Long-time JWFan contributor Frank Lehman writes about the music in the three trailers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens in a special article for the American Musicology Society:
“While the manipulation (and manipulativeness) of themes in these trailers tugs the listeners backwards, there are signs of our current musical times too. This is most apparent in the increasingly obvious use of digital processing, and decreasingly “old-fashioned” sound to the trailers. […] These are mannerisms like exceptionally reverberant piano notes and indistinct bass thuds, injecting extra punch into Williams’s music like sonic steroidal supplements.”
Full article: Trailers, Tonality, and the Force of Nostalgia, by Frank Lehman