'In Taxi Driver, just as the torment of his personality refuses to leave him, the movie stresses us out with a dreary, hypnotic narration, and the famous Bernard Hermann score, whose percussion is loud, commanding and scary, and underlined by a queasy saxophone track, unrefined and sleazy.'

'Bernard Hermann's soundtrack, which he wrote shortly before his death, turns Travis's ordinary life into what is sometimes a heroic epic, sometimes a horror film, and other times no more than just another New York story. Two major themes dominate the score of Taxi Driver. The first features an eight-bar melodic sighing of a solo saxophone. The theme evokes the lonely melancholy of an individual alienated from his environment. The smooth, jazzy tones of the saxophone also complement New York's urban terrain, which we see as Travis passes through the various neighborhoods of the city in his taxi. The theme varies somewhat, particularly in tempo, but it follows Travis in his taxi as he drives his often sordid passengers around the city.
Travis's psychotic tendencies shine through in a second theme, characterized by an unresolved, dissonant chord played by trumpets over rhythmic snare drums. At various points in the movie, a harp joins the trumpets and snare. At the beginning of the movie, the trumpets punctuate moments that augur Travis's instability, such as when he hits Iris with his car. While Travis descends gradually into psychosis, this theme becomes dominant in the score. The unresolved chords of the blaring trumpets echo Travis's feelings of discord with the city, and the snare drums propel him to action. The unresolved quality of this theme is characteristic of several Hitchcock movie scores, particularly that of Vertigo, which Hermann also composed.'

There's a difference between loud and unsubtle.

Come off it already.

Anyone else like the Hymn to the Fallen?

Not really. It's certainly the highlight of SPR, but it's nothing special, even if it does beat half of the stuff coming out of everyone else. It also reminds me of "Cadilac of the Skies". Must be the fact I get sick of the choir.

I didn't particularly like the SPR score. Just like the rest of the movie...
Okay-ish with outstanding moments.

Im a huge fan of John William's, I think his best work was in Home Alone, and Jurassic Park. I personally love "Setting the Trap" from Home Alone, and the Jurassic Park theme from the first movie. Another good composer from this century is Basil Poledouris, he did some scores for the Free Willy movies, "Friends Montage" being one of them. Nonetheless, John will always be one of my favourites, with Basil following close behind ~_^.

Excellent, excellent news. The Witches of Eastwick, one of Williams' best and rarest scores, is being re-issued by "Collector's Choice". This score for me is what Hook is to a lot of people, and does sound like a precursor to that score (having been written close to the same time as Williams started writing the original musical version of Peter Pan, which ended up as Hook) which is evident in the "Dance of the Witches". I also happen to think everyone should experience "The Balloon Sequence" once in their lifetime.

I is very happy.

Where is the four-disc SACD rerecording of the Indy scores?

Indeed. It's one of my other favorite scores of his, but I especially like the arrangement he did of the theme for violin solo and piano. Devilish and full of showy licks for the soloist.

We may never see an american release of Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom due to many mitigating factors. While a rerecording would be possible - Silva did a nice Indy Trilogy disc in 2004 - the original masters are lost and thought destroyed. The only place to order the CD is overseas, usually in Asia.

I actually think a rerecording is in the works, LeHah, from Silva Screen Records. Whether it's better than the trilogy rerecording remains to be seen - I for one am hopeful, as I was disappointed in that album. But maybe I just don't like the Prague Philharmonic.

Are masters the unmixed, raw recordings or what? Can't the sheet music be used for a new recording?

The masters would be the raw recording sessions, which are probably on a BETA tape since I think they got rid of reel-to-reel in the... 1970s? (John Barry's The Black Hole was the first digital recording for a soundtrack)

I dont know about the sheet music but it's not unheard of. Sometimes music is locked up by a composer (Alex North's 2001) and sometimes the music is just plain lost (all the choral sheet work for Basil Poledouris's Conan The Barbarian) and sometimes is destroyed (Hugo Friedhofer's Joan Of Arc)

Then again, how hard would it be for someone to sit down and transcribe this music from the movie itself?

You'd be very surprised.

First off, for reasons beyond me, film score people are idiot snobs that turn their noses up at rerecordings. I personally love some of the Telarc and Silva Screen CDs but a lot of people wave their arms and scream that if its not the original recording, its flawed somehow.

Also, attempts to 'fill the gaps' with new transcription end up very badly. Silva did this for their Conan The Barbarian suite and its a godawful mess.

Couldn't a computer basically do all the work for you? Just take the sound track from the movie, minus human voices and translate the wave form into a midi/sheet music?

And wow, that is pretty elitist. Even classical snobs relish in how often a piece is performed in different ways by different people.

I don't personally know enough about such technology but I don't think thats possible considering the depth of sound. I mean, a 100+ peice orchestra and 80+ person choir (I forget the number of people in the London Voices when ToD was recorded) is pretty damned dense, especially if you consider the really "big" moments of music in the score (The Mine Car Chase, the Temple Of Doom).

It would be more fesible to hire a professional orchestrator and have them transcribe than have a computer do it - but thats just me.

Three things you never bring up on a film score message board:

*Danny Elfman's Batman was so good becuase Shirley Walker orchestrated and conducted it
*John Williams is better than Jerry Goldsmith
*Rerecordings can be good and are sometimes better than the original recordings (IE: Silva's recording of First Knight compared to the original album release)

The track "The Face of Pan" is simply superb. I never really liked Hook as a film, but the scene where that little black kid (can't remember his name) starts touching Peter Pan's face, with that music playing, is beautiful...

