Music Composed by James Horner
Rating: *** 1/2

An artistic ‘voice’ is a strange thing. Young artists often struggle, feeling the lack of a consistent unifying aesthetic to their art. Their audiences are often invigorated – here is something new, something that escapes the all-too-familiar approaches to representation. And then often it happens that slowly, surely, the voice of the artist is recognised by both artist and audience. And once everyone knows the ‘voice’, it goes from being a desirable thing that’s missing or a source of dynamism to a list of inescapable ‘tics’ that are comfortable for some, and border on irritating for others. What once was novel becomes reliable, the devoted revel in the ‘new familiar’, the restless look for something fresh.

So it is with photography… design… music… film music… and film music by James Horner. Once upon a time it must have been a hard thing to distinguish James Horner from the romantic influences he made no effort to hide – Prokofiev, Schumann, Khatchaturian and others. Now the ‘added value’ that James Horner provides to a film – those defining licks and rips that unify his work – seem so obvious that it’s amazing to think we couldn’t see them all along. And his scores of 2006 are proof of this. Coming off the substantial rejection of his surprisingly conventional music for Terence Malick’s The New World, and his ejection from Robert DeNiro’s The Good Shepherd, the critically lambasted score for All the King’s Men stretched the composer into a near Shakespearean mode. Yet as new as the tone of the work felt in the composer’s oeuvre, you could never escape the feeling that it was a work by James Horner – the ethereal piano-led cues for character memories, the snare drum rolls adding punch to the morose main theme, every woodwind line, even the awkward poetry of the cue titles. A thousand unintentional clues gave away the artist’s voice.

James Horner

If any score had license to sound completely unlike anything in the composer’s canon however, it would have to be Apocalypto, Mel Gibson’s chase film set against the backdrop of the twilight of Mayan glory. James Horner applied a different method in scoring Apocalypto from all accounts. His scores have often involved inventive use of non-standard repetoire instrumentation – e.g. the bullroarer and orchestra chairs in The Missing, the ‘conch shells’ and Shofars in Troy – but this latest effort required the composer to push the envelope for an entirely non-orchestral approach. Regular collaborator and woodwind specialist Tony Hinnigan spent months in preparation, collecting instruments from sources such as the Globe theatre (a Renaissance-era stringed instrument called the ‘tromba marina’, Swedish ‘bark trumpets’ and Ugandan wildebeest horns) and just about every country that ever had an ancient music tradition. (One list of the score’s arsenal includes Syrian zouna oboes, Slovakian fujara flutes and Turkish sipsi clarinets!) Percussion specialists, a team of woodwind performers, acclaimed vocalist Nusrat Ali Fateh Khan (Horner’s celebrity collaborator on the underrated The Four Feathers score) and London Voices director Terry Edwards joined the team. The intention was to perfect an approach to scoring that clearly fascinates Mel Gibson: accompanying a pre-modern setting with pre-modern orchestration. It was an idea he abandoned at Horner’s suggestion on Braveheart, but subsequently pursued with John Debney on the world music medley (with occasional orchestral presence) of The Passion of the Christ. Of course it isn’t meant to be music that would have been heard at the time – verisimilitude isn’t the intent so much as the illusion of authenticity, or failing that, the use of an idiom utterly foreign to modern film music that also works as a dramatic language.

Combined with this unique instrumental arsenal (recorded in the Abbey Road studios) was an approach to composition very rarely employed in Hollywood: structured improvisation. Certainly improvisation to film imagery is often part of any composer’s process in discovering their score – Vangelis boasted of using it extensively for Alexander, for example – but for this improvisation to take place at the recording stage is rare indeed at this level of production sophistication. It’s very common in arthouse cinema, where budgetary limitations often demand a limited instrumental palette that lends itself to productive controlled improvisation - Sonic Youth employed it for Oliver Assayas’ Demonlover, as did Richard Thompson’s team for Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man. The only high budget films I can think of that employed this approach in recent years are both Hans Zimmer efforts – the excellent Black Hawk Down score, and the less impressive Mi:2 score.

So what does it sound like? It’s really strange actually… it sounds like James Horner. And that’s what a voice is, I suppose – remove everything that you think defines an artist, gather the familiar remains, and you’ve found their voice. It’s like Horner has stripped away the structured symphonic framework of much of his film music – the heart-felt theme-and-variations style, the diatonic harmony, the use of classical form and device. What remains is a dense collection of musical ideas – seemingly unstructured to the inattentive ear. Yet it still sounds exactly like the composer of All the King’s Men and many scores prior to that, and suggests that however aleatoric the process was for Apocalypto, it was carefully controlled by the composer. Apocalypto is rich in the stylistic devices that have granted his film music much of their uniqueness, and novel perhaps only in the idiom those devices are applied to.

