Acclaimed composer Michael Abels talks about his inspirations behind the soundtrack for the latest Star Wars series.
Spoiler warning: This article discusses story details from The Acolyte episode 7, “Choice,” as well as previous episodes in the series.
Mae prowling into the noodle shop on Ueda to duel — and best — Jedi Master Indara was a crucial moment for The Acolyte. As the cold open for the series, the moment sets the tone and expectations for the story to come. But composer Michael Abels was adamant that it wouldn’t be the first piece of music he composed for the project.
“I didn't do it first because you kind of need to understand what's going to happen before you take on an introduction to something so epic,” Abels tells StarWars.com. “I worked on that scene for a long, long time to get it just right.”
Instead, Abels — whose work, including compositions for Jordan Peele’s genre-defying films Get Out, Us, and Nope, has garnered him a Pulitzer Prize as well as Emmy and Grammy nominations — turned his attention to the coven on Brendok. Writing the Ascension incantation grounded his work for what was yet to come, a blend of international vocalists and languages that transcended Earth cultures to represent the witches at the heart of the tale. Throughout the series and the score, Abels continues to meld different perspectives and themes, revisiting a musical flourish here and there as the story shifts and our understanding of the truth evolves.
Recently, Abels sat down with StarWars.com to talk about the series so far, stepping into the shoes worn by the maestro John Williams and making the music of The Acolyte his own. “Star Wars is an incredible franchise that I've grown up with and, as a composer, an opportunity to participate in that universe is a huge honor,” he says. “[Creator Leslye Headland is] really clear about her vision of the story and all of the character's journeys. She's able to talk about that with extreme alacrity. And it just really makes me thrilled to help tell the story.”
A fresh introduction
Far different from the standard Star Wars fanfare, our introduction into the world of The Acolyte is more character focused and subtle. Drums and other percussive instruments follow Mae as she walks with purpose before shifting into a score that feels like it would be equally at home in a kung fu film fight sequence. “It's important that the music feel as innovative as the story is in the Star Wars world and also feel very familiar because it is part of the Star Wars world,” Abels says. “If you listen to the score, in each cue there's a very conscious decision about how familiar and how unfamiliar it should be and where it lies along that spectrum.”
Only when the lightsaber is ignited did Abels introduce the classic brass element to the score. “But then as tragedy strikes, you hear the first iteration of what I call the profound loss theme.” The music accompanying Indara’s shocking death “is played with incredible solemnity,” Abels says.
That theme isn’t reserved just for Jedi passing into the Force. It follows other tragedies spanning the series, a musical thread that joins disparate losses separated by time and space. “The musical themes in The Acolyte are tied more to an emotion or a point of view or a literary theme than they are to a particular character,” Abels says. “When Mae is out for revenge, we hear music that lets you know that she's stalking her victims. When Osha is on her journey and she aspires to be a Jedi, we hear a very hopeful, aspirational theme. Her music needed to come purely from the emotions she was feeling, like when she's being unjustly accused, but these themes can occur with different characters. That speaks to the duality of the characters as they pull apart and come together.”
A new class of Jedi
Those musical motifs extend to how characters perceive the Jedi, a point of view that shifts week to week as we gain more insight into the events on Brendok and the reasons some characters see the Jedi as antagonists.
“The music is designed to show the Jedi from the perspective of the characters that they encounter,” Abels says. “When you see the Jedi on Coruscant, the music is very traditional. But when we see them going into the courtyard on Brendok, they're not welcome. It's a very tense standoff in a foreign culture that doesn't appreciate their values. It's important that the audience understand why the coven would not think of the Jedi as good people, so the music's meditative, but it's an uncomfortable meditation.” Little Osha, however, doesn’t see Sol in that light. “When Osha encounters Sol for the first time and he holds the promise of her doing something that she considers noble, we hear a very noble theme that depicts her aspiration to become a Jedi.”
Since the two flashback episodes on Brendok show wildly different points of view, Abels used the score to accentuate those varied emotions playing out during some of the same sequences. “It's a real Rashomon moment in storytelling,” Abels says. “I think, shot by shot, you can see things that are visually the same in both episodes and also musically different.” And the latest episode includes a special end-credits track by Grammy Award-winner Victoria Monét and produced by D’Mile.
Clashing sabers and the Stranger
The Force doesn’t have its own specific theme for the series, as Abels sought to instead relate the mystical energy binding the galaxy to individual characters on their own journeys. A gentle flute theme might accompany one character using the Force for good, while Abels seeded some of the driving beats and horror-inspired motifs he’s known for in relation to the Stranger. “When the Force is harnessed for darkness, there's some chaotic textural music, like when the Stranger is forcing all of the Jedi back with just one gesture of his hand.” Abels says. But the mood shifts in episode 6, when Osha and the Stranger find themselves alone on an unknown world. “There's a sense of the seduction of the dark side of the Force,” Abels says of the compositions that accompany the quieter moments. “There's a power of darkness theme that's a driving string ostinato. A lot of my philosophy of how to score that music was to have it feel luxurious and calming in one sense, but all of the music you hear when Osha is on that planet is one part seductive and even romantic, but on the other hand, really troubling in a soul disturbing way that's hard to put your finger on. You can tell I've had a lot of fun playing with how the Force is used and who uses it and what we think about whether that use of the Force is good or bad.”
That’s consistent with the musical themes for the Stranger across the series, including a nod to Kylo Ren’s theme interlaced with one moment in the character’s journey at the end of episode 4. “My musical approach to Manny's character was always based on what do we know about him in this moment, and how do we feel about him in this moment?” Abels says. “When we first meet him as Qimir, he's the goofy sidekick and he doesn't really have a theme because we're really focused on Mae and we think of him as a supporting character. The music doesn't try to foreshadow or connect that at all. When the Stranger is revealed, I think we're surprised but still horrified.”
When the Stranger takes on the entire mission crew of Jedi on Khofar in episode 5, the music carries the frenetic action with a driving ferocity before shifting into the uncanny as the mysterious foe is unmasked. “It's important that it really feel like a Star Wars lightsaber battle, so there's a lot of brass and really big action cues. The music is both athletic and aggressive; it’s one part primal, but also one part grand and orchestral,” Abels says. “But when the Stranger is revealed, that's when the music becomes more horrific. Because he represents chaos and mayhem in a way that is unexpected and uncontrollable and frightening. And so the music responds in that way. The music becomes much more dissonant, even than the battle music. In some places it's aleatoric, which means that the musicians are improvising within limited boundaries all at the same time in a way that's designed to sound ugly. And while we often strive in music to play beautifully, in that style of music, the goal is to make it sound as ugly as possible and the effect that produces in our emotions is one of disquiet and terror.”
