Identify four aspects of John Williams' ET; 'Flying Theme' that makes the music immediately attractive and appealing. In each case discuss how the composer achieves this intention.

Another aspect is the rhythmic use. Williams keeps a constant motor rhythm going throughout the piece. This drives the music on and keeps it going. The motor rhythms are continuous all the way through the piece except for the end. The gives the listener a sense of achievement as he music has built up to this moment. An example of this motor rhythm is in bar 60. Also the rhythm of the tune is varied towards the end. This makes the music exciting, as it does not become predictable to the listener. Williams also uses also uses cross rhythms in order to make the music more appealing and attractive. This again gives the listener variation from the same theme. The end of the piece builds up using several musical techniques. The rhythm uses quavers to build up, and then lands on a homophonic semibreve note, as the piece comes to a climax.

Another aspect that Williams uses is pitch. He uses pitch to make the music attractive and appealing by using the leit motif. Williams shows this by making the intervals in the main melody of piece get wider to signify the flying action of the onscreen characters. Bells are used at the end of the piece in order to show the upward movement of the characters, heading towards the stars. This happens in bars 84 to the end. Upward moving quavers are also used within this piece; this again suggests the flying idea. This happens in bars 69-73. These quavers continue to rise until the piece reaches a climax. Low pedal notes are played in bar 69 in order to contrast from the rest of the melody and perhaps these notes are supposed to represent the ground in which ET and Elliot are rising from.

Another aspect, which makes the music immediately attractive and appealing, is the use of accents. Williams uses a lot of different types of accents to show how the music is dramatic. The accents used gives attraction to the music as it does not only drive the music on, but it also creates variation from straight quavers which are played at most times. An example of this is in bar 47 were the brass play homophonic chords. He uses the accents at this point in order to make the fanfares here stand out. I bar 68, the four quavers used, lead the piece into the coda. These four quavers are all accented, which makes the music more effective. The pieces texture then changes at this point, from a heavy homophonic texture to a more lighter polyphonic texture.