HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE soundtrack
© Warner Bros.
Patrick Doyle's Goblet of Fire
By: Randall D. LarsonDate: Thursday, November 24, 2005
THIS WEEK'S RECOMMENDATIONS
Patrick Doyle has proven to be an outstanding choice to compose the music to the fourth film in J.K. Rowling's cinematic franchise, HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE. Based on Rowling's then-longest and darkest series entry, director Mike Newell's sumptuous visualization of the fourth book is an extravagant fantasy peopled with the author's wonderfully developing characters while strongly tinged with the peril of Potter's ongoing nemesis, the malevolent malefactor Voldemort.
Academy Award-nominated composer Doyle is best known for his mainstream drama scores for DONNIE BRASCO, BRIDGET JONES' DIARY, HAMLET, and SENSE AND SENSIBILITY; but he has also proven very adept in more fantastical storytelling with his scores for MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN, the fancifully animated QUEST FOR CAMELOT, and this year's enchanted comedy, NANNY McPHEE. The world of Hogswort comes to a very vivid life with Doyle's capable hands, reflecting both the thrill of victory and agony of defeat that are perpetuated in large measures throughout the film's story.
Doyle brings with him an elegant gift for melody and thematic interaction, and his score proves to be very much the match for John Williams' previous three Potter scores (the second, HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, was actually sculpted by composer William Ross around Williams' themes, with Williams' help). Doyle adopts Williams' main theme and uses it sparingly but effectively to capture the abiding spirit of Harry Potter's world (on the CD, Williams' theme appears only on the first track; in the film it recurred more often throughout the score). As the story describes the challenges of athletic competition first a world Quidditch match and then the unique Tri-Wizard tournament in which Harry takes place and then imposes a dark malevolency upon that competition, Doyle provides both plenty of customary pomp and circumstance for the schoolyard pageantry ("Hogwarts' March," "The Goblet of Fire," "Hogwarts' Hymn") and plenty of vigorous action/adventure/danger music that's correlated with the various challenges and eventual horror that Harry confronts in the process of competing.
"The Quidditch World Cup" has overtones of Scottish and Irish musical influences as Doyle crafts a lavish overture that resonates muscularly over Newell's flying visual panoramas of the Quidditch tournament site. Energetic male chants suggest the sweat and musculature of the competition, but then "The Dark Mark" intrudes on the festivities with overtones of malevolence as Valdemort's wicked sign appears in the clouds and heralds the arrival of the Death Eaters. A stately and academic motif is provided for the Goblet of Fire, which selects which students will compete in the Tri-Wizard tournament; the cue turns suddenly cold and harsh, with powerful descents of brass and percussion, as Harry's name is unexpectedly called. Doyle composed a particularly witty and frenzied scherzo for the mendacious Daily Prophet reporter Rita Skeeter. A viciously slithering orchestral accompaniment for deep brass and Herrmannesque chord progressions exemplifies the demonic wizard "Voldemort," accentuated by bitter shards of brass and drums.
"Harry in Winter" is the score's loveliest track, a gorgeously lyrical melody that isn't used thematically anywhere else in the score, but resonates beautifully from strings over piano, capturing a mood of adventure, excitement, and romance as Harry grows into his role of heroic challenger; it serves as a momentary love theme for Harry and Cho Chang. The dramatic resonance of "The Black Lake" thunders with the full power of the London Symphony Orchestra, swelling with swirls of danger and vivid splashes of urgency as Harry tries to rescue his friends from the mer-peoples' trap. "The Maze" is the score's other terrific action piece, as Doyle furiously describes the battle between Harry and his fellow competitors within the huge magical maze that eventually pits Harry against Voldemort and culminates in one of the series' most profound calamities. In the midst of the cue's tremendous darkness, however, comes one of Doyle's most profound melodies, echoing the passion and the power of Harry Potter, victorious.
