Listen to John Williams’ Score From the ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Trailer
There were many, many things to enjoy in the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer. As this Rolling Stone article put it, “J.J. Abrams is the cinema’s greatest hype man since Alfred Hitchcock.” Whether or not the movie is going to be good or not seems almost irrelevant because this trailer is so damn good. In a trailer where Abrams and Lucasfilm don’t actually show you or tell you much at all, it’s up to John Williams’ to do most of the heavy lifting with his score, and boy, does he. If you’ve found yourself just watching the trailer again, just to listen to his new music, a) you’re not alone, and b) we’ve got some good news for you. Williams’ new The Force Awakens trailer soundtrack is now online, sans dialogue, and it’s just as moving without any visuals.
The soundtrack for the Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer — composed by John Williams, with additional music and arrangement by trailer composer Frederick Lloyd — was isolated from the footage by YouTube user SGTBizarro, who had to normalize the audio to compensate for the dips in the audio from the original dialogue. The result is nearly flawless.
Unfortunately this may be the last sample of Williams’ new music for the film until December 18, when both The Force Awakens and the soundtrack are set for release (if you’re so inclined, you can pre-order the Star Wars: The Force Awakens soundtrack here).
Williams will be taking off Star Wars: Rogue One, which will instead have music composed by Alexandre Desplat (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). Rogue One will be the first Star Wars film without a John Williams soundtrack, but previously Williams has said he hopes to compose music for the new trilogy of films, though Lucasfilm has yet to confirm his participation on Star Wars: Episode 8.