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.

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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”.

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