A person’s strengths and traits are important pieces of their identity. As we get to know someone, recognizing their unique qualities can help create a full picture of who that person is. This is true as we get to know characters from stories, books, and movies, too. For storytellers, imagining their main characters’ traits and strengths is a huge part of bringing those characters fully to life.
When composers tell stories with their music, they can use musical ideas to share details about characters’ traits and strengths. In the music for the film Star Wars: The Force Awakens, composer John Williams uses the piece “Rey’s Theme” to create a musical portrait of an amazing character: the hero and space adventurer Rey.
As a strong, creative, space adventurer, Rey and the real-life astronaut Sarah Gillis seem to have a lot in common!
But, read the character sketch of Rey below and find out a few more qualities that make the character Rey unique.
About Rey:
Rey is a creative problem-solver who is great with machines and loves adventure. She is completely loyal to the friends she makes, but is often on her own and lonely. She’s kind-hearted and stubborn with a strong sense of right and wrong.
Choose one or two of the traits you are most interested to hear in a musical portrait of Rey. Before listening to Williams’ music, see if those traits can spark some musical ideas in your own mind.
What do you imagine music that expresses those strengths or traits could sound like?
In many of his pieces, Williams uses small musical ideas called motifs to represent characters and their qualities. Listen to three motifs from “Rey’s Theme” and imagine which of Rey’s strengths or traits the music might be trying to express. (There’s no single correct answer—let your ears and your imagination guide you!)
Character Motif 1
Character Motif 2
Character Motif 3
- How are these three motifs different from one another? Try describing what you notice using some of the musical elements from the box below.
- What trait or quality of Rey do you think each of these motifs most connects with? Why?
- What else do these musical motifs make you imagine?
- Rhythm: unique combinations of lengths of notes
- Tempo: the speed of the music
- Register and Pitch: high, medium, or low musical voices and the specific notes they play
- Contour: how the pitches move—leaping, by step, repeating
- Instrumentation: which instrument(s) will play this music
- Dynamics: how loud or quietly the music is played
- Which musical elements can you experiment with?
- How do these musical changes affect the sound of the motif?
- How can you create a variation that expresses something new about Rey, or shows a completely different trait or strength?
If you have a pitched instrument, experiment with performing your new variation.
Want to share your new variation? Post your recordings on social media using the hashtag #space4music. We will be sharing selected musical ideas in this Zone’s Challenge Accepted! space.
Your ensemble can perform John Williams’ Rey’s Theme too! The Polaris Program will provide the first 50 programs who sign up here with a free set of electronic parts and score to this intermediate string arrangement from Hal Leonard of Rey’s Theme.
