Presenting the SWTC: A Symbolic Corpus of Themes from John Williams’ Star Wars Episodes I-IX
This paper presents a new symbolic corpus of musical themes from the complete Star Wars trilogies (Episodes I-IX) by John Williams. The corpus files are made available in multiple formats (.krn, .sib., and .musicxml) and include melodic, harmonic, and formal information. The Star Wars Thematic Corpu...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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The Ohio State University Libraries
2023-11-01
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| Series: | Empirical Musicology Review |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://emusicology.org/index.php/EMR/article/view/8927 |
| _version_ | 1797626135111008256 |
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| author | Claire Arthur Frank Lehman John McNamara |
| author_facet | Claire Arthur Frank Lehman John McNamara |
| author_sort | Claire Arthur |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This paper presents a new symbolic corpus of musical themes from the complete Star Wars trilogies (Episodes I-IX) by John Williams. The corpus files are made available in multiple formats (.krn, .sib., and .musicxml) and include melodic, harmonic, and formal information. The Star Wars Thematic Corpus (SWTC) contains a total of 64 distinctive, recurring, and symbolically meaningful themes and motifs, commonly referred to as leitmotifs. Through this corpus we also introduce a new humdrum standard for non-functional harmony encodings, **harte (Harte et al., 2005; Harte, 2010). This report details the motivation, describes the transcription and encoding processes, and provides some brief summary statistics. While relatively small in scale, the SWTC represents a unified collection from one of the most prolific and influential composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, and the under-studied subset of film and multimedia musical material in general. We hope the SWTC will provide insights into John Williams’ compositional style, as well as prove useful in comparisons against other thematic corpora from film and beyond. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-11T10:06:11Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-b631798a2caa43e7aee823265606b8a2 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1559-5749 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-11T10:06:11Z |
| publishDate | 2023-11-01 |
| publisher | The Ohio State University Libraries |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Empirical Musicology Review |
| spelling | doaj.art-b631798a2caa43e7aee823265606b8a22023-11-16T15:04:01ZengThe Ohio State University LibrariesEmpirical Musicology Review1559-57492023-11-0117216917710.18061/emr.v17i2.89278105Presenting the SWTC: A Symbolic Corpus of Themes from John Williams’ Star Wars Episodes I-IXClaire Arthur0Frank Lehman1John McNamara2Georgia Institute of TechnologyTufts UniversityGeorgia Institute of TechnologyThis paper presents a new symbolic corpus of musical themes from the complete Star Wars trilogies (Episodes I-IX) by John Williams. The corpus files are made available in multiple formats (.krn, .sib., and .musicxml) and include melodic, harmonic, and formal information. The Star Wars Thematic Corpus (SWTC) contains a total of 64 distinctive, recurring, and symbolically meaningful themes and motifs, commonly referred to as leitmotifs. Through this corpus we also introduce a new humdrum standard for non-functional harmony encodings, **harte (Harte et al., 2005; Harte, 2010). This report details the motivation, describes the transcription and encoding processes, and provides some brief summary statistics. While relatively small in scale, the SWTC represents a unified collection from one of the most prolific and influential composers of the 20th and 21st centuries, and the under-studied subset of film and multimedia musical material in general. We hope the SWTC will provide insights into John Williams’ compositional style, as well as prove useful in comparisons against other thematic corpora from film and beyond.https://emusicology.org/index.php/EMR/article/view/8927corpus studymusical themesharmonysymbolic encodinghumdrum |
| spellingShingle | Claire Arthur Frank Lehman John McNamara Presenting the SWTC: A Symbolic Corpus of Themes from John Williams’ Star Wars Episodes I-IX Empirical Musicology Review corpus study musical themes harmony symbolic encoding humdrum |
| title | Presenting the SWTC: A Symbolic Corpus of Themes from John Williams’ Star Wars Episodes I-IX |
| title_full | Presenting the SWTC: A Symbolic Corpus of Themes from John Williams’ Star Wars Episodes I-IX |
| title_fullStr | Presenting the SWTC: A Symbolic Corpus of Themes from John Williams’ Star Wars Episodes I-IX |
| title_full_unstemmed | Presenting the SWTC: A Symbolic Corpus of Themes from John Williams’ Star Wars Episodes I-IX |
| title_short | Presenting the SWTC: A Symbolic Corpus of Themes from John Williams’ Star Wars Episodes I-IX |
| title_sort | presenting the swtc a symbolic corpus of themes from john williams star wars episodes i ix |
| topic | corpus study musical themes harmony symbolic encoding humdrum |
| url | https://emusicology.org/index.php/EMR/article/view/8927 |
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