Fantastic Voyage (Leonard Rosenman, 1966): Leonard Rosenman provides a moody and often dissonant, but also sometimes melodic and thematic, score for the popular science fiction adventure about a team of miniaturized scientists exploring he innards of the human body.  It is an unusual and experimental score, but also distinctive and effective.

The melodic aspects of the scores are primarily built around a haunting and evocative central theme.  The theme is fairly short, primarily characterized by a short fanfare-type motif, although its statement usually leads to fairly dissonant and, at times, atonal material.  The score finally goes fully-melodic, and becomes recognizably Rosenman’s style, during the dramatic finale cue, entitled “Optic Nerve/End Cast”.

The soundtrack CD opens very strangely, with a minute and a half “Main Title Sound Effects Suite”, which is exactly what the title suggests.  It includes a variety of beeps, buzzes, clicks, and electronic hums with no melody involved.  The early part of the film (up until the scientists first enter the body) was left unscored, so this sound effects suite is representative of the opening of the film.

Film Score Monthly released a CD of the score back in 1998, the first release separate from the film.  This is a complete presentation with a running time of a little over 45 minutes.  The CD is out-of-print and is now a bit expensive, but not difficult, to locate.

Far and Away (John Williams, 1992): While the film was not a big hit and the score isn’t extremely well-known to the mainstream public, John Williams’ music to Ron Howard’s 70mm epic Far and Away has become a favorite of film music enthusiasts and is frequently featured at Williams’ live concerts. The epic scope of the film provided Williams with an opportunity to showcase a wide range of highly-thematic material, including Irish/Celtic flavored melodies, western-tinged Americana, and rousing action cues.  The result is one Williams’ richest and most diverse scores.

The film’s focus on the relationship (and romance) between Irish immigrants played by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman made the use of Irish-influenced melodies an obvious choice that Williams certainly embraced.  The first cue on the soundtrack, “County Galway, June 1892” establishes the main theme, which incorporates bagpipes along with the orchestra and is both distinctly ethnic and also an example of Williams’ strong gift for rich, thematic melody.  As the film transitions into American settings, the more ethnic elements of the theme are pushed more into the background in favor of a distinctively Americana orchestral flavor.

The strength of the main theme from Far and Away, which isn’t fully dependent on the Irish arrangements, led to a very effective violin arrangement of the theme that Williams arranged for the “Cinematic Serenade” album that he did with Yo Yo Ma, and which is now a frequent showcase for the lead violin player at some of Williams’ live concerts.

The ethnic components of the score are further strengthened through the participation of the popular Irish band The Chieftains on several of the scores cues.  On the soundtrack, these are the cues “The Fighting Donellys”, “Fighting for Dough” and portions of the end credits suite.  Their energetic strings and percussion are expertly blended with the orchestra. 

Williams provides some exuberant, orchestral action music in such cues as the rich, string-centered “Blowing Off Steam”, “Fighting for Dough”, and “The Big Match”.  Williams sticks with grand, very melodic material for the action segments of the score, eventually culminating in the absolutely thrilling 5 minute cue “The Land Race”, which is one of the score’s highlights. 

The score also features richly dramatic components, including the cue “Am I Beautiful”, which is highlighted by an especially effective piano rendition of the score’s central theme.  Another distinctive, quietly dramatic cue is “Inside the Mansion”, where Williams mixes tender strings with bell-like piano to create an almost dreamlike quality to the music, eventually leading into another tender piano rendition of the theme.  This cue then transitions into the more darkly-dramatic “Shannon is Shot”.

In addition to Williams’ music, the soundtrack album also contains the song “Book of Days”, written for the film and performed by Enya.  I admit that I tend to find that Enya’s songs all sound fairly interchangeable to me, although I generally find them pleasant enough.  I do like this song and it blends in fairly well with the score.  The song’s presentation on the album is between the film’s finale music and Williams’ end credits suite, but it doesn’t really feel out of place.

The soundtrack album to Far and Away isn’t a complete presentation of the score and isn’t entirely chronological, but it perhaps one of the best arguments out there in favor of an album arrangement over a complete and chronological release.  The listening experience on the album (which runs just under an hour and ten minutes) is simply superb, with expertly edited cues and transitions. While I would likely purchase an expanded release, I am also pretty sure that I would both retain and still frequently play the original album.

Far from Heaven (Elmer Bernstein, 2002): Far from Heaven has the bittersweet distinction of carrying Elmer Bernstein’s final score for a feature film.  The film was designed to closely resemble a 1950s melodrama, meaning that Bernstein ended his career with a score that was designed to resemble the style he employed with his earliest scores.  It is a fitting and distinguished ending to an impressive career.

As expected with its Golden Age roots, the score is orchestral with a lushly melodic approach.  Piano greatly dominates, with the score’s main theme introduced via solo piano in the opening cue, “Autumn In Connecticut”.  The full orchestra joins in later in the cue, bringing an attention-grabbing fullness to the presentation.

For some cues, Bernstein focuses on a smaller range of instruments, particularly piano and solo strings, in order to give the score a subtlety jazzy feel at times.  The cue “Prowl” is a good example of this, with music that is actually fairly evocative of the cue’s title.  A solo saxophone features prominently in the cue “Cathy and Raymond Dance”, another strongly jazz-influenced piece.  This aspect of the score stands out next to the more lush style of the rest of the music, and does lend it a certain period authenticity.

While I find the score to be a very pleasant one that works well as a bookend to Bernstein’s career, this is a case where I haven’t seen the film itself and feel that to be something of a disadvantage to the evaluation of the score.  The period nature of the score leads me to expect a lot of significance to how well it actually works in the context of the film.  This is a movie I probably should try to see at some point in order to better understand what Bernstein accomplished.

Farewell My Lovely (David Shire, 1975): David Shire composed a very melodic, jazz-oriented score for this mid-70s Philip Marlowe detective film.  The score is largely horn and piano centric, built around a distinctive principal melody, introduced in the soundtrack’s opening cue and incorporated liberally throughout the rest of the score. 

Shire also provides some darker suspense cues as well as some lively action music, both of which are particularly well-represented in the cue “Amthor’s Place”, one of the score’s highlights.  The score also includes some more song-like melodies, including the full-borne, swing-style  “Mrs. Floridian Takes the Full Count” and the lively, jazzy “Three Mile Limited”, which has some great solo horn playing.

An original soundtrack LP was issued at the time of the film’s original release.  The album was arranged by Shire into a very pleasing listening experience, which Film Score Monthly retained for their 2002 CD release, which also added one additional, previously-unreleased cue.  Due to the relatively short (about 33 minutes) running time of the score, it is paired on the CD with Shire’s score to Monkey Shines.

The Fastest Gun Alive (André Previn, 1956): While André Previn is very well known as a composer, conductor, and songwriter, his compositions for film during the 1950s and 1960s are not as widely familiar.  For the western The Fastest Gun Alive, Previn provided a robust and exciting action score.

The soundtrack opens with a “Main Title” cue that is dominated by majestic brassy fanfares lending the theme a nobly heroic quality.  These form a main theme that dominates much of the score, sometimes presented in brass but also very effectively in string arrangements.  The score also features a highly-melodic, string-focused love theme.  Both themes have an Americana quality that fits well with the western setting.

Film Score Monthly released the score on CD in 2004, paired with Previn’s score to House of Numbers.

Father of the Bride (Alan Silvestri, 1991): While Alan Silvestri is best known for big action-adventure scores, he has also contributed a number of strong and effective scores in the comedy genre.  One of the best of these was for the Steve Martin re-make of the classic romantic comedy, Father of the Bride.

The score is highly melodic, with a mix of grand, ceremonial themes, more tender, emotional segments, as well as some lively comic scoring.  For the score’s most prominent theme, introduced right at the beginning in the “Main Title” cue, Silvestri deftly incorporates the initial fanfare from Mendelssohn’s familiar wedding march, transitioning into a sweeping original melody.  This theme serves as the main emotional anchor to the score, reappearing in more tender arrangements in cues such as “Annie Asleep”.  The excerpts from Mendelssohn’s march also appear pretty regularly in the score, particularly towards the later part of the film as the action turns to the wedding itself.

While the main theme has a classic orchestral sound, the score also includes a number of more pop and jazz oriented cues, often harking back to the electronic scores that dominated the earliest part of Silvestri’s career.  Cues such as “Drive to Brunch” and “Snooping Around” prominently feature a pop styling while “Basketball Kiss” has a jazz style, including a solo saxophone.

The soundtrack album only features about 20 minutes of Silvestri’s score, with the rest of the short (under 30 minutes) album filled out by two performances of the Jerome Kern standard “The Way You Look Tonight” performed by Steve Tyrell (the song is prominently featured in the film) as well as a performance of Johann Pachelbel’s “Canon”.

Father of the Bride Part II (Alan Silvestri, 1995): The sequel to the 1991 version of Father of the Bride received a longer soundtrack album than its predecessor, but the album once again only featured a little over 20 minutes of Alan Silvestri’s score. 

The rest of the album is filled in with another Steve Tyrell performance of “The Way You Look Tonight” (a different arrangement than the versions on the first soundtrack) as well as Tyrell performing “Give Me the Simple Life” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street”.  The album also has familiar recordings of “At Last” by Etta James and “When the Saints Go Marching In” by Fats Domino.

Silvestri’s score revisits the main theme from the original film and introduces a major new “baby” theme, which dominates much of the new material.  Although he wisely avoids the Mendelssohn excerpts (other than briefly in the end credits suite), which wouldn’t really make sense in the context of the second film, serving a similar purpose in this score are very brief bits of Brahms’ lullaby, which fits the sequel’s baby-focused plot. 

At least on the album, the score’s focus is much more on the tender, melodic aspects of the original and less on the pop or jazzy elements, although those aren’t completely absent from the sequel.  Particularly nice is a simple piano melody that is prominently featured during the mid-section of the cue “George Walks”, transitioning into a more fanfare oriented conclusion.

One stand-out score cue is “Remembering Annie (Basketball Montage)”, which features a wordless vocal rendition of the score’s most prominent new theme, performed by musicians Phillip Ingram and Randy Waldman.  It has a wistfully nostalgic tone and is an interesting alternate take on Silvestri’s melody.

Both of the Father of the Bride scores are good ones and the available soundtrack albums are fairly satisfying releases, despite their fairly short length.  I’m not really sure if there would be enough substantially different music in the films to justify expanded releases, although it might make sense to at least repackage the two scores on a single release.

F/X (Bill Conti, 1986): I remember really liking this mid-80s thriller about a special effects artist that gets caught up in real life intrigue, but I also admit that I don’t really remember very much about it.  While Varese Sarabande released a soundtrack LP at the time of the film’s release, I never bought it and the score didn’t particularly stick with me after seeing the film.  As a result, I ended up essentially re-discovering this score with the 2007 Varese Sarabande CD Club release.

Bill Conti provides a moody, vaguely noir-inspired mixed orchestral and electronic score with several melodic main themes as well as fair amount of suspenseful, string-dominated music.  The "Main Title" cue actually opens with a bit of suspense-driven piano and string music before shifting into a brassy, percussive fanfare.  About a minute and a half in, it then transitions into the score’s main theme, which features a string melody overlaid with a repetitive piano motif.

The more melodic aspect of the score first comes into play in the cue "Rollie’s Diversion", which is primarily a piano-driven version of the main theme, although with some strings joining in towards the latter half of the cue.  The theme continues to provide a melodic line throughout the score, although the darker, more-suspenseful music tends to dominate the soundtrack.  Conti does occasionally provide some of the brassy, fanfare type music that is often his trademark.  In addition to the brief fanfare during the main title, the cue "No Loose Ends" also is a very brassy, action-oriented cue and is very recognizably Conti.  Horns are used more sparingly here than in most of Conti’s scores, but that just tends to make them a bit more impacting when they do appear.

The score is primarily orchestral, but Conti does make sparing use of electronics, such as in the cue "The Wrong Hit".  The electronic elements are typically used to ratchet up the suspense a bit.  Another change of pace comes with an extended militaristic drum solo during the late cue "Lipton’s Last Ride".

Fahrenheit 451 (Bernard Herrmann, 1966): The CD that I have of this classic Bernard Herrmann score is not actually the original soundtrack recording.  Instead, it is an excellent re-recording of the score by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, conducted by William Stromberg.  This re-recording was released by Tribute Film Classics in late 2007 and also includes music from Herrman’s score to the "Twilight Zone" TV episode entitled "Walking Distance".  The music from Fahrenheit 451 runs a little over an hour in length and is billed as being complete.

Herrmann’s score uses an interesting mix of fairly light-touch, vaguely fantasy-inspired melodies along with some darker, fairly oppressive music.  The lighter portions are dominated by piano as well as frequent use of xylophone and harp.  The darker material features aggressive, lower-register strings as well as some slower, vaguely-sad melodies.  The two styles of music are often presented side-by-side, reflecting Ray Bradbury’s story’s depiction of a society that is characterized by a surface happiness masking an underlying oppression.

There are some faster paced, action-oriented cues as well.  Herrmann makes especially effective use of very fast paced violins in these segments of the score.  Really good examples of this aspect of the score can be found in the cues "Fire Alarm" and "The Hose".  Occasional bits of xylophone and harp overlaying the strings add an especially appealing bit of color to these cues.  Herrmann also includes some emotional, melodic material, particularly in the later part of the score.  "The Reading" is a particularly emotional cue.

The score is presented as 47, generally very short cues.  The longest cues run a little over 3 minutes while many are well below a minute in length.  Despite this, the score does not seem choppy or disjointed.  The music is arranged so that the cues typically flow cleanly into one another, making for a very effective listening experience.  The large number of cues mainly makes it very easy to connect each bit of music directly to the appropriate part of the film.

Family Plot (John Williams, 1976): Family Plot is an historically significant film as it was the final movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  It is also significant to movie score fans as the score was written by John Williams, the first and only collaborator between arguably the most popular director of the movies’ golden age and arguably the most popular film composer of the modern age.  This collaboration also came at the start of Williams’ rise to fame, sandwiched between his scores for Jaws in 1975 and Star Wars in 1977.  Despite this pedigree, surprisingly the score to Family Plot remained unavailable (except for short excerpts on a few compilation albums) until it was released by the Varese Sarabande CD Club in late 2010.

The score is very recognizably in Williams’ distinctive style.  The album opens with a cue called "The First Séance", which has a mystical sound complete with choir.  It is reminiscent of some of the music that Williams would provide for Close Encounters of the Third Kind a year later and, especially, themes he would write years later for Empire of the Sun and A.I., although those later scores certainly present this style in a more serious light than here.  Williams provides a fairly simple, but distinctive main theme melody which is prominently presented in the second cue,  "Blanche’s Challenge", prominently featuring both harpsichord and synthesizer in order to give it an unusual flavor.

The entire score has a whimsical, offbeat nature to it, although intermixed with Williams usual strong melodies and distinctive brass and strings.  Both the harpsichord and a number of synthesizer elements help to give it this tone.  Williams also occasionally incorporates some dark, crashing piano to further provide a little bit of thematic darkness to the score.  These aspects of the score pre-shadow a style that the composer would more fully develop a decade later with The Witches of Eastwick.

One thing that is interesting about Williams’ one and only score for Hitchcock is that there is really no attempt to really even give a nod to Bernard Herrmann’s iconic scores for Hitchcock’s earlier classics. Just two years later, Williams would jump pretty much full force into his take on that style with his score to Brian DePalma’s The Fury, but the Family Plot score remains much more distinctively Williams’ style.

The CD ends with two bonus tracks.  The first is "Family Plot Theme", which is a pop-instrumental variation on the film’s primary theme.  This was created for a planned soundtrack album that was never released back in 1976.  It definitely has a 70s pop feel to it, but is a reasonably good presentation of the main melody and not an unwelcome addition to the album.  The last cue is a source music cue entitled "The Stonecutter" and it has a jazz/disco style that was very much of its time.  It is fun to hear this somewhat different side of Williams, although at 6 1/2 minutes the cue kind of wears out its welcome.

Varese Sarabande was, unfortunately, only able to locate masters of the score that were somewhat limited in quality.  The material is monaural, although the mixing makes a best effort to create a semi-stereo depth of field to the score.  The result is more flat sounding than other better preserved recordings from the era, although I do believe that they did the best they could with the elements available.  Still, I would consider this CD to be a must for any serious fans of Williams or film music in general.

Fantasia (Various, 1940): For his third animated feature (following Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio), Walt Disney shifted in a markedly experimental direction.  Fantasia used eight familiar works of classical music as accompaniment to animation in order to tell dialog-free stories via the melding of music and visuals.  The result was Disney’s first box-office failure, but one that has ultimately become highly appreciated due to its tremendous artistic merit.

To record the music for Fantasia, Disney teamed up with conductor Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra.  At the time, Stokowski was among the most popular classical conductors, with a style and personality that helped to bring a lot of public attention to the art of classical music.  Reportedly, he was very instrumental in convincing Disney to take on this project to begin with and was a major collaborator throughout.

As you would expect, the 2-CD soundtrack album to the film contains the recordings used in the film.  The pieces used in the film were Bach’s "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor", Tchaikovsky’s "The Nutcracker Suite",  Paul Dukas’ "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice" (featuring Mickey Mouse in the film’s best known sequence), Stravinsky’s "The Rite of Spring", Beethoven’s Symphony Number 6 ("Pastoral"), Ponchielli’s "Dance of the Hours", Mussorgsky’s "A Night on Bald Mountain", and Schubert’s "Ave Maria".  Of course, some of these are presented as excerpts, particularly "Nutcracker" and Beethoven’s symphony.  The finale’s pairing of "A Night on Bald Mountain" and "Ave Maria" is probably the most striking arrangement for the film.