I can only comment on the Sliva "Indy" compilation as that's the only full rerecorded album I own, but it's a mix of both worlds for me. Some parts are transcribed horridly, such as the "Medallion" theme in "Ark Trek" which is missing notes and has wrong harmonisation, resulting in the effect of the orchestra skipping over notes because they were hard (which I know is not the case, but it's still there after eharing the original). On the other hand, I think the rerecording of the End Credits suite from ToD is rich and wonderful, particularly the Love Theme (which, in my opinion, is up with "Balloon Sequence" as best love theme ever). It's slower than the original recording, but I think it works much better.

I think most of the time it's not just the fact it's a rerecording that annoys people. It's when there are blatantly wrong notes, terrible acoustics (which apparetnyl plague Prague recordings) and other issues in addition to questionable interpretations (which in itself isn't really a problem as that's the idea of interpretation). Charles Gerhardt's rerecording of ESB is one example of a brilliant rerecording, one which some argue is superior to the original but of course which others would consider blasphemy.

The technology that exists to do so is too sensitive; natural sounds and effects in a proper recording such as reverb, breathing, page turning/chair creaking and general noise don't transcribe at all well, resulting in blobs of notes all over the place. And that raises an important issue that I believe will soon confront the film and classical mediums of music - using technology to make things "easier". I'm not about to say I disrespect Danny Elfman for not arranging or orchestrating or doing anything else to his own music beyond humming it into a tape recorder, nor praising Howard Shore simply because his LotR opus was written, orchestrated and conducted himself. But is it really a good idea for such technology to be used in the mainstream orchestral industry? Sure, people complain that human transcriptions are flawed and don't sound right, but I'd take that over a robot's interpretations of something as sensitive as music. I know you weren't suggesting it for anything more than for lost sheet music/masters, but if and when the technology is developed I doubt it will stop there.

And just to add a little bit more on the subject of lost tapes/music and ToD, the masters are apparently nowhere and I don't know if someone holds the orginal scores. Williams certainly doesn't keep most of his music except for his initial sketches (i.e. before it's sent off to be professionally printed for the orchestra).

Don't get me wrong - not everything Silva has done is gold. Their earliest discs are especially painful, but they've really put out some real gems in terms of new recordings. Their version of "The Mine Cart Chase" on that Indy disc is above and beyond the original recording in terms of performance, enthusiasm and sound quality. They also did a fantastic version of "Dance Of The Witches" from Witches Of Eastwick that puts a gigantic over-emphasis on the tuba/bass trombone "answer" (enough to crack speakers) and they also did a powerful cover of "Never Surrender" from First Knight.

John Williams is easy to mess up. His scores tend to be more dense than a lot of stuff by John Barry or Jerry Goldsmith (though Jerry has a *lot* more alternating meter, so when Prauge Philharmonic screws up on Explorers, I can forgive them)

Well, thats the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Did you ever hear Joel McNeely's recording of the Judge Dredd suite? Or Frederic Talgorn's "Duel Of The Fates"? Those are enough to knock the fillings out of your head - DotF is a much darker, more full-bodied peice under Talgorn's baton.

But for every great rerecording - you get 3 or 4 bad ones. The new Telarc disc is pretty damned awful because of the choir. Listen to that. Ugh.

While "wrong notes" can be argued, complaining about acoustics is awfully silly given that people on the internet will download DVD Rips and live concert bootlegs. Yeah, I like a nice clear recording too - but sometimes it also helps to hear it in it's original "live" format. I have a number of live classical discs that are helped because they're kinda low-balled quality and analoge recordings.

When I buy a disc, theres two things I look for to judge the disc by and the Imperial March is one of them. I've yet to hear a version as good as the one Williams recorded for the original ESB album - but I'm still looking for one. (What I want to know is - why has no one rerecorded the Asteroid Field cue? Theres a suite version - but its only the first minute or so of the movie version. Why isn't the movie version recorded?)


Well, sometimes timetables don't allow it. Michael Kamen used 12 orchestrators to get Robin Hood finished on time and thats one of the best scores he ever did.

And sometimes having an orchestrator helps you work out ideas. Goldsmith owes his Oscar to Arthur Morton for his orchestrations and choir work on The Omen. The problem is when a composer's "voice" changes depending on the orchestrator - a problem I've heard with Elfman sometimes.

On the other hand, like you mentioned with Howard Shore, Don Davis is the same way for the most part. He had to hand-off a lot of the Matrix sequels to orchestrators because of the sheer size and volume of the work - but he's also written and orchestrated and conducted scores just as complicated (Jurassic Park III, Warriors Of Virtue)

Theres probably a good chance that Williams has his conductor's sheet from the recording of ToD. I say this because on the Indiana Jones DVD set, they interview him saying he was looking over the "Indy's First Big Adventure" cue from Last Crusade and made note of how many synch points there were in it. I think it stands to fair reasoning that if he has that, he could definitely have ToD.

Ah yes, I believe that was the first recording I'd ever heard of that particular track. While the original recording has its charms - like the funny synth instruments and the sliding string ending - I do enjoy a bold, ear-splitting performance as much as the next person. It also helps that it's a particularly wonderfully orchestrated piece, even for Williams.

I'm interested in hearing First Knight though, I'm unfamiliar with the score outside of the film though I have seen it countless times.
I'd also like to hear Talgorn's "Duel Of The Fates"; I'll keep an eye out for it, and I'm hopeful about the ToD conductor's score too.