"Foreign Visitors Arrive" is a terrific track, as Doyle proffers a number of vivid and vibrant melodic motifs that herald the arrival of the guests from the other schools. "Harry Sees Dragons" contains some marvelously dramatic crescendos as Harry is shown his adversaries in the first Tri-Wizard challenge. "Golden Egg" provides incredible accompaniment for Harry's flight from the dragon and his triumphant capture of the golden egg it had been guarding, as bold statements of brass and harp and percussion resound victoriously. "Neville's Waltz" is a graceful and cultured three-step motif; its counterpart, "Potter's Waltz," is less refined but more free-spirited, if not a bit mischievous in tonality. "Underwater Secrets" contains the plaintive song of the golden egg as it reveals the second clue of the competition, a sing-songy tune chanted by a solo female singer. With it's diversity from lyrical melody of "Harry in Winter" to the dark dementia of "Voldemort," Doyle has succeeded in crafting not only a worthy follow-up to John Williams' signature HARRY POTTER music, but also turns in one of the most provocative and powerful scores of the year.
Oh and just when you've gotten into the majesty and enchantment of Doyle's wondrous orchestral rhythms and melodies, you're shaken out of it by the most raucous and intrusive change of style and tone and texture, as three heavy metal/rock songs, one of which is heard during the second half of the Christmas Ball and I don't know where the other two appear in the film, if at all. They're actually rather good songs, but coming at the end of Doyle's enchanting orchestral music and introduced with an arrogantly thrashy, screeching, cacophonic rockstar spoken introduction, the mood is shattered completely. Program your CD to stop after track 21 and spare yourself the disturbance then listen to tracks 22-24 on their own when you come back for a much better listening experience.
For more information, see: www.harrypottersoundtrack.com
For an interview with Patrick Doyle about this score, see: www.musicfromthemovies.com/sotw.asp?ID=45
FILM MUSIC NEWS
On November 6th, the Italian Master Francesco de Masi died of cancer in his home at the age of 75 years. De Masi was an extremely prolific composer and arranger during the 1960s, nearly rivaling the output of his countryman Ennio Morricone. De Masi scored more than 200 films and TV shows during his career. His work is familiar to fans of Spaghetti Westerns, Giallos, Sword and Sandal epics and horror films, and his filmography includes such entertainments as for the Spaghetti Western lovers. He's best known for scoring ARIZONA COLT, LONE WOLF MCQUADE, 7 WINCHESTER PER UN MASSACRO, SARTANA DOES NOT FORGIVE, and VADO L'AMAZZO E TORNO, many of which were released in Italy on LP and CD, though few reached American shores except as imports. He also composed the music for Lucio Fulci's grisly horror film, THE NEW YORK RIPPER, AN ANGEL FOR SATAN, spy movies like KOMMISSAR X, sword-and-sandle epics like THE TRIUMPH OF HERCULES, and many others. For an appreciation of DeMasi's work, read Tim Lucas' thoughts at Video Watchdog at:
www.videowatchdog.com/watchblog/2005/11/francesco-de-masi-1930-2005.html
Varèse Sarabande has announced the four November titles in its limited edition CD Club and of course the most sought-after has already sold out within hours of going on sale: Maurice Jarre's symphonic score for the comedy TOP SECRET! Recorded by London's Royal Philharmonic, the broadly scored comedy has long been one of the most requested catalog titles. Check Varese' German distributor and then the usual soundtrack retailers they bought up most of the copies so even though all 1,000 copies are sold out on the Varese site, the title is sure to turn up just like previous quick-to-sell-out titles like THE KINDRED and TRUE CONFESSIONS did.
Also announced, in slightly larger quantities but also potentially a short-seller is Bill
THE SCALPHUNTERS
© Varese
And finally, after fifty years of languishing in the studio archives, Victor Young's glorious score for THE LEFT HAND OF GOD is released for the very first time. Young's score is an exceptionally beautiful one. It is exotic and shimmering and truly one of the composer's finest. The Club CDs will ship on Novembr 28th.
After his additional music credit on SPIDER-MAN 2, Christopher Young has been hired to compose the original score for SPIDER-MAN 3, to be released on May, 7th, 2007. Young has worked for Sam Raimi before, scoring his low-key thriller THE GIFT as well as THE GRUDGE, which Raimi produced. Danny Elfman, who scored the first two films, has left the SPIDER-MAN series and expressed his disappointment after his experiences on SPIDER-MAN 2, where the filmmakers wanted the temp track have too much of an influence on the original score.