Certainly, other recordings of every one of these pieces are readily available.  In most cases, one or more recording of each is probably pretty likely to be in most substantial classical music collections.  My own collection contains other recordings of pretty much all of these as well.  The actual recordings from Fantasia certainly do have a personality of their own, though, making the soundtrack a worthwhile purchase for fans of the film.

One notable aspect of Fantasia was that it was the first major motion picture to be recorded in stereo sound.  A specially designed surround sound system called "Fantasound" was installed into theaters showing the film in its initial road show release.  These presentations were the very first time that audiences experienced the kind of dynamic, multi-channel sound that we come to expect in movie theaters today.

Because of this, the music was recorded with extremely active and prominent stereo effects, all of which are reflected on the soundtrack.  This can make the playback of the score a bit disconcerting, particularly through headphones, although it also can be pretty impressive on home surround sound systems.  These stereo effects are definitely a reason why some may prefer other recordings of these pieces, but they also provide the soundtrack an original personality.

In the early 1980s, Disney commissioned a new digital recording of the music under conductor Irwin Kostal.  At the time the original recordings were thought to have aged too badly for an acceptable restoration and Disney felt that they were better off doing a new recording.  This was never well received by purists and even general audiences seemed to have a bit of a sense that something was a bit off.  They reverted to the original recordings with the film’s next re-issue and all subsequent releases.  This re-recording was released on LP at the time of the film’s re-release in the early 1980s and was briefly available on CD in the early 90s. It is somewhat difficult to find now.

Fantasia 2000 (Various, 2000): Walt Disney’s original idea for Fantasia was to regularly update the film for re-issues, replacing some segments with new ones.  After the relatively poor reception of the original film, it took 60 years for a version of that vision to become a reality.  The follow up was first released with great fanfare as an Imax-exclusive on January 1, 2000, serving as Disney’s celebration of the new millennium.  The film featured seven new segments, plus a reprise of "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice."

The new pieces featured in the film were the opening to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, Respighi’s "The Pines of Rome", Gershwin’s "Rhapsody in Blue", Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto #2, the finale from Saint-Saens’ "Carnival of the Animals", Elgar’s "Pomp and Circumstances", and Stravinsky’s "Firebird Suite".  Most of the new segments were performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under conductor James Levine.  The one exception was "Rhapsody in Blue", which was performed by The Philharmonia Orchestra under Bruce Broughton and featuring soloist Ralph Grierson.

As with the soundtrack for the original film, the Fantasia 2000 soundtrack doesn’t contain any music that can’t be found elsewhere.  In fact, "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice" is the exact same recording that is found on the original Fantasia soundtrack.  Still, these recordings are crisp and lively and are generally top-notch performances of an excellent selection of classical works.  Being newer recordings, these recordings do not have the showy stereophonic effects that were included in the original.  Even the mix on "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice" has been toned down for this version.

Once again, some of the pieces are abbreviated versions of longer works, especially the Beethoven piece which is only the 3 minute introduction to the full symphony.  I certainly would recommend seeking out more complete versions of the works that are abbreviated here, but this is still a fine collection of music.  The original film’s limited popularity (even as its reputation has grown) was often thought to have at least something to do with its length.  As a result, Fantasia 2000 was designed to be a shorter film (by more than 1/2 hour) with each segment generally shorter as well.  The Beethoven segment is only 3 minutes long while the Saint-Saens is only 2 minutes.  This probably was a right decision, as the new film does have a faster pace and is somewhat easier to absorb in one sitting.

Another nod towards accessibility was the use of some selections that are very familiar even to those that otherwise aren’t overly interested in classical music.  This kind of applied with both "Nutcracker Suite" and Beethoven’s "Pastoral" symphony in the first film, but even those may not be as instantly familiar to most as the opening to Beethoven’s 5th, "Rhapsody in Blue", and "Pomp and Circumstances".  The last was an especially interesting choice, since it took a piece widely known in a specific context (graduation ceremonies) and adapted it to a new context (Noah’s Ark) in a generally impressive manner.

Disney released two different versions of the soundtrack CD, a standard version and a collector’s edition (shown above), which was exclusively available at The Disney Store.  The musical contents of both versions is identical, with the collector’s edition coming in fancier packaging.  Some may prefer the standard edition as it comes in a regular jewel case instead of the oddly folding, thin plastic cover used for the collector’s edition.

Fantastic 4 (John Ottman, 2005): John Ottman uses a traditional, predominantly orchestral and choral-based approach to scoring the financially successful but not especially well-regarded adaptation of the Fantastic 4 comic book series.  The result is a very bombastic, typically energetic score.

It is a style that is pretty obviously inspired by John Williams’ landmark Superman score, which Ottman would directly adapt for Superman Returns a year later.  While he obviously didn’t have direct access to Williams’ themes with this score, many of Ottman’s compositions here pretty closely resemble the original music that he would later contribute to the Superman sequel.

The soundtrack opens with a main title march that is rousing, although a bit darkly shaded.  Choral material is mixed in with the central brass and percussion, giving it a touch of added grandeur.  I don’t really find it to be an especially memorable theme, although I have a hard time placing exactly why that is.  It could be that it is just a bit too derivative or it could come from the lack of a memorable film to associate it with.

The score is dominated by very bombastic action scoring, although Ottman does provide a few quieter, nicely-melodic moments.  The main theme of this type is introduced right after the main title in the second cue “Cosmic Storm” and is also particularly well used in the early part of “Changing”.  Some more playful bits figure occasionally, such as in the cue “Unlikely Saviors”.  Even here, the Williams’ influence is pretty evident with some obvious stylistic nods to the theme for Ned Beatty’s Superman character.

The Varese Sarabande soundtrack album for the film runs about 45 minutes and is probably a sufficient representation of this score.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (John Ottman, 2007): The soundtrack to the sequel to Fantastic 4 immediately opens with the “Silver Surfer Theme”, the most prominent new theme introduced in the sequel.  This theme is stylistically very much in keeping with the themes from the first film, with a mix of some march-like bombast with stately, grandiose brass and string melodies.  Its immediate introduction in a concert arrangement right at the start of the CD works well as a quick intro to the most important new element to this score.

The rest of the score largely sounds like an extension of the first film’s score, although electronic elements did seem a bit more prominent this time in cues such as “Chasing the Surfer”.  I generally consider musical consistency in a sequel to be a positive, although this score doesn’t really feel like it expands the material all that much.

I think part of the problem here is that Ottman took a more repetitive approach to the music this time.  There isn’t as much thematic variation, with the new Silver Surfer theme and the main Fantastic 4 theme as the only real stand-outs among a lot of fairly anonymous action scoring.  The new theme is certainly nice, but otherwise there really isn’t much to latch onto with this score.

The Egyptian (Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, 1954): The Egyptian is one of the most important scores of its era.  The score was a collaboration between two of the true giants of Golden Age film scoring, Alfred Newman and Bernard Herrmann, working together on a large-scale historical epic.  The score was a true collaboration with each composer composing key segments of the score, but with shared themes and effective blending of both composers’ styles.

While a few re-recordings were available, the original recordings were long thought to be destroyed, until Film Score Monthly obtained access to preserved stereo tapes in 2001, allowing them to release a 72 minute limited edition CD (still available) containing all the surviving portion of the score.  It isn’t complete, but it is does cover the most important portions of the score.

As you would expect, this is a true epic score with dynamic action music, intimate romantic themes, and pretty much everything in-between.  The score features a full orchestra and chorus, giving it a fittingly large scale.  For the most part, the composers tend to handle the parts of the score that are most appropriate to their styles.  Herrmann was often most comfortable with darker, more brooding music and that is on display here in cues such as “The House of the Dead/The Burial”.  His talent for thrilling, fast paced action scoring is present as well, particularly in the exciting “The Chariot Ride/Pursuit” and the frantically stark cue “The Homecoming”.

Newman’s contribution tends to focus more on the romantic side as well as the score’s sense of nobility.  While Herrmann’s segments often tended to emphasize brass and percussion, Newman’s is dominated by lush strings and gentle woodwinds.  This aspect of the score is particularly well represented in the lengthy (7 minutes plus) cue “Valley of the Kings”.  Newman’s portion of the scoring also tends to be the strongest contributor to giving the score a distinctively middle-eastern flavor.  Newman also provides a religious hymn (with Biblical lyrics) that is presented first in “Hymn to Aton” and later reprised in “Death of Merit”.

While the above comments almost sound like two separate scores, the two portions actually blend very well.  There is a fair amount of thematic overlap and there are quite a few places where music by one composer is designed to flow right into music by the other.  On the soundtrack CD, quite a few cues contain portions by both composers.  Even in most single-composer scores, there can be a fair amount of variation in style based on what is needed for individual scenes.  This is simply a prime example of two top composers splitting up the film in such a way that each is able to contribute to the parts that are the best fit to his style.

Eight Below (Mark Isham, 2006): Mark Isham’s score to Eight Below was one of the early cases of Disney’s recent trend toward download-only releases on soundtracks that are primarily score.  This title was released exclusively to iTunes and it continues to be only available from that service.  Unfortunately, this does mean that the music is only available in iTunes’ compressed AAC format and not as a lossless recording.  Unfortunately, this pretty good adventure score is marred somewhat by the less than stellar sound quality.

The album opens with an overture that provides a pretty good overview of the key themes.  The most prominent theme is a fairly simple, brassy fanfare.  It is effective, although its relatively spare use in the score is something of a surprise.  Isham tends to pull out the theme as sort of a periodic crescendo, while often tending towards more subtle scoring during much of the rest of the running time.

The score is largely orchestral with a definite emphasis on brass and percussion.  Guitar is also featured during many parts of the score, giving it a bit more of a contemporary sound without moving it substantially towards a modern rock/pop sound.  The main guitar riff becomes a key secondary theme for the score, particularly playing up the more playful aspects of the score.  The score’s more sensitive side is played up with solo piano melodies in a few cues, most notably “Southern Lights”.

Eloise at the Plaza/Eloise at Christmastime (Bruce Broughton, 2003): In 2003, ABC’s “The Wonderful World of Disney” series aired two made-for-TV movies, starring Julie Andrews,  based on the popular “Eloise” series of children’s books by Kay Thompson.  Both films were scored by Bruce Broughton and Intrada released a 1,200 copy limited edition (now out of print) 2-CD set, with one disc dedicated to each of the two scores.

Broughton establishes a charming and memorable main theme, which primarily features a solo saxophone.  It has a bit of an old-fashioned, Gershwin-inspired Americana style to it, which is a good fit for Broughton’s own sensibilities as well.  The theme debuts during the “Main Title/The Plaza” cue that opens the Eloise at the Plaza score and appears regularly throughout both of the scores, serving as a strong connecting tissue for a fairly wide variety of thematic material.  The rest of the musical material ranges from the charmingly manic to touchingly sensitive.  The latter is especially well represented by a gentle piano theme that serves as a core of the score’s more emotional components.

The score to Eloise at the Plaza tends to build on the style established in the main theme, maintaining a generally jazzy tone through much of the music.  Solo saxophone is used in quite a few variations that riff on the main theme.  Piano also tends to stand-out quite a bit, including some very dynamic playing in cues such as “Breaking the Boredom” and “Eloise’s Stuff”.  On the latter, there is some impressive violin counterpoint, an example of some interesting strings that also pop up periodically.  The result is a kind of upscale sophistication that reflects the film’s setting.

As you might expect, the score to the Christmas-themed second film adds interpolations of various common Christmas carols and other melodies associated with the holiday season.  This aspect of the score presents itself right up front with brief excerpts from “The Nutcracker Suite” kicking off the score’s overture before transitioning into reprises of some of the key themes from the first score.  The bits from the “Nutcracker” reappear in other parts of the score as well, including a fairly front-and-center performance in the cue “Doggie in a Tutu” as well as more subtle interpolations in quite a few other cues.

Broughton introduces a fair amount of new original music as well, further developing the earlier themes while often adding a holiday-themed overlay with common elements such as sleigh bells or brief statements of Christmas melodies.  At times, this includes using chimes or other seasonally-associated instruments for original melodies, such as in “Mrs. Thornton’s Story / Troubled”.  The substantial holiday influences tend to overtake the jazz influences of the first score, resulting in two distinctively different scores, although built around some of the same themes.

The Emperor’s New Groove (John Debney, Sting, 2000): Something of an oddity among Disney’s animated features, The Emperor’s New Groove started production as a fairly serious animated musical to be called “Kingdom of the Sun” before eventually being transformed into a largely slapstick (but, somewhat surprisingly, very funny) comedy.  Sting was brought in to write several songs, but only two of them ended up making it into the final version.

The two songs that made it into the film were “Perfect World” and “My Funny Friend and Me”.  The first was a snappy, fairly humorous lounge-style song performed by Tom Jones.  The song was featured at the start of the film in a montage that essentially introduced the main character.  “My Funny Friend and Me” is a soft-rock ballad performed by Sting himself.

The soundtrack album also includes three additional songs that Sting wrote for the film, but which were not ultimately used.  These additional songs give a bit of a taste of what the film was intended to be in its earlier incarnation.  The most interesting is “Snuff Out the Light (Yzma’s Song)”, a villain’s song that is performed in-character by Eartha Kitt.  The song and Kitt’s performance of it are tremendous fun.  It is a shame that it didn’t stay in the film, although that wasn’t really feasible as the lyrics focus on a key plot point (the character’s plan to blot out the sun) that was no longer part of the film.

The other two songs are less distinctive.  “Walk the Llama Llama” is a kind of funky, vaguely doo-wop styled song performed by Rascall Flatts.  The other is a fairly generic pop romantic duet performed by Sting and Shawn Colvin.  Both songs are ok, but their removal from the film doesn’t really seem like too much of a loss.

The first of John Debney’s instrumental score cues is “Run Llama Run”, an amusing, fast paced swing-music style cue, featuring extremely active brass, crashing cymbals, and even voices yelling out “Run!”.  This cue is featured during the portion of the CD otherwise devoted to the song cues and is probably better thought of as a source cue than a really key part of the score.

The rest of the score is much less distinctive, although definitely adequate to the film.  It is orchestral, but with a largely understated quality.  Debney does provide a main theme that is melodic with a cheerfully romantic quality.  The score also includes some pretty active brass at times, sometimes in the kind of on-the-nose matching of on-screen action that occasionally occurs in animated films to an extent that it is commonly referred to as “Mickey Mousing”.  Considering the film’s Middle Eastern setting, the score is surprisingly lacking in ethnic influences.

Empire of the Sun (John Williams, 1987): Several years before Steven Spielberg made the highly acclaimed World War II dramas Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, he directed his first serious drama set in the war, an adaptation of author J.G. Ballard’s semi-autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun.  The film received a mixed critical reaction and was not a box-office hit, but I found it to be a powerful, emotionally engaging film.  John Williams’ expressively emotional scoring definitely was a key asset.

The soundtrack album (and the film) opens impressively with a choral and orchestral performance of the traditional Welsh hymn “Suo Gan” featuring the Ambrosian Junior Choir, lip-synced in the film by young Christian Bale, who was making his film debut.  While not a John Williams composition, the song generally sets the musical tone for a fairly up-scale, sophisticated score.

The second cue on the soundtrack, entitled “Cadillac of the Skies” is a soaring, wistfully melodic piece with very active brass and strings early on, leading into a wordless choral conclusion.  This cue is one of the score’s most distinctive orchestral pieces and is often included in compilation albums or concert performances.   The film has a subplot involving the main character’s love of airplanes and there are a number of cues that have this kind of a soaring, aerial quality to them.

This is immediately followed by “Jim’s New Life”, a fast-paced, brassy piece with a bit of a playful edge which then gives way to a darker tone in the cue “Lost in the Crowd”.  These cues together represent a pretty strong expression of the score’s fairly extensive emotional range.  The score’s most distinctive original theme is a gentle, beautiful string-dominated melody that is best represented in “Toy Planes, Home and Hearth”.  In that cue, it eventually transitions into a gorgeous wordless choral rendition.  Williams also very effectively incorporates a couple existing classical pieces into the score, including an orchestral arrangement of “The British Grenadiers” and solo piano performances of Chopin’s “Mazurka Opus 17 No. 4”.

The score’s most impressive original Williams composition is the choral piece “Exsulate Justi”.  In fact, I consider this piece to be towards the top of my list of favorite of all John Williams compositions.  It is a robust and regal piece for full orchestra and chorus, with the choir performing Latin lyrics.  The piece is excerpted within the film during a fairly critical sequence and then is played in full over the end credits.  I believe this cue alone justifies buying the soundtrack, with the rest of the score as very good icing on the cake.

Enchanted (Alan Menken, 2007): Disney’s mixed animation/live-action hit about a fairy-tale princess transported to modern day New York City was a rare case of a film that worked both as a satire and as its own self-contained story.  The songs by Alan Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz as well as Menken’s score also succeed in the same way, working both as gentle send-ups of the genre conventions as well as working really well on their own.

Menken and Schwartz’s approach to the songs is to transition over the course of the film from fairly traditional animated fairy tale songs to a more contemporary (and less satirical) style, which also reflects the story arc.  As part of this approach, the film’s star Amy Adams (in a star-making role) performs primary vocals on the first 3 songs while the last two feature vocals by contemporary recording artists. 

The first song, “True Love’s Kiss”, is a very old-fashioned romantic duet that would sound completely at home in most of Disney’s classic fairy tale films.  In fact, the style is old-fashioned enough that the song is closer stylistically to the music from Snow White or Cinderella than to Menken’s own songs from Disney’s big animated hits from the late 80s to mid-90s.  The song’s satirical aspects tend to be subtle, including a certain over-the-top quality to its romanticism as well as some clever lyrics, particularly having James Marsden as the prince sing “You were made to” and Adams follow with “finish your duet!”

