"You killed Yoda! You bastard!"

I keep meaning to use this journal to expound about what's going on music-wise with SW:ME Trilogy.

So, I killed Yoda last night. Not actually, but I found myself doing the last incarnation of Music of the Knight, in which Yoda is basically Fantine-ing about the stage for his last gasp.

MOTK needs to strike a delicate balance in this show. It's immediately recognizable by audience members, but we reprise it a lot. There are four full incarnations of it, including an extended version between Vader and Luke. Plus, the theme itself gets referenced and mixed in with about four other songs. (Note that we cut about three reprises of it, too. Yikes.) I joke that we do it more often than Phantom, but it's true. And each incarnation has to bring something new musically, or the audience is going to rush the stage and bludgeon the orchestra to death by the time Vader gets around to singing it. Or, perhaps more likely, the orchestra will bludgeon me to death with my conductor's score before prod week.

So, last night I decided to tackle the last incarnation. I ended up starting with the recognizable part of the tune, and then altering the tune to keep the singer in chest voice, only heading into head voice right near the end, which turns out to be too much for him and he collapses into a coughing fit. All accompanied by cello and oboe being very wistful. Very pretty, actually.

Followed it with some of the actual music from Yoda's expiration in ROTJ, and it all came together rather nicely. I'm quite pleased.