Do you think that the Storm Trooper March was based on Holst's The Planets?

Question

Listen to Mars (the bringer of Peace) and then recall the bit that played when the Storm Troopers were marching.

Answer 1

First, Mars is the bringer of War.

When Lucas approached Williams to write the music for Star Wars he had music in mind that he wanted it to sound like. Lucas would show a section of the movie with classical music playing and say I want something like that there.

A major difference between Mars and the Imperial March is that Mars is in 5/4 time and Imperial March is in 4/4 time. But does have some similar sounding parts.

If you really want to hear Star Wars music that sounds like Mars, listen to the end of Mars and then watch/listen to the music at the end of A New Hope when the Death Star is destroyed, they are almost identical.

Answer 2

Well, the thematic material isn't related, but Williams is well known for imitating the orchestral "gestures", textures, colors (and even thematic material) of other composers.

Did you ever listen to the music he wrote for "The Right Stuff"? Almost lifted bodily from Tschaikovsky's Violin Concerto. And in the first Star Wars movie, the scene in which C3po and R2D2 are wandering in the desert of Tatooeen, the music is lifted almost verbatim from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.