The most clearly satirical song is "Happy Working Song", very obviously expired by "Whistle While You Work".  In the film, Adams sings the song while cleaning a New York apartment with the help of local wildlife: mainly cockroaches, pigeons, and rats.  The song has a charming absurdity to it and includes some clever situational lyrics, including one reference to the helpers as being "vermin".  The song is funny, but still doesn’t stray too far into parody.

The third song, "That’s How You Know" is my pick as the film’s best. It accompanies a big, showstopper production number in Central Park, with Adams’ vocals joined by a variety of the types of street musicians found in the park.  The song has a highly infectious tropical reggae rhythm and a very appealing melody accompanied by a mix of  instruments, including some great solo horns and even a steel drum. This song is on my list of most favorite Menken compositions.

“So Close” is a very appealing romantic ballad that is performed by John McLaughlin (who actually appears on-screen in the film) during the film’s climactic ballroom sequence.  It is a generally modern ballad that fits the scene’s mix of romanticism and melancholy absolutely perfectly.  This song is completely straight without a hint of parody, which is very appropriate to the tone of the scene it accompanies.

Finally, the final song in the film is “Ever Ever After”, a very peppy contemporary pop song performed by Carrie Underwood during the “happily ever after” montage that closes the film.  It is a fun song and I really commend the producers for recognizing Menken and Schwartz’s flexibility as songwriters instead of bringing in pop songwriters for this closing son.  The result is maintenance of some musical consistency, even incorporating a brief quote of “True Love’s Kiss”, as the style turns fully contemporary at the close of the film.

Menken’s instrumental scoring skill has improved dramatically with experience.  While he still occasionally incorporates his song melodies into the score, he now longer relies on them nearly as extensively as he did with his first couple scores.  Enchanted requires a pretty wide range of scoring, with scenes of romanticism, comedy, fantasy, and action.  He finds the right musical tone for each of those aspects of the score. 

The score tends to be pretty fully orchestral, with pretty extensive use of brass as well as some very well placed wordless choral.  One interesting exception to that is “Girls Go Shopping”, which is mainly a pop instrumental version of “Ever Ever After”, primarily featuring guitar, bass, and other traditional pop/rock instruments.  It sticks out a bit in the midst of the whole

Some of the score’s strongest thematic material is provided for the romantic aspects, particularly a nice woodwind and piano theme that Menken blends well with the melody of “So Close” during the cue “Robert Says Goodbye”.  For the villain, he provides a suitably over-the-top brassy theme, complete with bold, choral chanting.  This theme is front and center in the cue “Narissa Arrives” and also figures heavily during the impressive 11 minute finale cue, “Storybook Ending”.  This cue largely ties together all the main scoring themes as it covers the film’s climactic sequences.

For the most part, the score is played straight without satirical elements.  The one big exception comes during the cue “Nathanial and Pip”.  One clever inside joke in the film was cameos by the voice actresses that played Belle, Ariel, and Pocahontas in Disney’s hit animated films.  Paige O’Hara (Belle) appeared as a character in a soap opera that the prince was watching on TV and this cue opens with a melodramatic, soap-opera style arrangement of the most recognizable score melody from Beauty and the Beast.

One major highlight of the soundtrack CD is the 4 1/2 minute “Suite from Enchanted”, which also played over the film’s end credits.  This is a terrific instrumental arrangement of the melodies from all of the songs.  It is a great summation of the music from the film and it was really wonderful that the producers allowed Menken to prepare this suite instead of ending with a radio friendly pop song over the credits.

The soundtrack ends with James Marsden’s performance of “That’s Amore”, which is essentially a piece of source music from the film.  It is amusing, although perhaps a bit out of place after the suite provides really the perfect closing to the album.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (John Williams, 1982): E.T. is a film that is very special to me.  I was 12-years-old when the movie came out and I found it especially easy at that age to relate to the central character (Elliot) and the central story of friendship and the importance of home really connected.  Despite 3 huge preceding blockbusters, this was really the film that made Steven Spielberg a household name and, even now, it still feels like his most intimately personal film.

My first time seeing the film was also an especially memorable one.  We went to a sneak preview showing 2 weeks before the film’s general release.  There really hadn’t been a lot of buzz about the movie and we went solely on the basis of the ads that promoted it as coming from the same director as Raiders of the Lost Ark and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  We really knew nothing about the story or what to expect.  The theater was completely full, to the extent that they had even over-sold and were offering free movie passes to people that would give up their seat (we didn’t).  Seeing the movie with so little advance knowledge was amazing and, to this day, it remains the only time that I have seen an audience give a film a spontaneous standing ovation at the end.

John Williams’ Oscar winning score is, of course, widely considered to be one of the composer’s top-tier masterpieces.  The “Flying” theme is one of his most instantly recognizable and is a staple of compilation albums and film music concerts.  The score is thematically very rich and that familiar theme is only one of several very distinctive musical ideas that Williams weaves together into a truly magical and thrilling work that perfectly matches the film’s impressive range of emotions.

The score opens with what is effectively ambient noise over the opening credits.  As the credits fade away, the first of the film’s musical themes is introduced with a simple, plaintive 6-note melody played on the flute.  This simple theme both opens and closes the film, with the simple flute rendition replaced by a bold brass statement of the theme at the end.  The statements of the simple theme are typically expanded to include additional strings and deep brass.  This effectively serves as a primary theme for the titular character and the sense of wonderment connected with the presence of an alien visitor.

The famous “Flying” theme doesn’t actually appear until around the middle of the film and doesn’t get a full-blown performance until “The Magic of Halloween” when E.T. makes the bicycle fly for the first time.  One brief, earlier performance of the theme does make an impression.  During the cue “Frogs”, the theme receives a sweepingly romantic statement as Elliot (who is emotionally linked to E.T.) kisses a female classmate while E.T. is watching a observing a romantic movie on the television at home.

The third very distinctive and familiar theme from E.T. is “Over the Moon” (using the title of the concert arrangement on the original soundtrack release), which is typically featured prominently during the films chase sequences.  This is actually perhaps the most beautiful and uplifting of the themes in the score and Williams chose to use an impressive solo piano (eventually joined by full orchestra) arrangement over the end credits.  The theme makes its first strong impression in the cue “Searching for E.T.” and reappears during most of the subsequent action scenes.

Williams also provides the score with a bit of a darker side, primarily represented by a very deep, brassy theme that is used during the key sequences involving the government agents that are pursuing E.T.  This theme very effectively conveys the sense of menace surrounding those sequences.  This theme somewhat resembles the primary E.T. theme structurally, connecting it as kind of a darker analog to that main theme.

The score’s finale brings all of the themes together into one of the most impressive cues ever written for a film.  The piece, which is entitled “Escape/Chase/Saying Goodbye” on the complete score album and was named “Adventures On Earth” for the original soundtrack LP, runs for just over 15 minutes.  Spielberg has mentioned in interviews before that Williams made the unusual choice not to record the piece directly to the film and that Spielberg ended up editing the film to fit it.  This complex piece is often played in full at Williams’ live concerts.

There have been 3 major releases of the score and, to be frank, any fan of this score needs to have 2 of them.  The original 1982 LP release (which was later released on CD in 1986) contains a re-recording of the score.  This album runs around 40 minutes in length and is especially notable for the excellent concert arrangements of “Flying” and “Over the Moon”.  In 1996, MCA Records released an expanded soundtrack containing the original film tracks, except for an alternate version of the end credits that was missing the “Over the Moon” theme.

Finally, a “20th Anniversary” edition was released in 2002.  It contains the complete score, including the previously unreleased “Main Titles” (as noted earlier, this is mainly ambient noise) and the film version of the “End Credits”.  It only added a little under 5 minutes of music that was missing from the 1996 release, but the difference in the end credits cue alone justifies it.

The “20th Anniversary” release is definitely the version to get if you want to limit yourself to a single release of the score, but I think that it is worthwhile to own the 1982 LP program as well, principally for the concert arrangements.  Both versions are easy to obtain at low prices (copies can be found for well under $10), so I see little reason not to have both of them.

Earthquake (John Williams, 1974): The disaster movie formula established in the 1970s is built around a mix of soap opera style personality-driven melodrama and fast paced, fighting-for-your-life action sequences.  John Williams proved to be a particularly good choice for scoring those films as the composer has proven to be equally adept with both styles of scoring.  His score for Earthquake demonstrates those skills pretty effectively, although the soundtrack album (which only runs a little over 30 minutes) tends to be dominated somewhat by the more melodramatic scoring.

The score features a distinctive main theme, which is first heard over the film’s main title and is given a concert arrangement in the cue entitled “City Theme”.  The theme is peppered throughout the soundtrack, although the composer holds it back enough that it never becomes tiresome.  The other dominant dramatic theme is a romantic theme that is heard during the cues “Love Scene” and in a concert arrangement in “Love Theme”.

If you are looking for a soundtrack album to use to test out a subwoofer, this is a pretty good choice.  As you would expect from a film entitled Earthquake, the more action oriented part score has some segments with some pretty deep bass and the soundtrack CD even ends with a sound effects cue.   The soundtrack opens with some low percussion right at the start of the “Main Title” cue and the bass-heavy scoring especially dominates the cue “Cory in Jeopardy”.  In addition to expected percussion, Williams makes very effective use of some minor-key piano and deep strings.  The cue “Something for Remy” directly incorporates sound effects towards the middle of the cue.

The soundtrack includes a couple of disco/pop style instrumentals that do tend to date it a bit.  These are composed by Williams and are still recognizable as fitting with his usual approach to melody, but they definitely are very much of the era when the score was composed.  This aspect of the score is mainly heard in the cues “Miles on Wheels” and “Something for Rosa”.  Williams also includes some jazzy, saxophone dominated music, notably in the cue “Medley: Watching and Waiting/Miles’ Pool Hall/Sam’s Rescue”.

East of Eden (Lee Holdridge, 1981): This score comes from a big-budget TV miniseries based on the classic John Steinbeck novel.  Lee Holdridge provided a suitably epic scale, melodramatic score that is richly steeped in Americana.

Holdridge score is lushly orchestral, featuring a sweeping main theme that is introduced during the “Main Title” cue.  The music is dominated by rich strings and some very front and center and effective woodwinds.  Brass is understated but frequently present as well.  Some parts include some fairly dramatic piano as well, particularly on the cue “Enigma”.

The main theme sets the tone for richly wistful and romantic melodies that appear during parts of the score.  Holdridge does also include some darker melodies such as the one introduced in “The Sons” or the melancholy style used in the cue “Home”.  Particularly in the mid-section of the score, these qualities become more dominant.  The cue “Conflict and Resolution” is especially a standout, opening with one of the darker melodies, before shifting into a more upbeat brassy section that then leads into a particularly full-blooded rendition of the main theme.

Intrada’s now sold-out limited edition (1000 copies) CD release features the contents of the original 1981 LP program in stereo, followed by an additional 26 minutes of previously unreleased monaural score cues.  This adds up to a very generous running time of nearly 80 minutes.

East-West (Patrick Doyle, 1999): The French/Russian period drama East/West (Est/Ouest in the original language) was little seen in the United States, but fortunately its soundtrack album is readily available.  The film was scored by Patrick Doyle, in his third collaboration with director Régis Wargnier (the previous collaborations were Indochine and Une femme française).  Doyle provides the film with a big scale, ethnically-appropriate score in the composer’s distinctive, classically-influenced style.

While the score includes plenty of Doyle’s usually expert string compositions, this score also includes some very powerful and prominent piano, expertly performed by well-known pianist Emanuel Ax.  Despite the participation of such a distinguished soloist, Doyle is actually very selective in the use of the solo piano, making it all the more impactful in the cues where it does appear, such as in a brief segment of the cue “You’re Doing It For Us”, where Ax’s piano briefly and aggressively takes the focus from the previously dominant strings.  Ax’s piano is finally given its best showcase in the impressive and exciting back-to-back cues “The River” and “The Race”.

Doyle’s considerable songwriting skills are on display in several distinctly ethnic songs that reflect the film’s Russian setting.  These include the noble “Farewell of a Slav” as well as the spirited, celebratory tune “Smuglianka”.  The song “Nightingales” effectively adapts a theme used elsewhere during the score (most notably in “The Church”) into an operatic piece for male soloist and chorus.  A reprise of this closes the album in the cue “The Land”.

Ed Wood (Howard Shore, 1994): Due to a temporary falling out between Tim Burton and Danny Elfman, Ed Wood is one of Burton’s only two films that was scored by someone else (the other was Sweeney Todd, which used the Stephen Sondheim music from the musical).  Howard Shore was hired to score the film and delivered an absolutely terrific score that fit the film wonderfully.  Although it is hard not to wonder what Elfman might have done with this film, it is also hard to imagine a better score for this film than the one Shore provided.

Shore’s score is a pretty much perfect re-creation of the classic 1950s science fiction and horror scores, just like the ones that were found in Ed Wood’s actual films.  The score has a tongue-in-cheek sensibility to it but, just like the film itself, it is humorous in a loving manner that comes closer to homage than parody.

Shore’s main theme is a fast-paced, kind of warped lounge music tune featuring aggressive bongos and plenty of Theremin.   The main theme plays over the “Main Title” and receives an even better concert arrangement in the cue “Ed Wood (Video)” which closes the soundtrack album.  The score has its fair share of more straightforward orchestral music, including a surprisingly classical theme with lilting brass and strings used in the cue “Glen or Glenda”.  Another highlight is the triumphant, brassy march featured in “Ed Takes Control”.

Other portions of the score take on a bit more of a sentimental strain, particularly for the romantic aspects of the film as heard in “Ed & Kathy”.  Shore also very cleverly weaves bits of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” into some portions of the score, as in the cues “Eddie, Help Me” and “Sanitarium”.  The score even includes a mambo (“Kuba Mambo”), complete with accompanying vocals.

Honestly, the score is kind of all over the map in styles (appropriately), so I could really go on and on here describing each variation, but those discoveries are probably better made by listening to the album or, better yet, seeing the film.  The album features a mix of well-developed themes for pretty much every aspect of the story as well as a variety of original source cues, making for a decidedly unusual listening experience.

I’m not usually a fan of dialog excerpts or narration on score albums, but I see this album as being an exception.  The album includes a couple of very aptly and appropriately chosen bits of narration that really fit exceptionally well with the bits of music that they accompany.  It certainly doesn’t hurt that the narration excerpts are exceptionally amusing and completely capture the film’s bizarre sensibility.

I will state outright that I absolutely loved the film Ed Wood and consider it to be Burton’s 2nd best film to date (#1 will come later in this post).  Howard Shore found exactly the right musical accompaniment for every part of the film and I enjoy this album tremendously.  I do admit, though, that it would be an extremely puzzling (at best) score to anyone that does not know the film.

Edge of the City (Leonard Rosenman, 1957): This early Leonard Rosenman score has a very short running time (only 14 1/2 minutes), but features some impressively brassy and exciting themes.  The score was released on CD by Film Score Monthly, paired with Rosenman’s score for The Cobweb.  This same pairing was released on LP closer to the time of the films’ original release.

The main theme to Edge of the City is an energetic, very brass dominated march which is paired with a melodic counterpoint.  The soundtrack opens with a “Main Title” cue that starts with some fairly dark, atonal music before quickly transitioning into a full presentation of that main theme.  The score’s other distinctive melody is a romantic, string-dominated theme that is well represented in the cue “Love In the City”.

Rosenman’s style often has a distinctive atonal approach that is on display during much of this score.  A particularly strong example of this aspect is on display in the cue “Violence In the City”, where the use of wild brass along with dissonant strings and piano create a sound that is fitting of the cue’s title.

The Edge (Jerry Goldsmith, 1997): On the surface, The Edge appeared to be a fairly straightforward survival thriller that followed the experiences of plane crash survivors trapped in the Alaska wilderness and struggling against a black bear.  With a screenplay by David Mamet and starring Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin, the film actually was a much deeper drama that was as interested in the characters’ psychology as it was in the thriller aspects.

Jerry Goldsmith’s flexibility as a composer made him an excellent fit for this film.  He was able to provide appropriate musical accompaniment for the action sequences, the psychological drama, as well as the majestic vistas of the film’s Alaskan setting.  This score is apt to be more appealing to the fans of Goldsmith’s majestic orchestral compositions and his darker, brassy thriller music.  There is occasional action, percussive action music (such as in the cue “The Ravine”), but that tends to be fairly infrequent.

The focal point of the score is a hauntingly beautiful main theme for horns.  The theme is first hinted at during the opening cue, “Early Arrival”, before getting a full presentation in “Lost In the Wild(s)”.  The theme is majestic in scope and perfectly reflects the film’s setting as well as the relatively big ideas at the core of the storyline.  Goldsmith incorporated the main theme into more of the body of the score than he often did with his main themes, giving it an especially strong prominence.  A variety of orchestrations and various derived themes helps to avoid repetitiveness. The soundtrack ends with an unusual, jazz piano arrangement of the main theme.  It doesn’t quite fit with the orchestral approach of the score, but still provides an intriguing take on the melody.

Somewhat unusual for a score from the later part of Goldsmith’s career, the score is pretty much entirely orchestral without frequent (if any) use of synthesizers or other electronic instruments.  This approach feels right for the rustic, back-to-nature setting of the film.  Particularly during the action cues, Goldsmith sometimes uses the orchestra to create an approximation of some of the sounds he usually created via electronics, an approach that is surprisingly effective.  The score to The Edge is an especially strong presentation of Goldsmith’s considerable skills with orchestration.

