The other two major new themes in The Empire Strikes Back are so strong that they, when bracketing the "Imperial March" in the "End Credits" suite, together produce the most satisfying such arrangement in the franchise. The theme for the Jedi master, Yoda, is a benign and touching reflection of wisdom and restraint, heard extensively during the scenes on his jungle planet of Dagobah. Its optimistic progressions are an important counterweight to the rest of the score, and its generally affable nature carried over into a cameo performance of much fame in the Halloween scene of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. For the troubled romance between Han Solo and Princess Leia is a stunningly gorgeous love theme, its concert arrangement accompanying their first kiss in "Han Solo and the Princess." Just as the theme for the Force had accomplished in the prior film, the love theme in The Empire Strikes Back carries a very heavy, mournful sensibility with it, punctuating the carbon freezing scene and finale of the movie with unquestionable weight. The melody keenly shares its first two notes with Princess Leia's theme from A New Hope and uses that existing theme as counterpoint during the aforementioned concert arrangement. The duo of "Han Solo and the Princess" and "Across the Stars" from Attack of the Clones represents the most powerful melodramatic string writing in the franchise, both themes saturated with gloom despite their romantic allure. Aside from these major players, two important sub-themes call this score home, not appearing to any great degree in the other scores for the franchise; a sour motif for Boba Fett and an upbeat march for Lando's cloud city both exist in the latter half of the film. The existing theme for the Force, a dominant element in A New Hope, does make some important contributions to The Empire Strikes Back, including a few in the understandable scenes on Yoda's jungle world. Its most poignant application, however, comes when Luke uses the Force to call out to Leia at the cloud city; as the Millenium Falcon turns around to rescue Luke, Williams expresses one of the boldest incarnations of the theme heard in the entire series. As with the prior film as well, Williams includes a few vignettes in The Empire Strikes Back that demand mentioning of their singular success. Foremost is the haphazardly frantic rhythmic movement of "The Asteroid Field," though equally respected are the churning brass motifs of "The Battle of Hoth" to emulate the motions of the enemy walkers. The ethereal high vocals for "City in the Clouds" create a false sense of beauty and hope that is yet cold and distant.

Systematic rhythmic churning is important to defining the personality of the score for The Empire Strikes Back, with Lando's processional and Fett's departure yielding to a hyperspace motif (a very underrated portion of the score) that agonizingly flows with suspense as the heroes attempt to cut their losses and escape at the end. The "Imperial March" itself is the ultimate extension of this rhythmic approach, and it symbolizes the inevitable path towards the "dark side" with great effectiveness. The precision of application for each motif in A New Hope is really what propelled the structural success of that score (outside of the raw emotion of the Force theme during the binary sunset and burning homestead cues). In The Empire Strikes Back, Williams takes that precision one step further and applies a far deeper emotional palette. A more heart-wrenching score, The Empire Strikes Back is significantly heavier on the drama and lighter on the science-fiction action. No point exemplifies this reality clearer than the full "Carbon Freeze" cue, extending from a desperate performance of the love theme prior to Solo's freezing through Boba Fett's frustrating departure. When you saw The Empire Strikes Back for the first time, you got the feeling that damn near everything was going wrong, as it should be, and part of that feeling was the ambience of a relentlessly uphill struggle created by Williams' score. Despite everything that went right with this music, there are some less engaging moments that maintain effectiveness but are less interesting on album. The mass of material outside of Yoda's thematic expressions during the training sequences on Dagobah are not particularly noteworthy, often representing the most striking dissonance of the score (as in "The Magic Tree"). Likewise, the score takes quite some time to build momentum, the early pre-battle scenes on the ice planet treated tepidly. That said, there are few other detriments to what is otherwise an extremely impressive score. Regarding the albums for The Empire Strikes Back, much of the same information applies to this score as it did for A New Hope, but with one major twist. The original LP record release was a double-album, with two LPs featuring a significant amount of score from the film. When the album was translated from that medium onto CD, the content was cut down to one CD, making the LP (and its stunning booklet presentation) something of a collector's item. The history of the album on CD, however, shares the fact that every time you think you've purchased the definitive and final version of any of the classic trilogy scores, you can wait a few years and be treated to yet another re-release.

