Music Composed by Bruno Coulais
Rating: ***

A few years ago a friend and I were ambling about town, looking for something to do, and decided on a whim to walk into the local art-house movie theater. The only film that was staring anytime soon was a documentary that neither of us had heard of, called Winged Migration. An hour-and-a-half documentary about bird migration patterns hardly sounds like a thrilling way to spend an evening, but we were bored, so we bought the tickets and went in. The film was actually a visually stunning piece of work, but what left the biggest impression on me was the emotionally riveting score by a composer I’d previously been entirely unfamiliar with, a French gentleman by the name of Bruno Coulais. I picked up a few of his albums soon after, and while I’d be lying if I said I’ve closely followed his career ever since (little of his work gets released overseas, and I haven’t the attention span to spend a whole lot of time searching), my ears nevertheless perk whenever I hear his name mentioned for a project. I was delighted then, to hear that he’d achieved so much success for his work on the French film, The Chorus. The film to the best of my knowledge, is a Dangerous Minds–meets-Mr. Holland’s Opus story about a music teacher who teaches a group of juvenile delinquents in an all-boys school to sing and teaches the rest of us a valuable lesson about, um, how singing helps kids to not be juvenile delinquents anymore. Maybe that’s too snide a description as the film was an enormous success in France and secured a few Oscar nominations in the States, but it would take a lot of convincing to get me to sit through another film with such a bland premise. That blandness unfortunately extends into Coulais’ music, which, despite its integral role in the film and the large amount of attention it’s received, strikes me as surprisingly unremarkable. It’s pleasing to the ear and it’s well-produced, but I don’t hear anything nearly memorable enough to explain the massive popular success the album has had overseas.

Bruno Coulais

As the title might indicate, the bulk of the album is made up of choral songs from the French children’s choir. In that sense, the CD often resembles a choir album more than a straight-out film score, though the choral work generally blends together with instrumental underscore seamlessly. This being the case, I suppose it would be fairer to judge the CD as a choral project rather than as a film-score album, but to be honest, there isn’t anything particularly impressive about the choral work. The children have nice voices, but it’s hard to imagine this music playing during the requisite scenes where adult characters drop their jaws with astonishment at the miracles hidden in the voices of these formerly misunderstood misfits. The Mission this is not. The choral writing is also maddeningly simple - the children rarely sing with any more than two parts, and frequently they just sing in unison. Maybe in the film it didn’t make sense for the children to sing anything more complicated (or maybe Coulais didn’t feel it was worth the effort to write more than two parts for a choir consisting entirely of altos and sopranos), but the barebones simplicity grows thin very quickly on the album.

And Coulais’ music for his films has frequently been extremely simple, but he usually makes up for that with stunning melodies. Himalaya, for example, is an extremely simple monothematic score, but the theme is so passionate and emotionally vulnerable that I’ve never minded hearing it repeated note-for-note in every track of the album. The Chorus has a sizable handful of themes, but surprisingly, all are too restrained to be particularly memorable. The first theme was actually nominated for the “Best Song” Oscar (in it’s opening performance, “Les Choristes”), but I’m honestly surprised that such a low-key melody attracted so much attention. I appreciate the fact that Coulais doesn’t attempt to wring the premise’s potential for sappiness for all its worth, but the restrained approach combined with his stark simplicity leaves me feeling a little “blah” about the whole affair. There are at least 3 more full themes, each fairly easy to spot as they’re all sung as choral pieces, and each performed in full at least twice throughout the course of the album. None are anything less than pleasant, but none are likely to dig deeper than the surface (with the one exception being the quietly affecting theme that surfaces “Pepinot,” the score’s solitary trace of Coulais’ magic touch).

The said could pretty much be said of the album in general – it’s all very sweet, but it floats by without leaving any strong impression and is ultimately pretty forgettable. Perhaps I’m missing something, as I seem to be the only one who isn’t entirely enamored by the album, but I doubt anyone’s going to play this more than a handful of times before tiring of it. I am very fond of Bruno Coulais as a composer, and I’m happy to see him finally getting some recognition, but he’s done far better than The Chorus. I can tell that after only hearing a handful of his other works, and I’m sure there are countless more in his catalogue that are even finer. An enjoyable way to breeze through 40 minutes, but entirely inconsequential.

Music Composed and Orchestrated by Bruno Coulais; Performed by Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra; Choir: Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint-Marc, Director: Noclas Porte; Sound Engineer: Didier Lize; Music Executive Producer: Paul Lavergne; Label: Nonesuch Records, (61741-2); Availability: In-print; U.S. Release Date: January 4, 2004.

01. Les Choristes C. Barratier / B. Coulais (1′32)
02. In Memoriam (3′25)
03. L’arrivée À L’école (1′32)
04. Pépinot (1′50)
05. Vois Sur Ton Chemin C. Barratier / B. Coulais (2′19)
06. Les Partitions (1′03)
07. Caresse Sur L’océan C. Barratier / B. Coulais (2′10)
08. Lueur D’été C. Barratier / B. Coulais (2′02)
09. Cerf-Volant C. Barratier / B. Coulais (0′58)
10. Sous La Pluie (1′05)
11. Compère Guilleri (0′35)
12. La Désillusion C. Barratier / B. Coulais (1′22)
13. La Nuit Jean-Phillipe Rameau (2′21)
14. L’incendie (1′23)
15. L’évocation (1′45)
16. Les Avions En Papier C. Barratier / B. Coulais (1′28)
17. Action Réaction (1′45)
18. Seuls (1′53)
19. Morhange (1′57)
20. In Mémoriam A Cappella (3′19)
21. Nous Sommes Au Fond De L’étang Barratier/Ph. Lopes-Curval /Coulais (2′46)

Total Playing Time: 38′30