With the film’s original release, BMG Classics/RCA Victor released a CD soundtrack containing a little under 40 minutes of the score.  This wasn’t a bad representation of the score’s highlights, although it was definitely incomplete and the sound quality was a bit mixed.  The CD also went out of print fairly quickly and became somewhat difficult (and expensive) to obtain.

Fortunately, La La Land Records released a CD of the complete score in 2010.  This CD is re-mastered for much better sound quality and contains over an hour of score, including a little over 5 minutes of bonus tracks presenting some alternate takes.  This release is a limited edition of 3,500 copies, but is still available from their website.

Edward Scissorhands (Danny Elfman, 1990): In my comments about Ed Wood above, I mentioned that it was my 2nd favorite Tim Burton film.  My favorite is his other film that starred Johnny Depp as a strange outsider named Edward.  While several of Burton’s other films have been more popular and, arguably, more ambitious, I truly believe that none has been as personal or heartfelt as Edward Scissorhands.  The film really moved me and it remains not only my favorite Burton film, but one of the titles on my short list of all favorite films.

Danny Elfman’s score is also my favorite of the composer’s many scores for Burton’s films.  The film’s story is unquestionably a fairy tale and Elfman’s score is really nothing short of magical.  The score is romantic and melodious, packed with gentle charm and ethereal emotion.  Before this score, Elfman was mainly known for superhero action scores and comedies and I really feel that this one propelled his career to a new level.

The “Introduction (Titles)” cue establishes the score’s main theme.  It starts with a simple, music-box style piano melody that is then joined first by lush strings and then by a wordless choir.  The choir takes the lead for much of the melody in both the main theme and throughout the score, effectively allowing the human voice to anchor the score’s emotional construct.

The theme, and in fact the whole score, has a strongly balletic quality with obvious Tchaikovsky influences.  In fact, the score was in part later adapted to a ballet based on the film.  The idealized suburban world that serves as the story’s main setting is represented by a peppy cue called “Ballet De Suburbia (Suite)”, which very directly (as the title suggests) evokes the ballet style of the score.  The theme also receives a very prominent and expressive performance in the cue “Ice Dance”, where it is directly used as dance music in the film itself.

Elfman carefully develops the main theme over the entire length of the score with much of the music being based on variations.  This makes the score unusually cohesive thematically, actually making it feel much like a single long work.  The choral elements as well as the piano and strings are pretty much ever present in the score.  Brass is certainly well used in some cues, especially some deep brass in the cue “Cookie Factory”, but even then it still maintains the same melody.

As the later part of the film turns darker, Elfman’s score also introduces a more menacing quality, while still retaining the same basic melodies and instruments.  He very effectively weaves in more brass and percussion as well as sharper strings and more urgent choral elements in cues such as “The Tide Turns (Suite)” and “Final Confrontation”.  The continuation of the same thematic core even in these darker segments gives the score a definite arc.

The soundtrack CD contains a little over 45 minutes of Elfman’s score and covers most of the significant musical moments from the film.  The album also ends with Tom Jones performance of the song “With These Hands”, which is a bit of a jarring conclusion, even though it was used in the film.  An expanded version of the soundtrack will be included with the mammoth (and expensive) Danny Elfman & Tim Burton 25th Anniversary Music Box which is scheduled for release later this Spring.

Diamond Head (John Williams, 1963): Diamond Head was John Williams’ first feature film score to receive a soundtrack album release (some of his TV work was released earlier).  The LP was originally released on the Colpix Records label and is currently available on CD from Film Score Monthly, paired with Lalo Schifrin’s Gone With the Wave.  The Diamond Head album runs a little over half an hour and features a mix of Williams’ original score and various Williams-composed source cues.

In the 1960s, Williams most frequently scored comedies and most of his scores tended to have a light, pop/jazz style.  Diamond Head was a drama, though, and featuring a score that much more closely resembled Williams’ later highly thematic symphonic sound. Cues such as the “Main Title” cue as well as “Sloan Strolls” and “Sloan’s Dream” are very recognizably in line with Williams most recognizable style of music.

The inclusion of the source cues makes the album into something of a hybrid between Williams’ early and later approaches to scoring.  The source cues have more of a small ensemble, somewhat jazz-influenced sound to them with an emphasis on piano, horns, and underlying percussion.  The cue “Catamaran” is a particularly interesting hybrid, starting off with a lighter jazz piano melody before eventually seguing into a string-dominated orchestral conclusion.

The album opens with a title song written by Hugo Winterhalter and performed by James Darren, one of the film’s co-stars.  The song is a pretty typical pop song of that era, although with a bit of a Hawaiian tropical influence to fit the setting of the film.  Williams does occasionally incorporate Winterhalter’s melody into the score cues.

Diamonds Are Forever (John Barry, 1972): Diamonds Are Forever was the 7th film (and the last to star Sean Connery) in Eon Productions’ James Bond series.  By this point, the musical style of the series was firmly established by John Barry, who had worked on all of the previous films and was the sole credited composer on all but the first.

As was often the case with the Bond scores, the central melody here comes from the title song, written by Barry with lyrics by Don Black and performed by Shirley Bassey over the opening title.  This was Bassey’s second Bond theme song after her famous performance of “Goldfinger”.  While she would only return to the series one more time (for “Moonraker”), her vocal style remains the one that is most associated with the Bond films.

The song itself is a textbook example of Barry’s James Bond sound, with his distinctive mix of strings, piano, and blasting horns.  The lyrics to the song are loaded with sexual innuendo, even a bit more so than usual for a James Bond theme.  The theme has a distinctive melody that Barry uses well throughout the rest of the score.  Of course, the classic James Bond theme is also incorporated into the score periodically, including an electric guitar rendition that played over the usual gun barrel opening and more orchestral versions in other parts of the score.

The score is very typical of Barry’s Bond scores, with a very melodic, but often boldly energetic approach.  As expected, it is dominated by lush strings and extremely active brass.  As is usual for Barry, there is a bit of an underlying jazz influence, particularly in the occasional saxophone riffs.  The score does have a few interesting variations, particularly the unusual female choral music featured in the cue “Slumber, Inc.”

The most complete and readily available soundtrack release is an expanded CD that was released by Capital/EMI records back in 2003.  This disc contains about 75 minutes of music from the film (including a number of alternate cues), definitely a dramatic expansion over the original 35 minute LP release.  The CD is rather oddly sequenced, though, with the music presented in a seemingly almost random order.  While the title song does at least open the CD, the gun barrel opening doesn’t appear until track 13!  Throughout the album, the music is way out of film sequence.

Diane (Miklós Rózsa, 1957): Miklós Rózsa’s elaborate score to the costume drama Diana received a 2-CD deluxe treatment from Film Score Monthly as part of their Golden Age Classics series.  Disc 1 contains an over 70 minute presentation of the score as heard in the film while disc 2 contains nearly an hour of alternates and source cues.  This is a highly impressive presentation of a score that may not be from one of the composer’s best known projects, but which is a good representation of a style in which he excelled.

The score is very lush and thematic, filled with romantic melodies, excitingly regal fanfares, as well as some accessibly exotic themes for some mystical elements incorporated into the film.  Central to the score is a beautiful, very noble sounding melody that represents the film’s title character.  This theme is woven throughout the score and really sticks in your mind after listening to the album.  Disc 1 ends with a really nice, simple piano and violin arrangement of the theme.

Rózsa provides a fairly wide variety of secondary themes to represent other characters and situations, giving the score an overall richness.  Strings are definitely the dominant instrument in this score, giving it a very classical sound.  Brass is also used very effectively, especially for the fanfares that are used to emphasize the royalty elements of the storyline.  An especially striking example of this is heard in the very brassy cue “Cortege”.

As mentioned earlier, there are some mystical elements to this score, most notably in the cue “Crystal Ball”.  This cue includes some really interesting wordless vocal elements performed over minimally orchestrated music.  The result very effectively evokes the supernatural in a particularly intriguing manner.  More fully orchestrated versions of the same basic music are included in some of the subsequent cues, both with and without the vocals.

Disc 2 of this set is an eclectic collection of tracks.  It starts with about 42 minutes of alternate takes of the various score cues.  These don’t really differ much characteristically from the score that was used, instead mostly representing differences in orchestration.   This is followed by about 15 minutes of various source cues, which generally have a period-specific style with simple instrumentals played by soloists or small ensembles.

Finally, the disc closes with a few alternate cues from Rózsa’s scores to Plymouth Adventure and Moonfleet, which did not fit onto the previous FSM CDs of those scores.

Dick Tracy (Danny Elfman, Stephen Sondheim, 1990): Disney clearly had hoped that Warren Beatty’s big-budget, all-star film based on the famous Dick Tracy comic strips would be a blockbuster start to a major new franchise for them.  The film instead was a moderate hit at best, but it still is a generally entertaining film that benefited from a striking look and an immense amount of talent both on screen and behind the scenes.  Music was definitely no exception to this, with the film featuring songs by Stephen Sondheim and a score by Danny Elfman.

Coming just one year after Elfman’s big breakthrough Batman score, he was a pretty obvious choice for this film.  Of all of his other scores, this is the one that probably most closely resembles his Batman compositions.  In fact, I think even his Batman Returns score is more of a stylistic departure from Batman than this one is.  That isn’t to say that the score isn’t a good one or that it doesn’t work in the film.  Elfman almost certainly delivered exactly the score that the filmmakers were hoping for and it works really well.

Despite the overall stylistic resemblance of the two scores, Dick Tracy is certainly not nearly as dark a film as Batman and that difference is reflected in the score.  For the main theme Elfman once again provides a brassy, percussive march, but this one has a generally brighter tone and faster pace.  Elfman also provides melodic themes for the two female leads, including a smoky, seductive theme for Madonna as Breathless Mahoney and a more tenderly romantic theme for Glenne Headley as Tess Trueheart.

The score also includes a fair amount of action music, including an entertaining period-appropriate, swing-style cue entitled “Crime Spree” and some fast paced, brassy action music for various chase sequences (including one cue simply titled “The Chase”) and for the finale.

There were three soundtrack albums released at the time of the film.  One was a song album that contained music “inspired by” the film.  I don’t have this album and I don’t believe it contained any music that was actually used in the film.  Instead, it was more of a marketing gimmick.  Elfman’s score was featured on a CD that runs around 35 minutes in length.  While it covers the highlights, this is absolutely a score that really would benefit greatly from an expansion.

The third album released with the film was I’m Breathless: Music from and Inspired by the Film Dick Tracy, which was marketed as a Madonna studio album.   Three of the five Sondheim songs are featured on this album plus a non-Sondheim song entitled “Now I’m Following You”.  The latter was performed in the film by its composer, Andy Paley, but is performed by Madonna as a duet with Warren Beatty on the album and is presented split into two separate parts (each in its own cue).  The first cue is a more old-fashioned performance while the second has a bit more of a modern dance beat to it.

The other two Sondheim songs, “Live Alone and Like It” (performed by Mel Torme) and “Back In Business” (performed by a chorus) are not on any of the three soundtrack releases.  Torme’s performance of “Live Alone and Like It” is available on Torme’s album Mel Torme At The Movies while the film recording of “Back In Business” does not appear to be available on any album.  All of the Sondheim songs have been re-recorded quite a few times and can be found on various compilation albums of Sondheim material.  The compilation musical “Putting It Together” included a couple of the Dick Tracy songs as well, including both of the ones missing from the film soundtracks.

Sondheim’s songs can often be something of a vocal challenge and there was definitely some doubt before the film’s release about whether or not Madonna would be up to them.  For the most part, she does an acceptable job with the performances and generally this film (and album) did quite a bit for the perception of her vocal range.

The fast-paced, old-fashioned dance number “More” is probably the best fit for Madonna’s vocal style.  She handles the rapid-fire and complex lyrics very well and pretty successfully captures the very song’s very entertaining personality.  “What Can You Lose” is a nice duet that Madonna performs with Mandy Patinkin, who played the piano player in the film.  Patinkin wisely underplays his usually very dramatic vocal style a bit, which allows their performance to blend fairly well.

Madonna seemed to actually struggle the most with the seductive “Sooner Or Later”, although I think my perception on her version is probably colored a lot by the fact that there are quite a few excellent re-recordings out there, including some by such distinguished Broadway performers as Jane Krakowski and Susan Egan (who did a great recording of “More” for one of her albums as well).

The album also includes several additional songs that were not from the film, although some have at least vague references in the lyrics and even some film audio samples.  Some of the non-Sondheim songs are typical of Madonna’s usual pop style, including “Vogue” which became one of her biggest hits, while others reflect the period style of the film.  Oddly, one of these songs is entitled “Back In Business”, but is not related in any way to the Sondheim song from the film.  The album is definitely an eclectic one.

While the score album and the Madonna album cover a fair chunk of the important music from the film, there really is a strong need for a definitive Dick Tracy soundtrack release.  I’d love to see a CD release that contains the film versions of all the Sondheim songs, Andy Paley’s performance of “Now I’m Following You”, and an expanded presentation of Elfman’s score.

Die Another Day (David Arnold, 2002): While Die Another Day, the last James Bond film to star Pierce Brosnan, was a reasonably big hit, it is also a film that very few people seem to be overly enthusiastic about.  The movie generally wasn’t bad, but it felt like just about everyone involved was kind of going through the motions.  The reinvigoration that the series received with the next film, Casino Royale, almost certainly owed a lot to the generally forgettable nature of this one.

This was the third James Bond film for composer David Arnold, who continued on as the series’ composer for the next two entries as well.  It is pretty typical of Arnold’s Bond scores.  The style has a nod towards the John Barry tradition of bold, dynamic brass and strings, but with a fairly significant layer of electronics added on.  In fact, the electronics heavily dominate the score this time, with the action sequences sounding more like techno music than the more traditional orchestral music.  Several cues, such as “Iced, Inc.” are almost purely electronic and really don’t sound much like they came from a James Bond movie.

The over-use of electronics generally causes this to be the weakest of Arnold’s scores for the series, although it isn’t without merit.  When Arnold does choose to focus on the orchestra, such as in the early cue “Some Kind of Hero?” he does deliver very spirited, high-energy melodies that do a good job of modernizing the series traditional musical style.  Also appealing is a melodic, romantic theme for Halle Barry’s female lead, first heard in the cue “Jinx Jordan”.   The lengthy finale cue entitled “Antonov” also shifts heavily in the orchestral direction, even including some choral elements, and generally closes the score out on a somewhat up note.

Arnold continues to be very skillful at weaving the classic Monty Norman theme into the score at very appropriate points, essentially allowing it to serve as a central theme for Bond’s character without overusing the familiar melody to the point where it becomes distracting.  The traditional gun barrel opening does add a bit more electronics to the mix than usual, giving a bit of an early hint of the score to come.

Of course, every James Bond film includes a prominently featured theme song, usually played over a highly-stylized opening title sequence.  The title song for Die Another Day is performed by Madonna, who co-wrote it with songwriters Michel Colombier and Mirwais Ahmadzaï who had previously worked with her on other recent songs.  As Arnold did not contribute to the song, it is not incorporated into the score at all.

Considering the James Bond series’ long history of recruiting popular female singers to perform the opening title song, it is a bit surprising that Madonna hadn’t done one before this.  In many ways, her career and musical approach, particularly her sexually charged ballads, seemed like it should have been a perfect fit for a Bond theme.

Unfortunately, her title song for Die Another Day is simply dreadful.  It has this odd, halting electronica dance style that is incredibly annoying and the lyrics are beyond insipid, including weird whispered asides.  It is easily the worst James Bond theme song to date and a huge disappointment, particularly considering that Madonna probably could have been very effective on a more traditional Bond song.

After the bad title track, the second cue on the soundtrack CD is an only slightly less annoying one: an electronic techno/dance mix version of the classic James Bond theme.  This was put together by remix performer Paul Oakenfold and basically takes the familiar theme and adds a whole bunch of unnecessary electronic elements on top of it.  In most cases, I think it is a best choice to simply start playing this CD at cue 3, the first of the David Arnold score cues.

Con Air (Mark Mancina & Trevor Rabin, 1997): Teaming up Mark Mancina and Trevor Rabin, two of the major composers to come out of Hans Zimmer’s Media Ventures film score company during the late 1990s, Con Air features a pretty hard-driving, largely electronic score that echoes the film’s intense, adrenaline-fueled action.

At the very beginning of the soundtrack, the score’s intensity is established with the opening “Con Air Theme”.  The cue starts with some very rough, metallic sounding sounds that are closer to sound effects than to music.  This transitions into the score’s primary theme, which is melodic but very much in a rhythmic, rock-instrumental mold.  The main theme somewhat resembles Mancina’s well-known Speed theme, which suggests that he probably was the primary driver on it.  Most of the rest of the cues continue in this rock-based style and the Hans Zimmer influence is pretty evident in this score as well.

The second cue, entitled “Trisha”, introduces a softer, very melodic theme for Nicolas Cage’s character’s wife, the only really significant female character in the film.  This theme is the primary deviation away from the hard driving nature of the rest of the score.  At least on the soundtrack album, the theme only appears very rarely after this initial presentation of it.

Oddly, the final cue on the soundtrack album is entitled “Overture”, suggesting that the album producer doesn’t know the meaning of that word.

Conan the Barbarian (Basil Poledouris, 1982): Although he had been around for quite a while, and even scored some high profile projects, this extremely popular score did quite a bit to elevate Basil Poledouris into the upper tier of composers and established him as a solid choice for scoring high energy action films.

The best known theme from the score is the highly percussive “Anvil of Crom”, which is the opening cue of the soundtrack album (preceded by a brief spoken prologue).  It features a very rhythmic drumbeat which is overlaid with a brassy march-type melody.  It is a recognizable theme that had a pretty obvious influence on a number of future action score themes, particularly Brad Fiedel’s The Terminator and Jerry Goldsmith’s Total Recall.