While the existence of all of the music from the classic Star Wars film scores is taken for granted today, the first fifteen years were quite lean for fans of the composer and trilogy. In fact, it would take a full twenty years before the full scores finally reached fans in time for the 1997 Special Editions in theatres. Much of the information that follows in regards to each of the various releases of the music is relevant to not only this score, but the others in the classic trilogy as well, so you'll read very similar accounts in the Filmtracks reviews of those scores. After their initial, separate releases on LP records and their early CDs, the scores on subsequent discs have always been released as a trilogy, despite fans' ability to usually buy them separately upon each update of all three. The first CD release of The Empire Strikes Back, as mentioned before, reduced the 1980 2-LP release of 75 minutes down to 42 minutes and rearranged some of the cues. It was, surprisingly, released by Polydor as a bargain item in 1985 even before A New Hope made it onto CD from its original LP form in 1986. Considering the mass of music unreleased from this score, listeners searched for comfort in, once again, the only alternative source of music from the series before 1993: Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra. For years, Gerhardt and the NPO had recorded famous film scores from mostly the Golden Age of Hollywood, but as a few of their final collaborations, Gerhardt recorded the three classic Star Wars scores near the times of their release. For The Empire Strikes Back, the 1980 re-recording of 45 minutes for an LP record remained absent from CD shelves for a longer period than the other two classic trilogy scores. His versions of Star Wars and Return of the Jedi had been released in 1989 by RCA, but Gerhardt's The Empire Strikes Back recording took until 1992 before Varèse Sarabande finally pressed the album on CD. For over a year, this Gerhardt CD was the only digital source for music that had appeared on the original LP for The Empire Strikes Back but had been dropped from the official CD. A newly arranged performance of the "Imperial March," adding some "Carbon Freeze" material to the start, is a highlight despite weak brass. Even more than for A New Hope, the Star Wars trilogy Anthology released by 20th Century Fox in 1993 was considered a godsend by fans. The Anthology finally offered the contents of the LP and several extra cues as well, featuring a much more significant boost than the other two scores in the set. Produced by some of the biggest names in film score production, the additional music was certainly welcomed with great anticipation.

The presentation on the 1993 Anthology, however, was not perfect. It placed as much music as possible on an individual CD for each of the three scores but then pressed additional unreleased cues on a fourth CD that spans all three. Thus, the long and vital "Carbon Freeze/Luke Pursues the Captives/Departure of Boba Fett" and "Drawing the Battle Lines/Leia's Instructions" were orphaned from the rest of the presentation. Add on a large, custom-sized package and hard-to-read individual CD covers within, and you had some ill-received protests from fans. That Anthology was rendered outdated by the massive, highly advertised RCA "Special Edition" releases of 1997. In January of that year, The Phantom Menace was announced along with newly enhanced versions of the original trilogy for a 20th anniversary theatrical release. On album, fans were treated to double-CD releases of each Star Wars score in film order with alternate cues and extensive attention to detail in the mixing and arrangement. Including the alternate version of the "End Credits" that actually made it into The Empire Strikes Back (attached to the end of a Return of the Jedi cue, for some reason), a total of 124 minutes of music on this Special Edition appeared on the definitive release. Extensive notes and pictorials grace both the 1993 and 1997 products, the glittery CDs of the latter a nice touch. Later in 1997, these albums were re-packaged by RCA and offered in slimline packages adorned by the Special Edition poster art, but these fell out of print about five years later. In 2004, the Sony Classical label, which had been releasing the prequel scores, acquired the rights to the classic trilogy and reissued the 1997 releases with new artwork. These 2004 albums offer Sony's Direct Stream Digital remastering, and while this technique does provide some minimal extra clarity on high-end stereo systems, casual listeners will notice no significant difference. Those who owned the Special Edition albums and didn't require slightly improved sound had no reason to seek the 2004 sets. The same presentation was re-pressed in 2016 by Sony as the "Ultimate Soundtrack Collection." More basic re-issues dribbled out with Sony's various 2007 releases (the "Corellian Edition" compilation and "30th Anniversary Collector's Edition"), both of which redundant, unnecessary, and irritatingly packaged. Upon Disney's ownership of the franchise's rights, its label sadly remastered only the original LP album presentation for a single CD in 2018. Overall, owning The Empire Strikes Back is an absolute must for any film score collector, even more so than the other entries in the classic trilogy. With its outstanding packaging and complete presentation, the 1997 Special Edition album (the original full version bound in black booklets) continues to be the best product available for this undeniably classic score.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download