GDM Music in Italy has re-released Ennio Morricone's seminal score to Sergio Leone's masterpiece, C'ERA UNA VOLTA IL WEST (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE
WAR OF THE WORLDS
© DreamWorks
ABC's upcoming mini-series THE TEN COMMANDMENTS will get an original score
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
© ABC
SoundtrackNet has posted an exclusive "First Listen" for Harry Gregson-Williams' large-scale score to THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. Based on the best-selling novel by C.S. Lewis, the film opens December 9, and the soundtrack comes out on December 13. "Building up his career as one of Hollywood's top composers, Harry Gregson-Williams has come a long way since his days of working with Hans Zimmer in the late 90's," writes author Mike Brennan. "Stepping off the success of his collaborations with John Powell on ANTZ, CHICKEN RUN and SHREK, he broke into his mainstream solo career with SPY GAME in 2001, which was quickly followed by blockbusters such as SHREK 2, MAN ON FIRE, and this year's KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. Each film Gregson-Williams scores expands his repertoire to a slightly new genre: THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA is his first journey into the world of live-action epic fantasy, and it gave him a wonderful opportunity to pull out all the stops."
The production of the score for THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA was on a grand scale," Brennan continues. From late September until early November, Gregson-Williams conducted the 75-piece Hollywood Studio Symphony and supervised the recording of the 140-member choir at Abbey Road in London. Additional solo musicians were recorded at his Wavecrest Studio, including vocalist Lisbeth Scott and electric violinist Hugh Marsh. The result is simply astounding. Bold orchestrations, strong choir, and careful thematic development define this score as one of the best of the year." Read the whole article and listen to the soundbytes at:
www.soundtrack.net/features/article/?id=169
A new interview with Don (THE MATRIX) Davis has been posted at the Music from the Movies web site. It's mostly a discussion about classical ("serious") music and its relation to film music. As always, Don has a number of interesting and intelligent observations to share.
http://www.musicfromthemovies.com/feature.asp?ID=46 -
An update on the KING KONG score from www.kingisking.net: "James Newton Howard and Peter Jackson are working hard on the KING KONG score with 4 weeks left to go. James Howard and his 'King Kong Roadshow' are in and around LA recording the score as it trickles out of his mind and onto paper. These musicians have to be on top of their game to be able to learn this music very, very fast. We get some great sound-bytes from the recoding sessions and a look at some of the interesting instruments James is using for his score. 4 weeks to go and the pressure is on"
FSM's Silver Age soundtrack for November is the unreleased Jerry Fielding score to Sam Peckinpah's THE GETAWAY. For several years, the Peckinpah-Fielding association was one of the most potent director/composer collaborations in cinema
THE GETAWAY: Jerry Fielding's Original Score
© Film Score Monthly
www.screenarchives.com/fsm/detailCD.cfm?ID=350
The CD is paired with FSM's Golden Age Classic for November, Bronislau Kaper's melodic scores for INVITATION/A LIFE OF HER OWN, a pair of domestic dramas starring Dorothy Maguire (INVITATION) and Lana Turner (A LIFE OF HER OWN) and featuring nicely melodic scores from the composer of THEM! and MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY.
www.screenarchives.com/fsm/detailCD.cfm?ID=349
Intrada will release Laurence Rosenthal's score for THE ECHO OF THUNDER, a 1998 Hallmark Hall of Fame production based on the award-winning novel by Libby Hathorn and directed by Emmy Award-winner Simon Wincer (Lonesome Dove, Quigley Down Under). THE ECHO OF THUNDER vividly captures the struggles and triumphs of a close-knit Australian family in the harsh Australian outback. Rosenthal fashions a probing, sensitive orchestral score with a focus on haunting themes and sensitive orchestrations. Solo writing for clarinet, flute and oboe against strings are standout features. Balancing these gentle colors are several exciting pieces accompanying numerous outdoor sequences. In addition to a full symphony orchestra, Rosenthal incorporates the distinct sound of the didgeridoo in a couple of key sequences to identify the locale. Intrada presents the premiere release of this beautiful score in a special limited "Signature Edition" of 1000 copies.