The whole score is mix of some very active and dynamic action music, dominated by brass and percussion as well as some pretty impressive choral elements.  The entire score maintains a very strong melodic quality, with strings generally brought in to enhance the more emotional portions of the score.  Poledouris establishes some pretty strong thematic material here with some very distinctive melodies.

The original LP release of the soundtrack from the time of the movie’s release ran around 49 minutes and was later re-issued on CD by Milan Records.  That CD edition is still pretty easy to come by and is also available as a download or as an in-demand CD-R release from Amazon.  Varese Sarabande also released an expanded CD edition back in 1992 that ran over an hour in length.  That edition is out of print and relatively difficult to find at reasonable prices.  I only have the shorter Milan release.

Congo (Jerry Goldsmith, 1995): This adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel was seriously panned by critics (although it did reasonably well at the box-office), although I think it actually is a film that is a lot better than its reputation.  Possibly its strongest component was the exciting, ethnically-appropriate score by Jerry Goldsmith.

The score closely reflects the setting of the film, with the use of a lot of African-style percussion and rhythms.  These are integrated carefully with Goldsmith’s typical style of fast paced and melodic action music.  The primary theme is based around the song “Spirit of Africa”.  Popular African vocalist Lebo M, best known for his arrangements and performances for The Lion King, provided mixed African and English-language lyrics and performed vocal versions of the song that open and close the album.  It is a very cool song, particularly if you  and the melody is used frequently throughout the score.

The soundtrack CD contains only a little over 33 minutes of the score and, thus, an expanded release would be very welcome.  Now that Paramount has recently started working with specialty soundtrack labels, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if an expansion of this score shows up at some point in the future.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (Tom Scott, 1972): The fourth film in the Planet of the Apes series was scored by Tom Scott, a newcomer to the film series.  This score was released by Film Score Monthly on a CD that paired it with Leonard Rosenman’s score for Battle of the Planet of the Apes.  Scott’s score runs for a little under 40 minutes on the CD and is billed as being complete as heard in the film plus a number of unused alternates.  This album is probably apt to be one that is more for completists than for more casual fans.

Scott continues the generally atonal approach that was established with Jerry Goldsmith’s score for the original and was carried through the rest of the scores during the 1970s films in the series.  Scott does bring a somewhat darker tone to the score, which is dominated  by a very wide variety of percussion instruments as well as brass that tends to be presented in a pretty harsh style.  Occasional more melodic elements are often presented on woodwinds, particularly a solo whistle.

One strange deviation in style is the source cue “1991 Restaurant”, which is a 70s style melodic pop/jazz cue.  This one definitely sticks out among the much more sonically unusual cues of the rest of the score, although it probably is a good reflection of Scott’s background as a jazz musician.  Another odd cue is “Subjugation Soul”, which has an otherworldly rock style to it, including some strange elements that sound like electronically altered vocals.

Conrack (John Williams, 1974): The only music from this John Williams score available on an album is a 6-minute “Main Title” suite that Film Score Monthly included on their long out-of-print (and difficult to find) CD of music from The Poseidon Adventure and The Paper Chase.  Note that the “album art” shown above is a homemade one that I created from an image of the film’s poster as Conrack isn’t mentioned anywhere on the actual CD cover.  The suite is a nice sampling of Williams’ music and leaves me wishing for more of it. 

The suite opens with a very gentle theme that is principally performed on a solo flute.  This is a soft melody that is very reminiscent of Williams’ other Americana scores.  After this introduction, it switches to a country/bluegrass inspired series of themes.  Acoustic and electric guitar, harmonica, and fiddle are featured along with a full orchestral backing.  It is a nice mix of melody and dynamic instrumentation and it really would be nice to hear the rest of the score.

Contact (Alan Silvestri, 1997): I believe that the adaptation of Carl Sagan’s novel Contact was Robert Zemeckis’ best film to date and was one of the most intellectually interesting films of the 1990s.  The movie not only strove to provide a particularly plausible depiction of alien contact, but it also was rooted in an extremely thoughtful and fascinating evaluation of the relationship between faith and science.  The film was especially well supported by a non-obtrusive but very effective score by Zemeckis’ usual collaborator Alan Silvestri.

Silvestri provides a fairly simple, but memorable melody that serves as a primary theme.  This melody is often heard on harp, strings, or piano and is used throughout the score, but not with such a frequency that it becomes unwelcome.  In fact, the theme is kept very rare during the early parts of the score (it only plays through once during the “Main Title” cue), becoming more frequent towards the end.  The theme gets its most widespread play during the nearly 8-minute final cue entitled simply “Contact”.

The film has some sequences that are very genuinely suspenseful and this can often be reflected in the score.  The cues “The Primer” and “Test Run Bomber” are especially suspenseful in tone, with an increased use of percussion and deeper brass creating a more disquieting atmosphere.  Silvestri also makes some careful use of electronics to ramp up the tension at appropriate points, particularly during the latter cue.  There are also some cues that build a bit of an action-oriented pace, such as the lengthy and dynamic cue “Good To Go” that accompanied the film’s big launch sequence.

There is one fairly strange bit of trivia that surrounds the main theme.  Back when Dr. Phil’s daily television series first debuted, David Letterman had a running gag on his show where every night he would play one ludicrous, out-of-context clip during a segment he called “Dr. Phil’s Words of Wisdom”.  This went on for at least a year or so.  As it was a recurring gag, a short introductory title card was created for it and, for some reason, they chose to use the main theme from Contact as the theme music. 

Courage Under Fire (James Horner, 1996): The third, and to-date last, of James Horner’s collaborations with director Edward Zwick was not as famous as the first two, Glory and Legends of the Fall.  The film was a lower-key, more character and drama driven film than the previous two and that is reflected in the score.  It still is an effective score that fit the film generally well, but it is a somewhat dull listening experience outside of the film. 

The soundtrack album opens with a short cue entitled “Hymn”, which is a fairly sad, almost funereal, string-driven melody that sets the mostly serious, kind of downbeat tone of the film.  This melody serves as the one really distinct main theme for the score and is re-used fairly regularly during the more dramatic segments of the rest of the score. 

This is followed by the 10 minute cue “Al Bathra/Main Title”, which contains quite a bit of Horner’s usual style of action music, with lots of percussion, aggressive piano, and fast paced strings as well as some occasional electric guitar riffs.  While Horner does this kind of music well, he doesn’t really establish any distinctive themes or other solid musical ideas to create much cohesion. The rest of the cues seem to largely alternate between the styles of these two opening cues, with the more downbeat and dramatic material perhaps dominating a bit.

Soundtrack enthusiasts often view this score as something of a transitional one for Horner.  It came just one year before Titanic and this score suggests a few of the musical ideas that he would use to great effect in that score (the action music here often feels like early drafts of the sinking music), while some of the more dramatic scoring seems more rooted in Horner’s earlier work.

I don’t want to give the impression that this is a bad score or one that isn’t worth getting, particularly for Horner’s fans.  As I mentioned at the beginning, the score works extremely well in the film and it does reflect Horner’s usual compositional skills.  As a stand-alone album, though, the relative lack of strong themes during the action scoring and the somewhat unfocused style makes it one of his lesser soundtracks.

The Cowboys (John Williams, 1972): The main march from The Cowboys has become one of John Williams’ most popular themes and is a staple of his concerts and compilation albums.  It is one of the earliest and best of his famous marches.  Varese Sarabande issued the full soundtrack album to the film on CD, allowing the familiar march to be heard in context.

The original soundtrack version of the march may come as a bit of a surprise to those that know it from the various concert performances, such as those Williams did with the Boston Pops.  On the soundtrack, the march is not played by as large an orchestra, giving it a smaller ensemble sound with more use of solo instruments than is typically heard in the re-recordings.

The march is incorporated very regularly into the rest of the score, which is a dynamic and fast paced, western movie score.  Brass and strings dominate with piano and percussion playing a big role as well.  Occasional harmonica adds to the western flavor of the score.  Periodic quieter, more introspective cues, such as the lovely cue “The Ranch”, are welcome respites from the action.  Williams still makes very good use of the main theme during these parts, keeping them well connected to the rest of the music.

Unfortunately, the soundtrack CD to The Cowboys is out of print and can be fairly expensive to obtain now.  At the Amazon link above, used copies start at around $50.  The album is available from iTunes for only $10, but obviously not in a lossless recording.

Crimson Tide (Hans Zimmer, 1995): This was one of the earliest of the many scores that Hans Zimmer or his various protégés have written for films produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and it played a pretty key role in establishing the style that Bruckheimer himself has come to refer to as the “Jerry Bruckheimer sound”.

Zimmer gave the film a moody score with lots of electronic, rock-influenced melodies and fairly frequent wordless choral vocals.  Electric guitar and synthesizer are key instruments of the score, but with full orchestral backing.  The main theme has a rock anthem, authoritative style to it that has become very much associated with Zimmer’s thriller scores.  The nature of the film’s story put more focus on tension than on action, so the score also favors intensity over pace.

The soundtrack album features only 5 cues, but all but one are very lengthy resulting in a running time of a little over an hour.  The longest cues are “Alabama” at almost 24 minutes and “1SQ” at just over 18 minutes.  This approach gives the score an almost symphonic quality, with minimal pauses in the music.  It is an unusual approach, but not an invalid one.

Crosscurrent (Jerry Goldsmith, 1971): Film Score Monthly included this brief score from a failed TV pilot on a Silver Age Classics CD release that also included Goldsmith’s scores to The Last Run and The Scorpio Letters.  The score only runs a little over 12 minutes, but is an interesting inclusion on this set.

The score has a very 70s sound to it, with a style that fits the “mod” style that was popular at the time.  It is a very unusual score, almost entirely performed on percussion and other rhythm instruments including some very hard edged piano and occasional electronics.  It is a strange, but creative, sound.

One other interesting aspect of this score is that Goldsmith originated a melody here that would later become the main title theme for his score to Escape From the Planet of the Apes.  It is definitely unusual for Goldsmith to reuse a theme in two projects, but he likely presumed that since this was from a series that wasn’t picked up, it was reasonable to re-use that piece of music.

Crossed Swords (Maurice Jarre, 1978): Despite his fame and popularity as a composer, I have surprisingly little Maurice Jarre music in my film score collection.  I’m not really sure why that is as I have generally liked the music that I do have.  It may simply be that the films he chose to score didn’t all that often line up with my interests.  Crossed Swords is probably the most obscure Jarre title in my collection.  Film Score Monthly released it on CD as part of their Silver Age Classics series and the sample clips were enough to sell me on it.

The score is exciting, swashbuckling music that sounds like it could have come from a much earlier era.  The score is highly melodic and tends towards a pretty full-blooded orchestral approach, although the medieval setting did prompt Jarre to often use a lot of solo acoustic instruments as well, frequently performing the score’s very infectious main theme.  At the very beginning of the soundtrack, the theme is first introduced by a solo whistler, which is followed by the orchestra taking up a full performance.  The whistled version returns during a number of different parts of the score as well.

In addition to the swashbuckling main theme, Jarre also introduces a nicely melodic and romantic secondary theme that is a major highlight of this score.  A particularly good performance of this theme is presented in the cue “Hendon Hall”, where it is given solo flute and violin renditions as well as some nice fully orchestral treatment.

Adding to the period flavor, the score does contain a few particularly period sounding cues.  “Coronation” is a religious hymn performed by a choir.  The cues “Ruffler’s Men” and “Gaillard” have a rougher, old-fashioned sound with melodies played primarily on medieval instruments, including pipes and various shakers and other similar percussion instruments.  Cues such as these give the score a very distinctive flavor.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Tan Dun, 2000): Tan Dun’s score to Ang Lee’s hit action film was a fairly surprising Oscar winner in 2000, particularly since it beat out Hans Zimmer’s extremely popular score to Gladiator, that year’s Best Picture winner.  The score’s success with the Oscar voters probably had a lot to do with its strong east Asian influences, which gave it more of an exotic quality to those accustomed to more traditionally western film music.

The score is heavily dominated by solo cello, with featured soloist Yo Yo Ma continuing a long running collaboration with the composer.  While Yo Yo Ma was already somewhat known to film music fans from his solos on John Williams’ Seven Years in Tibet, this score was really what brought him widespread attention among western audiences.  Solo woodwinds also come into play pretty regularly, while brass is minimized. 

Percussion instruments also play a very broad role in the score, with percussion being allowed to often carry the action sequences with minimal or no support from other instruments.  Cues such as “Night Fight” and “To the South” contain some especially expressive and impressive rhythms that are both exotic and exciting.  Even in the musical segments that do not primarily focus on percussion, it is often present in the background, frequently used at points when most western composers wouldn’t have included it.

The most prominent theme that Dun establishes in the score is primarily introduced in the cue “The Eternal Vow” and then carefully and sparingly spotted throughout the rest of the cue.  It is a softly romantic melody, primarily featured on solo cello played very sensitively by Yo Yo Ma.  The melody serves as the basis for the song “A Love Before Time” that is performed by CoCo Lee in both English and Mandarin at the conclusion of the soundtrack.

The Clearing (Craig Armstrong, 2004): As I know little about the film, it is fairly unlikely that I would have bought this soundtrack myself. It is one of several that I was given by a friend who works at the movie studio and it is a pretty good score.  My only previous familiarity with Craig Armstrong was mainly through his projects with Baz Luhrmann, which tended to be pretty song-oriented.  It is interesting hearing a more full score.

Much of the score has a very dark and moody quality.  The opening cue is a solo violin presentation of the score’s main theme.  This kind of low-key presentation of the theme establishes a pretty distinctive mood right at the start.  The theme is a fairly simple motif, built around a fairly simple 8 note melody with the first 3 notes repeated.  This motif is woven throughout the score, often either via the solo violin or via piano (including a stand-alone solo piano cue of the theme). The soundtrack ends with a full orchestral arrangement.

Armstrong includes some electronic elements as well, introducing a bit of a modern style to some parts of the score.  The early cue “Arnold On His Way” especially showcases this aspect of the music and comes as a somewhat interesting shift in tone after the moody, more classical instrumentals of the first couple cues.

Cliffhanger (Trevor Jones, 1993): Trever Jones’ Cliffhanger is one of my favorite action scores of the early 1990s and it comes from what I think was probably the most purely entertaining action film of Sylvester Stallone’s career.  I’ve always found it a bit puzzling that Jones didn’t make a bigger name for himself as an action composer.

The score is built around an absolutely thrilling main theme.  The theme is built around a series of very brassy fanfares backed by some absolutely soaring strings.  This is one of those themes that really sticks in your mind after listening to the album or seeing the film.  The opening cue of the album is a terrific concert arrangement of the theme.  It may have played over the main title, although I don’t recall for sure.  Either way, it gets the album off to a rousing start while firmly establishing the score’s primary musical voice right from the beginning.

Stallone’s action movies often tended to have something of a brooding quality to them and Jones’ score does reflect this with some cues that are fairly moody.  This is pretty effective scoring, with Jones retaining a melodic quality that never strays excessively far from the style of the main theme.  This helps to keep the darker side of the score from becoming oppressive and also retains a cohesive sound to it.

One thing that might be a tad surprising about the score is that it doesn’t have a lot of extremely high-adrenaline action music.  It isn’t completely absent, of course, but even some of the core action cues like “Bats” or “Helicopter Fight” still stay very anchored in melody and are a bit heavier on tension and mood than on what you might usually expect for a big-budget action movie.  When more actively percussive music comes into play, it tends to be particularly effective due to its fairly sparing use.

Cloak & Dagger (Brian May, 1984): I haven’t seen it for years, but this was a movie that I especially enjoyed when it first came out.  I was 15 years old and already a definite computer/video game nerd by then, so the film connected with me pretty well.  What I don’t remember was ever really thinking too much about the music in the movie, particularly since there was no soundtrack released.   Intrada released Brian May’s score for the first time earlier this year and I found the music to have a certain familiarity, although not as much as I might have expected from a film that I saw a number of times back when it was reasonably new.

May provided a pretty charming adventure score for the film.  It is a fully orchestral score with a somewhat old-fashioned sound.  Considering the computer and video game theme to the film, it is actually a bit surprising that the score is so traditional and lacking in electronic elements.  The score is dominated by some very active string and piano melodies, with occasional militaristic brass and percussion brought into some of the action sequences, including a pretty great march that appears occasionally during the score and then gets a full performance in the end credits cue.  Gentle woodwinds often accompany piano during the more quiet parts of the score.

The score is very energetic and fast paced, although it is somewhat limited in thematic elements.  May does introduce a very short primary motif that serves as something of a main theme for the score, but it isn’t one that is especially distinctive and, thus, probably not one that will stick in your mind too much after seeing the film or hearing the album.  In fact, this fairly minimalist main theme is probably the reason that I didn’t find the music exceptionally memorable based on multiple viewings of the film.  This isn’t necessarily a negative, though, as the music is pleasant to listen to and likely served the film well.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (John Williams, 1977): If pressed to pick my favorite score (and favorite movie, for that matter), I inevitably end up picking Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  In the early days of my soundtrack collecting (when I was around 10 years old), I remember calling around to every record store in town until I found one with the LP in stock and then convincing my father to drive me across town to buy it.  On the day that I purchased my first CD player, this soundtrack was the first disc that I bought to play on it.  I simply love this music.

