The soundtrack for the film has been issued numerous times. The original 1982 album release was a recording of concert arrangements based on the film's music, whereas later issues contain the actual soundtrack cues as heard in the film, although most cues are alternates originally recorded for the film, but replaced by new cues.
On the track "The Magic of Halloween," when E.T. sees a child wearing a Yoda costume, Williams includes a reference to "Yoda's Theme", which he had composed for The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. In 1999, George Lucas made the final link when he included three E.T.s as members of the senate in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (also composed by John Williams) and thereby semiconnecting the two movies.
The music
There are almost 80 minutes of music in ET, excluding alternates and album arrangements. The full hand-written score has in excess of 500 pages. The music was first written by Williams in 8-12-line sketch format; these were then expanded to full score by orchestrator Herbert W. Spencer from December 1981 to January 1982.
The music was orchestrated for a conventional large orchestra - e.g. the end credits is written for 3 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 3 bassoons, 4 horns in f, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, percussion section, 1 harp, 1 piano and string section. Other cues call for additional instruments such as celeste and organ.
In the course of the recordings several revisions to various cues were made; some of the original versions of these cues ended up on the 1996 or 2002 album releases.
The original 1982 soundtrack album contained a number of cues that Williams adapted and recorded specifically for the album around a month after the original film recording sessions: 'Abandoned and Pursued','ET and Me', 'ET's Halloween', 'Flying' and 'Over The Moon'.
La La Land Records finally released the complete ET score in 2017, including the full score as heard in the film, the original album-only cues, and alternate versions of cues where applicable.
One of the known anecdotes from the recording is that Williams had problems with timing of the music during the recording of the final chase which resulted in Spielberg shutting off the projector and telling Williams to record the music as he wanted it. Spielberg later edited the scenes around the recorded music.
The score was the fourth in history to accomplish the feat of winning the Academy Award, Golden Globe, Grammy, and BAFTA. (The previous two, Star Wars and Jaws, were also composed by Williams, who remains the only person to have won all awards for the same score more than once.)[1] To date, a total of only six scores have won all four awards.[1]
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