For cover art, track listing, and sound samples, please visit http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.ACCT67745/it.A/id.4574/.f
La-La Land Records will release on December 6th LOST IN SPACE: 40th Anniversary Limited Edition, a remastered 2-CD set commemorating the best musical moments of one of television's most beloved Sci-Fi series. The CD features more than 65 minutes of never-before-released music some of the best music ever created for television, from acclaimed composers Herman Stein, Alexander Courage, Leigh Harline, Cyril Mockridge, Gerald Fried, Fred Steiner, Leith Stevens and John Williams a decade before he revitalized science fiction films music with STAR WARS.
FILM MUSIC ON DVD: WAR OF THE WORLDS
The limited 2-DVD special edition of WAR OF THE WORLDS that was released by Paramount this week includes a 12-minute segment on John Williams' score for the film on the second disc (these features do not appear on the single disc DVD). We see Williams conducting the recording sessions recording the score to picture, a few shots showing scenes with the sound effects dialed down to emphasize almost an isolated score, and a handful of intriguing comments from both Spielberg and Williams about the creation of the score.
"This is the first picture that I've ever done with John Williams where he did not get to see the picture before he began writing the score," says director Steven Spielberg in an interview recording during the scoring process, before it was recorded. "John is writing the music in a semi-vacuum. When he first sat down to watch the movie, I only had 6 of 12 reels complete, so he only saw 60 minutes of the movie and began writing he never saw the last 60 minutes of the movie! But he said he had enough of an experience in the first sixty minutes that he knew how to write it. I have no preconception of what it's going to sound like except John keeps reassuring me that it's going to be really different from anything he's done before."
"Steven's other space epics are all very warm and welcoming, in terms of the visitors," says Williams. "This movie is a change for him... with aliens that are so destructive. It's an interesting deviation for Steven, and so it creates a different musical opportunity and a different role for the orchestra. There are a few sections in there, a few cuts to the alien machines, where the orchestra does a grand gesture, like a classic monster film, so we just sort of doff our caps, give a referential nod to the genre."
Williams describes the intersection scene, where the alien machine first emerges, as one of the most terrifying things he's ever seen. "Where we first have the bodies being evaporated by the strike of the aliens, we have orchestral gestures and sound effects,
C'ERA UNA VOLTA IL WEST (ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST)
© GDM Music
"There are some male voices in some sections of the basemen scene, because we have some very interesting sound effects for the probe, and also for the aliens themselves," says Williams. "But if you dig really deeply into that soundtrack the music track, there are men singing even below the Russian bass; it goes into almost a register of Tibetan monks, which is the lowest kind of pitch that our bodies are able to make, and I have a group of men doing that very softly."
Williams describes the score's brief use of electronics, which appear at the start and the end of the film. "The film begins musically with an electronically-assembled group of sounds that I put on paper - I would just write it like I would write an orchestra score describing what I think the sounds can be, and then someone with a synthesizer would develop those sounds and put it together with step by step," he says. "Only two places, in the beginning which accompanies the Morgan Freeman narration, and equally at the end of the film, as the camera proceeds along the limb of what we think is a dead tree and one of the buds on the tree is alive and we see that life is there, and you hear, cyclically closing, Morgan Freeman's voice and again, the orchestra morphs into electronics."
Williams describes one of the film's memorable images when Ray's character comes out of the destroyed house and he sees the crashed plane there. "That music was not intended to be there," he explains. "That was part of the epilog, which comes at the very end of the End Credit, and Steven came in and said 'you know the trumpet that is playing in the middle of the epilog, how do you think that would be for when Ray comes out and he sees the plane?' I thought it was an inspired idea, to put that epilog, which I wrote for some other purpose, I thought it was a wonderful solution to that moment. It's not the first time he's done that."
FILM MUSIC ON DVD: KING KONG
This week's other big genre release the very long-awaited and beautifully realized
THE KING KONG COLLECTION
© Warner Bros.