The film gave John Williams one of the most complex structures that he has ever had to work with, allowing for a score that has a pretty wide variety of styles.  “Nocturnal Pursuit” (I’m using the cue names from the original 1977 soundtrack release) contain exciting, militaristic chase music full of dynamic brass and fast paced strings.  “The Abduction of Barry”, on the other hand, is as scary and disquieting as any horror score, with its dissonant choral vocals mixed with deep blasts of brass and screeching strings.

Of course, the most famous motif in the score is the 5-note Williams-composed tune that the aliens use as a base for their attempt to communicate.  This motif has a key role in the film’s plot and, in fact, is probably on the short list of examples where an element of the score has been critical to a film’s storyline.  The amusing and clever “The Conversation” represents this motif’s most prominent use, with Williams later making extensive use of it during the finale sequences.

Finally, Williams provides a hopeful, incredibly memorable primary theme for orchestra and chorus for the alien visitation.  that is first introduced in “I Can’t Believe It’s Real” and then developed spectacularly during the amazing finale pieces “The Appearance of the Visitors” and “Resolution and End Title”.  This theme is composed in a way that it blends exceptionally well with the famous 5-note motif during these concluding cues.  The visitation theme also intentionally has a slight resemblance to the key melody of Leigh Harline’s “When You Wish Upon a Star”, which Williams actually subtly, and very effectively, incorporates (with credit) during the finale as well.

There have been three different CD releases of the Close Encounters soundtrack to date.  The first release was by Arista Records and contained a direct transfer of the old 40 minute LP program, but without the disco arrangement of the main theme that had been included as a separate 7-inch single with the LP package.  A few years later, Varese Sarabande licensed and re-issued the same program, but with the disco track included at the end.  Finally in 1998, Arista released a “Collector’s Edition” CD that contains a full 77 minutes of music from the film, presented more or less in film order.  This edition also included some of the music that scored sequences added to the 1979 “special edition” version of the film, including a gorgeous orchestral performance of “When You Wish Upon a Star” that was incorporated into that version’s end credits suite.

While the collector’s edition release is definitely the one to get if you are only going to purchase one version of the Close Encounters soundtrack, the CD of the original LP program really is worth obtaining as well.  Back when program lengths were limited somewhat by the capacity of an LP, Williams (or his music editors) had a real talent for putting together excellent programs that really highlighted the best of the music as the best possible listening experience.  While the original program isn’t complete and often presents the music out of film order, it really is an exceptionally good organization of the score and I still find myself choosing it over the collector’s edition fairly often.

Cloverfield (Michael Giacchino, 2008): The surprise hit monster movie Cloverfield had no score during the film, due to its format as supposedly being found home video footage.  For the end credits, composer Michael Giacchino (the usual collaborator of the film’s producer J.J. Abrams) wrote a 12 minute original musical suite entitled “Roar!”  Not surprisingly, there is no soundtrack CD, but this end-credit suite is available for download from iTunes.

The suite of music is great fun!  It really sounds like Giacchino jumped at the challenge of essentially writing an exciting, fully-developed monster movie action score compressed down to 12 minutes.  The suite contains dynamic brass and percussion themes along with soaring strings, some stirring choral segments, and even some sensitive, introspective thematic material.

It is exciting, thrilling orchestral bombast and incredibly cool considering that it was all written strictly for the end credits.  For a 99 cent download, this is pretty much a no-brainer for any fans of Giacchino, or this type of orchestral thriller music in general, to purchase.

The Cobweb (Leonard Rosenman, 1955): This very early Leonard Rosenman score (it was only his 2nd) was released by Film Score Monthly as part of their Golden Age Classics series, paired on CD with music from Rosenman’s score to Edge of the City.  According to the liner notes, the score is presented complete at a running time of a little under 37 minutes.

The score is dark and often dissonant, using a full orchestra to create a frenetic and at times unsettling sound.  The film was a dramatic feature set in a mental institution, but the score, taken alone, sounds more like music from a horror film or a dark thriller.  In many ways, the style of the composition seems to have more in common with chamber music than with the more fully symphonic film scores that were typical at the time.  Fairly atonal strings and woodwinds dominate, with occasional bits of brass and percussion used for emphasis.

Cocoon (James Horner, 1985): Ron Howard’s Cocoon was an especially creative blockbuster, mixing alien visitation science fiction with a human interest storyline about the process of aging.  The film was particularly notable for reviving the long dormant careers of veteran actors including Don Ameche (who won an Oscar for the film), Hume Cronyn, and Jessica Tandy.  The film was also the first of several acclaimed collaborations between Howard and composer James Horner.

Horner provided a score that has something of a mix of his typical 1980s science fiction scoring (it is very reminiscent of his two Star Trek scores at times) and some more nostalgically tender scoring for the character-driven aspects of the film.  The science fiction scoring is particularly evident in the fairly dynamic early cue entitled “The Chase”, while the more tender side is especially well represented by the tenderly melancholy cue “Rose’s Death”.

At the heart of the score is a memorable main theme that is initially presented in a fairly low-key piano performance at the beginning of the opening cue, “Through the Window”.  The theme is developed considerably over the score, frequently performed on different instruments and at a variety of tempos.  A tender, nostalgic secondary theme is often used in conjunction with the primary theme as well.  In most cases, the primary theme is largely associated with the science fiction aspects of the story while the secondary theme is used for the more character-driven material.

One particularly notable cue in the score is “The Boys Are Out”, which is a nostalgic, swing-dance type melody used during a night-on-the-town sequence.  This cue is a definite pre-cursor to the approach that Horner took to scoring the similarly themed film *Batteries Not Included (which featured some of the same cast) a couple years later.  The cue is impressive in that it fulfills an old-fashioned, nostalgic requirement, but still feels like it comes from the same family as the rest of the score.

The soundtrack album contains about 40 minutes of Horner’s score and is organized pretty far off from film order.  The album also includes one rock song, “Gravity” performed by Michael Sembello.  This was used during the famous dance sequence in the film, but is a bit jarring on the album due to its placement pretty much right in the middle.  The soundtrack is out of print and pretty difficult to obtain and this definitely seems like a score that is in need of a re-issue, preferably expanded and in a more logical order.

Cocoon: The Return (James Horner, 1988): The 1988 sequel to Cocoon re-united most of the original film’s cast (but not director Ron Howard), although the result was a somewhat lackluster re-tread.  James Horner was also brought back to score the sequel and delivered a workable score, but one that didn’t really expand much beyond the themes he had written for the original film.

The opening cue on the soundtrack, “Returning Home”, is essentially a re-visit of the “Theme from Cocoon” cue that closed the first soundtrack.  The orchestrations are a bit different which does show that the cue was likely newly-recorded, but it does pretty much immediately establish that Horner’s main goal with this score is going to be to repeat what he had provided for the first film.  The rest of the score has some definite changes in orchestrations and some occasional new melodies, but is still very familiar to those that know the first score well.

One key change in focus in the sequel score is that the swing-style music that was used in a single cue on the soundtrack to the first film is much more prevalent this time.  Multiple cues on the new soundtrack are presented in this style: “Taking Bernie to the Beach”, the lengthy “Basketball Swing”, and the last part of “Good Friends”.  These cues are based around the same basic melody used in “The Boys Are Out” from the first film, but develops it quite a bit for the sequel, adding a number of variations and supplemental melodies.  Fans of that cue in the first score, or of Horner’s *Batteries Not Included score, are likely to find this aspect of the Cocoon: The Return score pretty satisfying.

The soundtrack CD was released by Varese Sarabande at the time of the film’s original release and featured a generous 53 minutes of Horner’s score, presented in some pretty long cues, some 8 minutes or longer all the way up to a 11 1/2 minute finale cue.  The soundtrack is out of print, but is relatively easy to find at reasonable prices.  In fact, it is far easier to find than the soundtrack to the original Cocoon and is probably a reasonable substitute for those that like the music but don’t currently own either CD.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Harry Gregson-Williams, 2005): Obviously inspired by the enormous success of the Lord of the Rings films, Walden Media and Disney saw adapting C.S. Lewis’ classic Chronicle of Narnia book series as an obvious opportunity to create a similar, but more family-friendly, franchise.  Shrek co-director Andrew Adamson was a somewhat surprising choice to helm the first film in the series.  Adamson brought along Shrek composer Harry Gregson-Williams, giving him a welcome opportunity to stretch his talents quite a bit beyond the animation and contemporary action scores for which he was mainly known.

The film cranked up the intensity and scope of the action and battle sequences quite a bit compared to the books, which gave Gregson-Williams the opportunity to create some fairly intense action music.  The soundtrack gets off to a very fast-paced start with the opening cue, “The Blitz, 1940”, a percussion and brass driven action cue that accompanies the film’s surprisingly intense opening sequence.  This type of action music again will later dominate the final portions of the score, particularly the lengthy finale cue simply entitled “The Battle”.

The majority of the score has a more melancholy and moody quality, which is introduced in the second cue, entitled “Evacuating London”.  The first half of the cue introduces some simple piano-driven melodies before transitioning to an otherworldly, largely electronic theme accompanied by vocals by Lisbeth Scott.   A more gentle, traditionally orchestral version of the same basic theme is central to the next cue, “The Wardrobe”. Later, Gregson-Williams provides an appropriately regal main theme for Aslan the lion, heard particularly prominently in the opening to the cue “To Aslan’s Camp”.  That is the theme that eventually serves as essentially the primary theme for the film, with some fairly frequent statements during the battle music late in the score.

The entire score has a somewhat surprisingly modernistic sound to it, generally forgoing the more traditional British classical scoring approach to this kind of fantasy that Howard Shore had used for The Lord of the Rings.  Gregson-Williams introduces a number of ethnic elements and also uses a fair amount of electronic instruments as well as frequent choral and solo vocal elements.  I find it to be an effective score, although probably not what a lot of people expected for this material and, thus, it has tended to be a somewhat controversial one.

The album ends with four songs, all of which are very atmospheric and moody in style, with a somewhat modern electronica-ballad style.  “Can’t Take It In”, performed by Imogen Heap, and “Where” by Lisbeth Scott were both co-written by Gregson-Williams and are based on themes used in the film.  “Wunderkind” by Alanis Morrisette and “Winter Light” by Tim Finn are not connected with the rest of the film’s music.  With the exception of “Where”, the songs are each pretty long (4-5 minutes+) and they kind of wear out their welcome.

Note that there were quite a few different soundtrack albums for the film.  Two score albums were released, a standard and a special edition.The musical content is identical on both releases, with the special edition simply offering fancier packaging.  I have the special edition because I was able to get it at a decent price, but there is little reason to spend much extra for it.  There also were at least two song compilation albums released which were really just “inspired by” the movie.

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (Harry Gregson-Williams, 2008): Composer Harry Gregson-Williams returned to the world of Narnia for Prince Caspian, the second entry in the series.  The score maintains stylistic continuity with the first one, including reprising a couple main themes, but it does also take a more action-oriented approach while downplaying some of the more otherworldly elements from the original.  The result is a score that is in the same family as the first one, but perhaps a bit more conventional.  While less of a creative leap, I also think it is a somewhat more listenable score.

Just like with the first score, this one opens with a driving, percussion and brass action cue.  The cue this time is called “Prince Caspian Flees” and it perhaps demonstrates Gregson-Williams’ background in Hans Zimmer’s scoring company more than any of the cues in the previous score.  The piece definitely has a quality that reflects Zimmer’s driving, orchestral/electronic approach to action scoring.  This cue sets the tone for the kind of action scoring that dominates a lot of this score.  This opening cue does also introduce a new theme for the title character, although it is only sparingly used during the rest of the score and feels a bit underdeveloped.

The key themes from the original film are reprised here, with the primary theme for the siblings that are the story’s central character first making an appearance in the second cue, “The Kings and Queens of Old”.  The regal theme for Aslan is used very frequently in this score, initially making its re-appearance in the cue “Arrival at Aslan’s How”.  As in the first score, that theme tends to serve as a victory theme in the battle cues which, as noted earlier, dominate this score much more than the original.

As with the previous soundtrack, several songs are included at the end of the album.  Once again, they are generally in that modernistic, electronic folk ballad style and really aren’t exceptionally interesting.  This time, Gregson-Williams is not credited as a writer on any of the songs and the performers, Regina Spekter, Oren Lavie, Switchfoot, and Hanne Hukkelberg, are all unfamiliar to me.

Prince Caspian was the last released film in this series at the time that I’m writing this.  As of this point, this will be the last film in the series for Disney, Gregson-Williams, and director Andrew Adamson.  The third film in the series, The Voyage of the Dawn Trader, is scheduled for release (by Twentieth Century Fox) later this year with Michael Apted taking over as director and David Arnold taking over the scoring.  It will be interesting to hear whether Arnold chooses to retain any of Gregson-Williams’ themes.  I tend to hope that he at least retains the Aslan theme in order to keep some musical continuity to the series.

Cimarron (Franz Waxman, 1960): The big, epic widescreen epics of the 1950s and 1960s were probably among the most dramatic users of music as a critical component of their story telling.  These films often had big, very bold scores with lush melodies played by large orchestras, often supplemented by choir.  Franz Waxman’s score to the 1960 version of Cimarron is one of the more impressive examples of this kind of scoring.  Film Score Monthly’s Golden Age Classics release of the score provides a beautiful, fully-stereo restoration of the score in a program with a generous 1 hour and 20 minute running time.

The score’s main theme is introduced right away in the “Main Title” cue, which features a vocal performance by the Roger Wagner Chorale performing lyrics written by Paul Francis Webster.  Instrumental versions of this theme are woven throughout the score, in fully orchestral versions as well as on a variety of instruments.  The theme is an infectious melody that sticks with you for a while after listening to the album.

Much of the score is characterized by brassy, exciting action music, including a thrilling 6 minute cue entitled “The Land Rush”, which contains pretty much the type of fast paced, kinetic music that you would expect from a cue with that title.  The score has some quieter, more melancholy segments as well, such as the early cue “Goodbye Father” and, later, “A Son Is Born”.  Darker music is included where needed, such as in the amusingly bluntly titled cue “The Villain”, which is characterized by some low, menacing strings.

The album ends with a 5 minute “Outtakes Suite”, which contains some alternate versions of some of the music used in the film.  The liner notes also mention that a number of the cues on the CD contain bits of music that was trimmed for the movie but are presented as recorded on the album.

Cinderella (Mack David, Al Hoffman, Jerry Livingston, Oliver Wallace, Paul J. Smith, 1950): Disney’s second (after Snow White) princess-based fairy tale remains one of their most famous and beloved animated features.  Musically, the film contains several of Disney’s most famous songs as well as an effective orchestral score, largely built around the song melodies.

The music credits for the film are a bit vague, making it a little difficult to tell who really composed what part of the music.  Although not listed in the film’s credits, the songs are generally accepted to have been written by Mack David, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston.  The film also credits Oliver Wallace and Paul J. Smith as music directors and it is generally accepted that they wrote at least some portion of the film’s score.  Despite the fairly large group of composers, the music is remarkably cohesive and, of course, fits the film wonderfully.

Several of the songs have a very romantic quality to them, particularly the title song (which plays over the film’s main title), “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, and the romantic waltz “So This Is Love”.  On a personal note, “So This Is Love” was the song that my wife and I used for our first dance at our wedding reception, which makes it pretty special to me.

Several of the songs have an entertainingly playful quality as well.  The Fairy Godmother’s song “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” is one of the catchiest songs in the Disney canon while the mice chorus perform a fun song called “The Working Song”.  Another amusing song is “Oh Sing Sweet Nightingale”, which is bookended by humorously off-key performances by the evil stepsisters, contrasted with a sweetly on-key version performed by Ilene Woods as Cinderella.

Disney first released a full soundtrack CD to the movie back in 1997. This contains all the songs as well as a fairly complete presentation of the score.  The disc also ends with a demo version of an unused song entitled “I’m in the Middle of a Muddle”.  In 2005, they released a new “Special Edition” of the soundtrack that adds one more demo song, entitled “Dancing On a Cloud”, as well as a cover version of “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” performed by Kimberley Locke.  It also includes a performance of a song called “Beautiful” performed by Jim Brickman.  I’m not sure of the origin of that song.  I never picked up the 2005 version, so I can’t comment on the quality of these additional tracks.

Two years before releasing the actual soundtrack CD, Disney released a “The Music from Cinderella” concept album that contained cover versions of the songs as well as a re-recording of 25 minutes of the score under conductor J.A.C. Redford.  The covers included “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” by Linda Rondstadt (both in English and in Spanish), “So This Is Love” by James Ingram, “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo” by Bobby McFarrin (this cue opens with the original soundtrack version of the song), “The Work Song” by Take 6, and an instrumental medley of the songs from the film by David Benoit and David Sanborn.  This concept album is an interesting collection of alternate versions, although definitely not a substitute for the original soundtrack.  Even if the covers don’t interest you, though, the CD is probably worth tracking down simply for the excellent stereo re-recordings of the score cues.

Cinderella (Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein III, 1957 & 1965): A few years after Disney’s hit version of Cinderella, CBS staged a live television broadcast of a new musical version featuring songs by Rodgers & Hammerstein and starring a young Julie Andrews, 7 years before she made her big movie debut in Mary Poppins.  Two other TV productions of the musical were done in 1965 starring Leslie Ann Warren and in 1997 starring Brandy.  Soundtrack CDs are available for the 1957 and 1965 productions, but surprisingly none was ever released for the 1997 version.

This is one of the very few Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals that didn’t originate as a stage production and, thus, the songs are probably not as well known as those from their various shows that get regularly revived.  That isn’t to say that there aren’t some very familiar songs in this show.  In particular, Cinderella’s opening solo entitled “In My Own Little Corner” and the romantic duet “Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful?” are pretty recognizable and get covered pretty frequently on various compilation albums.  The songs are all very much in the familiar, melodic Rodgers & Hammerstein style.  There is also some very clever word play, particularly in the Fairy Godmother’s number “Impossible/It’s Possible” and in the very amusing “The Stepsisters’ Lament”.

