didn't do it, it wasn't because he couldn't figure out a theme, but rather because JJ Abrams wouldn't tell him...

Again, that's just my personal theory.

Rey's theme, on the contrary, has a lot more implications...