"Without the contribution of Max Steiner's wonderful musical score, and Murray Spivack and the sound effects that he provided, Kong wouldn't have the same impact," says Doug Turner, author of Making-of-KONG book Spawn of Skull Island. "You wouldn't have the empathy that you have, the music underplays what he's doing on screen, and gives it those larger than life proportions. The sound effects, too, add to his character."
Austrian-born Max Steiner, known as "the Dean of film music composers," created the first great Hollywood film score with KING KONG. Prior to that, films had no scores they had main and end title music, like Universal's DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN did, but no underscore working to link the audience emotionally to the characters, environments, and situations depicted on screen. With KING KONG, Max Steiner changed all of that, forever, and proved the power of dramatic orchestral underscoring in motion pictures. With KING KONG, Steiner composed one of the greatest cinematic scores ever written," rightly notes the featurette narrator.
Initially, however, cash-strapped RKO wanted to score the film with pre-existing cues from its music library, refusing to pay for a new score by Steiner.
"Steiner said 'there's no music to cover a film like this. We've never done anything like this!,'" explains author Jon Burlingame (Sound and Vision: 60 Years of Motion Picture Soundtracks). "So Producer Merian C. Cooper came to the rescue. He knew what Max could do, and he said to Max, just do what you have to do, make this picture work. And so Max set out to write and original score for KONG. He started in December of 1932 and worked over eight weeks to create about 70-plus minutes of music."
"The beginning of what we call modern film composing really begins with KING KONG," notes Peter Jackson, director of the 2005 KONG. "There was a lot of music that had been done in silent movies, which obviously were never silent, they always had musical accompaniment, and people had always written music for film. Steiner was really the first person to write a complex symphonic score that is tied so directly to the pictures. I guess that's where his achievement in KONG is really notable, in how themic and precise his writing was to picture, It isn't simply a musical piece being played and put up against the images he's weaving his music in and around the cuts of the film."
"He understood the arc of Kong's character," notes Burlingame. "When we first see him, Ann is scared to death, and that's very clear in Max's music. But gradually, over time, we see visually what's happening between Kong and Ann. And, while Jack Driscoll and Denham are chasing him, on one side of the film, there's a relationship growing between Ann and Kong as the film unfolds, Steiner spotted that, he saw that, and he makes that understood, musically."
"I look at Steiner as something of a sculptor as well as a musician," says James D'Arc, Curator of the Merian C. Cooper papers at the Brigham Young University. "Using specific themes for each character, or leitmotifs as they are called, he formed a shape and a characterization for each character in Kong that you could not have in the same way in the silent era."
"Kong has his own theme it's three descending notes," says Burlingame. "Ann Darrow has her own theme, written in ¾ time (most of the time), developed and varied so that it can be a romantic mood or later on can be somewhat agitated, if she's in jeopardy or danger."
By the end of the film, says Burlingame, "it's Steiner's music that reminds us that in fact [Kong] has a heart, and he has a soul, so that by the time those airplanes are attacking him while he's atop the building, shielding Ann, we hate those planes! We're devastated by the death of Kong, because by that time, we understand him, and it's Steiner's music that has moved us in that direction, so that by the time the end of the film comes, we've really felt something for this character that, amazingly, was just a special effect."
Former editor/publisher of CinemaScore magazine, Randall Larson was for many years senior editor for Soundtrack Magazine and a film music columnist for Cinefantastique magazine. He is the author of Musique Fantastique: A Survey of Film Music in the Fantastic Cinema (Scarecrow, 1984) and Music from the House of Hammer (Scarecrow, 1995). In addition to Soundtrax and Music News for Cinescape.com, Randall reviews soundtracks Music from the Movies, writes for Film Music Magazine, and in many other fields.
Recommended Soundtrack sources:
www.buysoundtrax.com
www.intrada.com
www.screenarchives.com
www.footlight.com
www.arksquare.com/index_main.html (Japan)
www.intermezzomedia.com/ (Italy)
www.moviegrooves.com
www.moviemusic.com
For questions or comments, contact the author at Soundtrax@cinescape.com
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