While both of the available soundtracks contain excellent performances and are worthwhile, I would say that the 1957 version is the one to get if you are only going to get one.  The obvious reason for that is the simple fact that it features Julie Andrews.  As good as Leslie Ann Warren was in the role, she can’t quite equal Andrews’ gorgeous voice and crystal clear diction.  The sound quality on both recordings is very good as well, particularly impressive considering the age of the 1957 version and the fact that the show itself now only exists as a black & white kinescope.  Note that the 1965 version did add one additional song, an opening ballad entitled “Loneliness of Evening” performed by Stuart Damon as the prince.

Cinderella Liberty (John Williams, 1973): This John Williams score came right around the start of his long streak of 1970s hits that shifted him to the top of the film composing industry.  It was a more intimate, dramatic score than the big disaster movies and other blockbusters that he took on around that era and, thus, isn’t as well remembered.  Intrada released a good, limited edition soundtrack CD that is still available from their website.

The score’s central theme, introduced during the first instrumental cue entitled “Nice To Be Around”,  features a solo harmonica played by Jean "Toots" Thielemans, an approach that Williams would more famously repeat a year later with The Sugarland Express, his first score for Steven Spielberg.  This theme has a bit of a soulfully dramatic quality that contrasts interestingly with the rural quality that is lent by the harmonica.   The album later contains a version of this theme with vocals written and performed by Paul Williams and the theme is also given a full concert presentation in the cue “Cinderella Liberty Love Theme.

Some of the cues are not fully orchestral and have a very 70s, kind of disco/jazz quality to them.  Cues such as “New Shooter”, “Maggie Shoots Pool” and “Neptune’s Bar” are melodic, but with a bit of an improvisational, small jazz-ensemble quality to them.  These cues appear to likely be source cues, but the “Boxing Montage” cue also has some similarity in style while heavily incorporating the score’s main themes.

The soundtrack opens and closes with the jazzy song “Wednesday Special” which was co-written and performed by Paul Williams and plays over the main and end titles.

City of Angels (Gabriel Yared & various, 1998): When I saw City of Angels, I was sufficiently impressed by Gabriel Yared’s score that I purchased the soundtrack album, despite the fact that more than 2/3 of the CD contained songs that were of little interest to me.  Yared’s score is featured on the last 4 cues on the CD, which add up to a little over 20 minutes of music.

Yared’s score has a very moody, ethereal quality to it and is also, at times, very lush and romantic.  The opening cue “An Angel Falls” is dominated by strings and angelic chorus.  As the film’s subject matter would suggest, there is definitely a vaguely religious aura to the music as well.  Later cues continue this style, with solo piano often added to the mix for the more romantic passages.  Woodwinds are used sparingly and brass is mostly absent.  The piano melody is the most distinctive theme that Yared establishes in the score.

The second score cue, “The Unfeeling Kiss”, stands out as a stylistic deviation with a light, pop/country melody featuring solo guitar and electronic instruments, before transitioning during the last part of the cue back to the ethereal orchestral style heard through most of the rest of the score.  There is also some acoustic guitar solo during the lengthy finale cue, which is simply entitled “City of Angels”.

The collection of songs on the album did have a fairly substantial popular appeal and the soundtrack even reached #1 on the pop charts for a time.  The performers featured on the album include U2, Alanis Morissette, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Cole, John Lee Hooker, Sarah McLachlin, The Goo Goo Dolls, Peter Gabriel, Jude, and Eric Clapton.  “Iris” by The Goo Goo Dolls and “Uninvited” by Morissette were written for the film and became hit singles.

Although most of the songs were not original to the film, the list of artists featured is pretty impressive, but there is not a lot of consistency in style making it seem a lot like a marketing-driven song album.  Admittedly, the songs chosen do have some connection with the film’s plot (several are about angels), but I still find the manufactured quality of the compilation to be hard to overlook.

A Civil Action (Danny Elfman, 1998): This courtroom drama was one of the earlier examples of Danny Elfman moving away from his comfort zone of fantasies and comedies.  Unlike some of his other drama scores from that time period, this one is pretty instantly recognizable as an Elfman score, including many of his trademark stylistic touches.

The score is heavily electronic, often with a pop-styled approach.  The melodies are frequently drum machine backed, which provides a lot of the pop rhythm to the music.  In this respect, quite a few of the cues have a noticeable resemblance to Elfman’s better known score to Men In Black, which came out a year earlier. Choral elements are included very frequently and the approach to using these wordless vocals is the aspect that most clearly identifies the score as Elfman’s.  The sensitive cue “Why?” is particularly effective in its use of vocals.

While most of the score is more moody and dramatic, there are occasional hints of more action-oriented scoring.  The cue “First Landing” contains some brassy action music that actually has a bit of a resemblance to the type of music that Elfman usually provides for his superhero scores.

Chain Reaction (Jerry Goldsmith, 1996): During the 1990s, Jerry Goldsmith frequently took jobs scoring 2nd tier action films.  These were usually medium-budget major studio releases with reasonably well-known actors, but they weren’t big budget tentpole releases starting top box-office draws.  Goldsmith delivered very competent scores for these films, even often helping to elevate the film’s overall quality, although they didn’t usually count among the composer’s most memorable work.  Chain Reaction, which starred Keanu Reeves and Morgan Freeman, was one of the more forgettable of these films and scores.

Goldsmith created a nicely melodic main theme, introduced during the opening cue “Meet Eddie”.  The theme is orchestral with a strong emphasis on strings, but also with a substantial synthesizer assist.  The synthesizer component gives the theme a bit more of a pop sensibility, particularly in its overall rhythmic line.  The rest of the score (as presented on the CD) is pretty typical Goldsmith action and suspense music, very competent but not extremely distinctive.  The cue “Ice Chase” is one of the better examples of Goldsmith’s approach to chase music during this period of his career, though.

Most of Goldsmith’s scores during that era were recorded in Los Angeles with union musicians.  At that time, the musicians’ union had a pretty rigid and costly re-use fee regulations that would greatly limit the viability of soundtrack album releases that were unlikely to be big sellers.  Various music labels, especially Varese Sarabande, did still put out albums of these scores, but with short running times.  This one runs just slightly over 30 minutes in length.  While some of the scores from that era have received expanded releases now that the union has adopted more favorable fee structures, Chain Reaction is one that has not been revisited.  It is possible that this is a score that would make a bigger impression with a more complete release.

Chaplin (John Barry, 1992): Chaplin was John Barry’s first major film score after his big, Oscar-winning success with Dances With Wolves.  While this is a smaller-scale score than this one, it does clearly come from the same era of Barry’s career, when his focus had shifted more towards lushly romantic melodies than big action cues.

The score is dominated by piano and strings, although with some occasionally very prominent trumpet sections.  The main theme has a gentle, kind of melancholy quality to it.  While the score is mostly fairly upbeat, the lush style that Barry utilizes often gives it a bit of an edge of sadness.  This actually reflects the film pretty well as it is a biography of a comedic genius with a bit of a dark side. 

Barry also provides some very lively music for the segments depicting Chaplin filming.  The cue “Discovering the Tramp/Wedding Chase” contains great examples of this aspect of the score.  The cue “The Roll Dance” is a particularly fun, old-fashioned turn-of-the-century nickelodeon style cue. This overall more up-beat approach becomes somewhat dominant during the later part of the score, as the film shifted its focus to Chaplin’s professional career.  This puts the score into a more upbeat territory as it progresses.

Central to score is a melodic love theme that suffers a bit from a perhaps slightly too close resemblance to the main theme from Dances With Wolves.  The theme starts off almost the same as the previous film’s theme before veering off with a different conclusion.  This theme is particularly prominent in the cue “Charlie Proposes”.

The soundtrack also includes instrumental, orchestral versions of Charlie Chaplin’s famous song “Smile” incorporated into the score at a few points.  The album also ends with a vocal performance of the song, sung by the film’s star Robert Downey Jr.  It is a kind of odd, modern pop arrangement and it would have been nice if the soundtrack had included a more straightforward performance of it as well.

The Charge of the Light Brigade (John Addison, 1968): This score was included in Film Score Monthly’s “MGM Soundtrack Treasury” boxed set.  The film was a remake of a 1936 Errol Flynn movie (with a score by Max Steiner) about the events surrounding England’s involvement in the 19th century Crimean War against Russia.

The album opens with a title song performed by Manfred Mann, featuring lyrics taken from Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson’s famous poem that served as a basis for the film’s storyline.  The song has a late-60s contemporary, folk song style.  The liner notes mention that it isn’t clear if the music to the song (which wasn’t used in the film) was written by score composer John Addison or by Mann, but the melody is not incorporated into the score.

The “Main Title” is a Victorian-style choral and orchestral work with a fairly royal sound to it.  This style continues to be incorporated into other parts of the score, with occasional repeats of this primary choral theme as well as other musical motifs that often bring to mind royalty. This includes some familiar, period-appropriate choral songs in the cues “War Fever” and “Across the Seas” as well as a very traditional sounding waltz in the cue “Lady Scarlett’s Ball”.  The score is heavy on brass fanfares and other brassy melodies. Strings are dominant in some of the more romantic sections of the score.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Danny Elfman, 2005): Tim Burton’s 2005 remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was largely a more faithful adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel, while also bringing Burton’s distinctive style to a story that was pretty well-suited to it.  It was definitely a challenge to remake a film that is a childhood favorite for many and still holds up well, but the result was a different take on the story that stands up quite well to the earlier version.

As usual, Burton enlisted Danny Elfman to write the music for the film and he provided one of his most enjoyable recent scores.  While this version was not a full musical like the earlier one, Elfman still did have the opportunity to write four songs for the Oompa Loompas as well as “Willy Wonka’s Welcome Song” that plays during the character’s first entrance.  The lyrics to the songs are taken directly from the versions of the songs in Dahl’s book, while Elfman provides some distinctively strange pop/rock style melodies for each.  The songs from this film actually resemble Elfman’s work with Oingo Boingo more than almost anything else he has done in his film scores.  The “End Credit Suite” cue is a reprise of the Welcome Song followed by instrumental versions of the Oompa Loompa songs.

The score occasionally uses the melodies of the songs as well as instrumental-only themes.  The score is very distinctly Elfman’s, complete with his trademark use of unusual orchestrations, otherworldly gothic choral elements, and very fast-paced and dynamic piano, string and brass instrumentation.  He also includes some of his more gentle, fairy-tale melodies for the quieter moments.  The exciting “Main Title” cue provides a great overview of the film’s themes and range of styles. While this score is definitely in the style that is most associated with Elfman, there is a reason why that style has become so popular.  This score really is an example of Elfman firing on all cylinders. 

Charlotte’s Web (Danny Elfman, 2006): Just a year after Charley and the Chocolate Factory, Danny Elfman once again took on the score for another film remake based on a classic children’s story.  His score for Charlotte’s Web was considerably less manic than his previous one, maintaining a gentle, fairly-tale style with a bit of a rural flavor to it.

The soundtrack opens with a very lively “Main Title” cue that is very string heavy, giving it a bit of an orchestral country feel.  It is melodic, although it doesn’t quite coalesce into a particularly distinctive theme.  In later cues, Elfman also adds quite a bit of fairly lively piano work as well as some nice woodwind melodies.  Brass is present, but mostly fairly muted.  Choral elements are used fairly sparingly, but are included periodically.

The most distinct thematic material in the score is a lullaby that is introduced with a child’s vocals in the cue entitled “Lullaby/Escape” early in the score.  The melody from this song is then weaved pretty liberally into the rest of the score, essentially serving as the film’s primary theme.  While the lullaby emphasizes the fairy-tale nature of the story, the rural setting is reflected by the pretty extensive use of violins, often with fast-paced, fiddle-style playing.

The soundtrack album ends with a folksy pop song entitled “Ordinary Miracle”, which is performed by Sarah McLaughlan.  The song was written by Glen Ballard Steward and David A. Stewart and is not connected to the score at all.

Checkmate (Johnny Williams, 1960): Originally released on LP at the time that the TV series was on the air, I believe that the TV soundtrack to “Checkmate” is the earliest album released of music composed by John Williams (billed as “Johnny” in those days).  I came across the LP at a record store back in the late 1980s and thought it was an especially cool find.  The album was released on CD by Film Score Monthly in 2006, paired on the disc with Williams’ 1961 jazz album “Rhythm in Motion”.

Performed by a relatively small ensemble primarily featuring horns and piano, this is a very jazz-oriented score that still provides some early examples of Williams’ melodic skills.  The album opens with the series’ main theme, which is a fast paced theme for horns, piano, and percussion.  Williams has often said that Henry Mancini was one of his earliest influences and it is definitely evident here with a theme that is cut from the same cloth as Mancini’s “Peter Gunn” (on which Williams played piano) as well as other similar themes from that era.

The album’s second cue, entitled “The Isolated Pawn”, is a moody, melodic piece that more closely resembles the more symphonic melodic style that would come to dominate the majority of Williams’ scores.  While still played by the smaller ensemble, and thus missing a string component, this piece is still pretty recognizably a John Williams composition.  Through the rest of the album, the music tends to shift back and forth between very jazzy, sometimes swing-styled music and the more moody, melodic elements.

Cherry 2000 (Basil Poledouris, 1987): For a time, the CD release of this soundtrack was one of the rarest titles out there and one of the most expensive to obtain on the secondary market.  It was an early release of the Varese Sarabande CD Club with only 1500 copies available and the rare copies that went up for sale often sold for hundreds of dollars.  In 2004, Prometheus Records released an expanded edition of the score (paired with Poledouris’ No Man’s Land).  While out-of-print as well now, that edition is currently fairly easy to find at reasonably inexpensive prices. Finally, the score is now available as a downloadable release as well.

The film itself is not a particularly well-regarded, kind of exploitative late-80s sci-fi entry, but the score is quite strong.  Poledouris provided an orchestral, fairly lush and melodic score that even could, at times, qualify as romantic in approach.  The score is pretty strongly thematic, with core melodies that sound like they could possibly have come from a western, but with carefully placed additions of electronic instrumentation used to give it a futuristic edge. 

This score hasn’t managed the same level of prominence as other Poledouris scores from that time period (the film was in theaters at the same time as Robocop), almost certainly because the film itself is so widely regarded as being terrible.  This is a case of a bad film inspiring a very strong score, though.  In fact, I think it is one of Poledouris’ best.

Chicago (John Kander & Fred Ebb, 2002): I had heard of the Kander & Ebb musical Chicago before the 2002 film version and was familiar with a couple of the songs (particularly “All That Jazz” and “Razzle Dazzle”), but I had never seen the show or even heard a cast album recording of it.  After hearing good things about the film, my wife and I decided to go see it and we thoroughly enjoyed it and quickly purchased the soundtrack CD afterward.

The film was cast with generally well-known actors, but most were not generally associated with musicals.  The two female leads were Catherine Zeta-Jones and Rene Zellweger while Richard Gere was in the most prominent male role.  All handled the musical performances extremely well and brought a considerable amount of personality to the roles.  Zeta-Jones’ performance (which won her an Oscar) was extremely high energy and tremendously amusing, while Zellweger showed a much darker side than she had generally shown in past performances.

Richard Gere was something of a revelation in his performance.  Not only does he handle the songs better than expected, he also brought a light touch to his overall performance (especially his singing) that was definitely a change from the usually grave and brooding performances for which he was generally known.  He has three major showstopper numbers in the film (“All I Care About”, “We Both Reached for the Gun”, and “Razzle Dazzle”) and all play extremely well both in the film itself and on the soundtrack album.

In the two most important supporting roles, they did cast actors with more of a musical background: John C. Reilly as Zellweger’s suffering husband and Queen Latifah as the prison warden.  Reilly, who had a fair amount of stage experience, has a part that is relatively small, but his one featured solo, “Mr. Cellophane”, is one of the musical’s most famous songs.  Latifah is the one performer in the film that probably saw the biggest career change from her performance.  Known almost exclusively as a hip-hop/rap performer up to that point, the skill with which she belted out the old-fashioned jazz number “When You’re Good to Mama” was quite a surprise.  She has since released at least one album of jazz standards.

Since seeing the movie and hearing the soundtrack, I did purchase the recent Broadway cast album featuring Bebe Newirth and Ann Reinking, but I have to say that I generally prefer the film soundtrack.  I’m sure much of that comes from simply becoming familiar with those performances first, but I simply find it to be a more lively and engaging version of the album.  The soundtrack album does include one new song that was written by Kander & Ebb for the film, “I Move On”, a duet performed by Zeta-Jones and Zellweger over the end credits.  One key song from the show, “Class”, was cut from the movie, but is still included on the soundtrack album.  It is a duet between Zeta-Jones and Latifah.

Danny Elfman was the surprising choice to provide additional musical score for the film and the soundtrack does contain two short cues of his contribution.  Both are very jazzy instrumentals that Elfman definitely designed to blend well with Kander’s compositions.  It is nice that a sampling of his music is included.  I’m not really sure how much additional music Elfman wrote for the film, but it is possible that these two cues are a pretty complete representation.

The soundtrack ends with two songs not used in the film.  The first is a hip-hop/rap version of “Cell Block Tango (He Had It Comin’)” performed by Queen Latifah along with a couple other hip-hop performers, which has very little resemblance to the original song.  The other is a totally unrelated pop song entitled “Love Is a Crime” performed by Anastacia.  Neither of these are to my taste and I generally skip them when listening to the album.  They are easy to ignore since they are at the very end.

Chicken Little (John Debney & various artists, 2005): This was the first fully computer animated feature from Disney’s Feature Animation division (Dinosaur featured live-action backgrounds) and had a fairly strange and uneven style that is reflected in the soundtrack album.  The album opens with a number of songs by various artists, some not written or recorded for the film (or both).  This is followed by a handful of cover songs performed by the film’s cast.  Finally, the album ends with about 15 minutes of John Debney’s score from the film.

The first cue on the song is actually a sort of modern updated remix of a song from another movie, Patti LaBelle’s “Stir It Up” from Beverly Hills Cop.  This version of the song adds some kind of hip-hop style electronic overlays and is credited to both LaBelle and Joss Stone.  The second cue is “One Little Slip” by Barenaked Ladies, which I think may have been specifically done for the film, although I’m not sure.  This part of the album continues with a cover of “Shake a Tail Feather” from Disney Channel stars The Cheetah Girls, “All I Know” from Five for Fighting, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” by Donna Summer, and R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)”.

The songs performed by the film’s cast are “We Are the Champions”, “Wannabe”, and “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”.  While these are familiar songs, of course, the performances by the film’s characters do make for fun versions that tie in well with the film.  The last one, in particular, is lots of fun and I can’t help wonder if the film might have worked better had they gone ahead and made it fully a musical instead of using so much music by various pop artists.  Note that these three cues are all extremely short, adding up to only just under 3 1/2 minutes total.

The best words to use to describe Debney’s score are probably “big” and “broad”.  He pretty much scores the film as if it were a big science fiction/fantasy epic.  The opening score cue, “The Sky Is Falling”, contains religous-sounding choral elements, old-fashioned science fiction motifs, and some driving, partly electronic action music.  The other score cues include a lot of brassy fanfares and pretty broad action music as well as some quieter, fairly rural sounding cues.  It is fun stuff, although I think it is reasonable to say that the score is as much all over the map as the songs, and the film itself, were.

Chicken Run (John Powell & Harry Gregson-Williams, 2000): The first full-length feature film from “Wallace and Grommit” creators Aardman Animation was a very loose parody of The Great Escape starring chickens  striving to escape from an oppressive chicken farm.  The score re-teamed composers John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams, who had previously teamed up for Antz and would later separately or together be very much in-demand as animation composers.

The score is a very lively orchestral work that, as the source material would suggest, contains a lot of parody music.  Of course, Elmer Bernstein’s famous Great Escape score is an obvious inspiration here, with a “Main Title” theme that isn’t a direct copy but certainly brings Bernstein’s score to mind.  One very obvious element that moves this theme more into comedy territory, though, is the composers’ use of a chorus of kazoos.  Additional color is added to the score through the use of harmonicas (particularly prominent in the cue “Chickens Are Not Organized”), bagpipes, and even whistling at various points.

The score is mainly orchestral with electronic elements occasionally included, but used very sparingly.  The composers also make very good use of choral elements in several cues, especially during the impressive finale cue “Lift Off”.  Typically, the choral elements are used to give the score a bit more of an epic scope in some of the film’s bigger sequences.  The score also includes a few cues that have some jazzy/swing rhythms, including in the cues “Rocky and the Circus” and “Flight Training”.  The score does occasionally include some more serious elements, particularly in the tender, even melancholy cue “Rocky, a Fake All Along”.

The soundtrack album also includes the songs “Flip Flop and Fly” performed by Ells Hall and “The Wanderer” performed by Dion.  Both are familiar songs that were used in the film, but were hardly original to them.  They seem a bit like padding on the soundtrack CD.

Cartoon Concerto (Bruce Broughton, 2003): I generally haven’t been including compilation albums in my reviews of my soundtrack collection (although I have many), but I am making an exception in order to call attention to this wonderful collection of cartoon scores composed by Bruce Broughton.  The scores are generally complete and not available anywhere else.  This is actually a promotional release, but copies can usually be tracked down with some searching.  At the time I’m writing this, there is one copy available at a reasonable price from the Amazon link above and Percepto Records (which, I believe, produced the album) has copies available from their website.

The CD includes complete scores to the Disney animated short “Off His Rockers” (which played with the Broughton-scored film Honey, I Blew Up the Kid) and the two Roger Rabbit shorts “Roller Coaster Rabbit” and “Trail Mix-Up”.  Also included is an 18-minute suite of music from Broughton’s numerous scores to the popular Steven Spielberg produced TV series “Tiny Toon Adventures”.  The CD also includes another 18 minute suite entitled “Scherzo Berzerko in 3 Portions”, which isn’t identified as coming from a specific source.  This is most likely a suite compiled from a variety of sources and, since this is a promo disc, it may be partly or entirely example music composed specifically for the promo.

Considering that the majority of the source music was pretty clearly inspired by the classic Warner Bros “Looney Toons” shorts, it isn’t surprising that Broughton’s style throughout this album calls to mind the work of Carl Stalling.  The music is all orchestral and extremely brass heavy with a very fast paced and lots of quick stings and humorous motifs, including occasional samples of familiar melodies.  The music is exceptionally well organized on this CD and it really does play like a cohesive symphonic work.  This disc is simply a lot of fun!

Casablanca (Max Steiner, 1942): Casablanca is a pretty likely candidate for being the most truly beloved of American films.  I’m sure there are people out there that don’t care for it, but I can’t say that I recall encountering any.  The movie was a nearly perfect mix of drama, romance, intrigue, and humor.  Max Steiner’s score and Dooley Wilson’s entertaining performances of several classic songs contributed a lot to the film’s success.

Rhino Records released a soundtrack CD, which contains a mix of dialog, songs, and score.  A better, purely score and songs release would certainly be welcome, although the Rhino release is probably a more commercially acceptable approach for this film.  The condition of the recordings is also surprisingly poor for such a famous film, with quite a bit of static and noise in many of the cues.  The orchestral score portions are in much better condition than the songs and dialog segments and sometimes there is a noticeable shift in quality even within a single cue.  In some cases, it sounds like the music may have come from LP sources.

The most famous music in the film is, of course, the song “As Time Goes By”, written by Herman Hupfeld.  The song wasn’t originally written for the film, but is now pretty much inseparably associated with it.  In addition to Wilson’s famous performance of the song, Steiner very frequently incorporates the melody into the score.  The rest of the score is extremely romantic, with extensive use of lush strings and piano melodies.  Some ethnic elements come into play, particularly during the medleys from the Paris sequences.

I’m generally not a fan of dialog on a soundtrack album and do feel that there is too much here.  On the other hand, Casablanca has such a rich selection of exceptionally well-known lines and speeches that it isn’t hard to understand why it was included.  Very little of the album features score that doesn’t have dialog and/or sound-effects over the top and it almost plays more like a story album than a score soundtrack.  At the end of the album, there are 3 cues, running about 15 minutes, that do present some of the score cues without the dialog.  A better presentation of Steiner’s score is definitely needed, but at least the key parts are there.

Casino Royale (David Arnold, 2006): For most of the history of the series, the producers of the James Bond movies had never been able to obtain the rights to Ian Fleming’s first novel featuring the character, Casino Royale.  Through various business deals, most notably one of the many times that MGM changed ownership, they were finally able to get the rights and produce a film that was released in 2006.  They took the opportunity to do a “reboot” of the series, casting Daniel Craig as a young and inexperienced Bond going on his first major mission after earning his license to kill.  The result was a the series’ biggest critical and financial success in years.

One major behind-the-scenes figure retained from the Pierce Brosnan starring Bond films was composer David Arnold, who was scoring his 4th consecutive film in the series.  Arnold really embraced the concept of the film, delivering a score that built the musical conventions of the series over time.  Over the course of the score, Arnold regularly hints at Monty Norman’s famous James Bond Theme, often presenting a couple recognizable notes of it, without playing it in full.  This all led up to a wonderfully full-blooded, orchestral performance of the classic theme that played over the film’s closing moments and end credits.  This works extremely well, allowing the music to play a definite role in the film’s concept of showing James Bond becoming the character the audience knows so well.

Arnold’s Bond scores have all shown a good balance between faithfulness to the series’ musical conventions that John Barry established, while still lending them a bit more of a contemporary sound.  The Barry style horns and fast paced strings are still there, but with a somewhat stronger emphasis on percussion.  The more direct jazz influences that dominated Barry’s work give way in Arnold’s scores to a bit more of a rock influence, including sparing use of electronics.  He also provides a nice piano and strings love theme, best presented in the cue “Vesper”.

Of course, distinctive opening title songs are another convention of James Bond films and this one has one of the best of recent memory.  Chris Cornell performed “You Know My Name”, which Cornell and Arnold co-wrote.  The song has a classic style that makes it recognizable as a James Bond theme, although it has a somewhat rougher, grittier sound in keeping with the film’s style.  Cornell’s somewhat gravelly voice gives it this grittier sound, while Arnold helps to deliver a melody that still sounds like a Bond theme, and which is incorporated periodically into the score.  Oddly, rights issues resulted in the song not being included on the soundtrack album.  It is available as a CD single or as an individual song download from the usual sources such as Amazon and iTunes.  The extra effort to obtain the song is definitely worthwhile.

The soundtrack album as included on the CD is a very good album presentation of the score, organized to provide a good overall listening experience.  It contains about an hour and 15 minutes of Arnold’s score and covers all the key thematic material.  Sony also made a deal with Apple to offer an exclusive to iTunes version that includes an additional 14 minutes of score as bonus tracks.  While the extra music isn’t essential, it does include some nice to have bits, particularly the music from the film’s prologue sequence.

Those extra tracks are all marked as “album only”, meaning that they can’t be purchased separately.  Unless you are willing to buy the standard album twice, you are basically faced with a choice between the higher sound quality of a lossless presentation on CD or getting the extra music but at the price of reduced sound quality.  I did opt to purchase the album from iTunes for the extra tracks, but I find it lamentable that the full score isn’t available with the best sound quality.

Casper (James Horner, 1995): The Steven Spielberg produced live action adaptation of the “Casper the Friendly Ghost” cartoons was a film that was much better than the source material ever would have suggested was possible.  Much of that was a result of an overqualified cast and crew, including a highly entertaining score from composer James Horner.

The score is one of the better, if somewhat lesser known, examples of the type of melodic, sentimental fantasy adventure scoring that was common to Horner’s output in the late 1980s and the early part of the 1990s.  The score’s strongest parts are built around variations of one primary theme, which is presented in a concert arrangement in the cue “Casper’s Lullaby”.  It is a gentle, sensitive theme that is played at various points on solo piano, woodwinds, strings, and even a few brass arrangements.  Choral elements also are used to elevate the theme at some points as well.  It is one of Horner’s strongest melodies from that period of his career and it is very well used in the score.

The film’s format as a family friendly, kind of sentimentally comedic haunted house movie does also provide Horner the opportunity to write some light suspense cues, sometimes with a bit of a comic tone.  The cue “First Haunting/The Swordfight” is a good example of this aspect of the score.  Particularly during the first half, it includes some harsh strings, sudden bursts of brass, minor key piano, and a few brief choral outbursts.  It then transitions into a more fully adventure-oriented conclusion, with lots of strings and brass.

While Horner does not use the well-known TV series theme song in the score, the soundtrack album does include a performance of it by Little Richard, which I believe played over the first part of the end credits.  The album also includes another song entitled “Remember Me This Way”, which is performed by Jordan Hill.  This song was written by David Foster and Linda Thompson and is a fairly typical early 90s pop song.

The Cassandra Crossing (Jerry Goldsmith, 1978): This score comes from one of Jerry Goldsmith’s strongest periods both creatively and in the caliber of films that he was being hired to score.  While a fairly short LP program was released with the film and has been re-issued a few times, the best representation of this score is definitely the 2-CD set put out by the Belgian label Prometheus Records, which includes both the full score and the LP program.

One of Goldsmith’s trademark strengths was his skill at composing lush, romantic main themes, usually with a strong string and woodwind base, as a central component to action film scores.  These themes would help to provide a strong emotional anchor, something that was especially helpful in films like this one that have a strong focus on ordinary people in peril.  First presented during the “Main Title” cue, the main theme to The Cassandra Crossing is well used during most of the score’s quieter, more character driven segments and is also effectively dropped in during some of suspense and action sequences to better connect them with the human element.

The score also has some great, driving action cues.  The second cue on the soundtrack, “Break In”, includes some extremely wild and aggressive string playing that is very impressive.  In the cue “Train on the Move”, he includes some atonal, basically mechanical sounding elements that eventually transition into some really kinetic action music, all of which really plays up the on-board a train setting of the film.  Many of the action cues also have a progressive rhythm that helps to convey the sense of the moving vehicle.  Occasional atonal elements somewhat resemble the style Goldsmith used in his famous Planet of the Apes score, making this a very rare example of him mixing that approach with his usual, more melodic action scoring.

The original LP program was a much shorter (less than 30 minutes) presentation of the score that, not surprisingly, focused mainly on the melodic main theme and some of the more accessible action music.  While there are a few hints of the score’s more atonal elements, the bulk of that material was absent. 

The LP also included two songs, including “It’s All a Game” which is based on Goldsmith’s primary theme and featured lyrics by Hal Shaper.   The version on the Prometheus album is instrumental only and I am not sure if the original album included an actual vocal version.  The instrumental basically sounds like a pop/disco version of the theme.  The other song is called “I’m Still on My Way” and was written by Dave Jordan and performed by Ann Turkel.  The Prometheus album includes the album version of Turkel’s performance of the song plus an instrumental version (which also has the backing vocals) and a vocal-only track.  The song has kind of a folksy/country sound and doesn’t really fit too well with the score.

Cast a Long Shadow (Gerald Fried, 1959): This score was included as part of a Film Score Monthly 3-CD collection of scores from five different movie westerns released by United Artists.  The collection was originally released for $35, but is now out of print and used copies tend to go for much higher prices.

Fried’s score was from a fairly lesser known western that was classified as a B-movie.  The score is a generally colorful, fully-orchestral score that follows a lot of the standard western conventions.  The “Main Title’ cue opens with big brassy fanfares, with a strong emphasis on trumpet.  At various points, the score incorporates the other various instruments most commonly associated with westerns, including harmonica, banjo, and acoustic guitar. 

Despite it being a fairly conventional western score, Fried creates some very good melodies and it is a fun score to listen to.  The set includes a fairly generous 41 minutes of the score, which the liner notes indicate to be a complete presentation.

Cast Away (Alan Silvestri, 2001): This score is an extremely unusual case.  Robert Zemeckis hired his usual collaborator, Alan Silvestri, to score this film which, of course, generated interest in the music within the soundtrack community.  Zemeckis made the artistic decision, though, to leave the film unscored for the first 1 hour and 24 minutes of its 2 hour and 20 minute running time, which didn’t really leave enough music for a full soundtrack album. 

While there is about 20 minutes or so of score during the final act of the film, it is all built around a single theme that Silvestri wrote for a relatively small ensemble.  It is a fairly quiet, melancholy theme that principally features the oboe, piano, and the orchestra’s string section.  It is a great theme and this musical approach works amazingly well in the film.  The scene where the Tom Hanks character leaves the island where he had been stranded and the score swells up for the very first time is rather breathtaking.

Obviously, the nature of the score made a full soundtrack release a difficult prospect at best.  Varese Sarabande came up with a pretty good solution, though.  They licensed the 7 minute closing credits suite and released it as the anchor for a compilation album that contained suites from each of Silvestri’s scores for Zemeckis’ films to date.  The suite contains a complete presentation of Silvestri’s theme and then ends with a couple minutes of ocean sounds intermixed with brief orchestral bursts.  The result is a very effective orchestral suite that is quite evocative of the film.  The inclusion of the other Silvestri/Zemeckis scores makes for an overall great compilation album as well.

Catch Me If You Can (John Williams, 2002): This is one of the most atypical scores in John Williams’ catalog.  The jazz style certainly really stands out as a significant stylistic change of pace among his scores for Steven Spielberg’s films, although I don’t want to overstate it as the score contains many orchestral melodies that are distinctly and recognizably Williams’.  This score has become one of Williams’ favorites to include during his concerts as it provides a great opportunity both to showcase skilled jazz instrumental soloists and the performances of the full orchestra.

As a primary approach, Williams chose to score this film using a predominantly jazz-inspired orchestral approach.  Substantial sections of the score feature solo saxophone, sometimes playing clearly defined melodies but also frequently performing in a highly improvisational-sounding (but not truly improvisation) manner.  One of the most impressive accomplishments of this score is Williams’ success at making the music sound like improvisational jazz even as though the players are still performing to a fully defined score.  Piano is also more dominant in this score than is often the case for Williams, with the pianist occasionally joining with the saxophone in the pseudo-improvisation.

Even with the jazz inspired approach, Williams still makes substantial use of the full orchestra.  The solo saxophone and piano segments are nearly always eventually joined by the full orchestra, often providing highly melodic counterpoints.  As I noted at the top, the orchestral elements are recognizably in Williams’ traditional style, bringing an impressive fullness to the music.  One of the most impressive examples of this is in the cue “Reflections (The Father’s Theme)” which opens with a lengthy solo saxophone section, before having the full orchestra join in to bring the piece to a finish.

Spielberg worked hard to clearly depict the film’s period settings and, thus, very effectively made us of period contemporary popular songs during several key sequences.  The soundtrack CD includes Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly With Me”, Stan Getz’s “The Girl from Ipanema”, Judy Garland’s “Embraceable You”, Nat King Cole’s “The Christmas Song” and Dusty Springfield’s "The Look of Love”.  All of these are the original recordings that are available elsewhere, but their inclusion does make the album an effective representation of the film’s overall musical identity.  Even with the songs, the CD still contains a pretty generous 44 minutes of Williams’ score.