‘From the Forest’ begins with one of the less expected examples of repetition in the Horner canon – undulating strings (synthetic in this case) descending from bird calls and jungle atmosphere, a familiar choice for listeners of The New World. Bass drum strokes resonate, and Khan’s melancholy voice appears for the first of many times. The use of Khan’s voice is very similar to the use of Tanya Tzabovska’s vocals in Horner’s Troy – heavily foreboding. And rightly so, for the end of the world the protagonists know draw near. The same ideas return to close the album in ‘To the Forest’ in Horner’s preferred concluding style – a long slow release, each voice exiting gradually until one remains for a quiet finish.

The reflective ‘Forest’ cues bookend one of the most bizarre action film scores ever written. While at times it plays like a homogeneous combination of unusual timbres with no sense of structure, closer examination reveals a controlled manipulation of the audience’s perception of on-screen events. (At this point, I must confess I haven’t seen the film, and am relying on accurate track titles for the following.) ‘Tapir Hunt’ anticipates a chase-driven third act: Khan gurgles and bellows like a Mongolian throat singer, Terry Edwards provides inhuman-sounding ‘PAH’ sounds to punctuate the chase. Overlapping percussion layers create a dense layer of polyrhythm that prevent the listener from ever getting a clear sense of where the on-screen threat is, and how quickly it may be approaching. Blasts of woodwind instruments of all descriptions fill out the spectrum – Horner’s familiar shakuhachi, but also some of the more exotic instruments Hinnigan brought along. It’s interesting to observe just how full a sonic space music can occupy in a film where the audibility of dialogue isn’t paramount. The cue ends with a tearing sound that is almost like a stylised version of the sound of glass expanding under heat, the origin of which the bare basic sleeve notes do not explain. Onscreen, accompanying a flurry of violent imagery, the effect must be quite exciting.

The score’s quieter moments are frequent and heartfelt, never slipping into that cloying emotional language the composer so easily has slipped into in the past. ‘The Storyteller’s Dreams’ is led by a fragile flute melody that recurs throughout the score. Jingling shells, soft bodhran-like percussion and twittering birdlike flutes lend the piece a warmth that will not return. A melody that represents the protagonist’s family is also presented here: an unassuming tune for flute reminiscent of some of Horner’s music for Beyond Borders. (The idyllic depiction of a primitive people is the sort of scoring I expected from Horner for The New World, which was a surprisingly hymnal score when you think about the potential for ‘culture’ scoring.)

‘Holcane Attack’ attack recalls some of Horner’s extended suspense set pieces from previous scores – ‘Revenge’ from Legends of the Fall particularly coming to mind with its resonant percussion and pan flute ostinati. Synth orchestration lends an elegiac feel to the scene where the protagonist’s village is pillaged by ‘Holcane’ warriors from one of the Mayan cities. A blend of high and low range woodwinds (the bullroarer from The Missing among the latter) shift the cue that little bit further towards the surreal. ‘Captives’ follows with the score’s most openly elegiac material – the descending strings of the opening coupled with Khan at his most melancholy.

With ‘Entering a city with a future foretold’ comes Horner’s depiction of the Mayan civilization as brutal culture based on violence – blasting flutes and reeds, shrill ethnic horns and resonant percussion. The cue is reminiscent of Horner’s ‘3200 Years Ago’ prologue to Troy (dissimilar in orchestration, but not in tone). This is unsurprising perhaps, since the earlier score was setting the stage for a war between ancient cultures on the verge of collapse, a theme not dissimilar to those explored in Apocalypto. This sound is extended with more aggressive percussion, and multiple vocal lines by Khan, for ‘Sacrificial Procession’. ‘Words through the Sky’ begins with a haunting flute reminder of the protagonists family, giving way to an unlikely duet between Khan’s moaning and Edward’s more aggressively-phrased vocals in ‘The Eclipse’.

From the middle to the second last score cue comes a series of cues that develop the ideas of ‘Tapir Hunt’. ‘The Games and Escape’ gives an indication of what Horner might have written for Gladiator, with an assault of overlapping percussion layers and dextrous woodwind performances – again shakuhachi and pan flute. What I assume is the ‘tromba marina’ adds a groaning texture that fills out the sound. (The palette recalls ‘The Battle’ from Master and Commander, though the sound is more primal here.) Khan and Edward’s respective bellows and ‘pahs’ return in ‘Ellusive Quary’, ‘Frog Darts’ and the turning point, ‘No Longer the Hunted’, the latter cue closing with a particularly definitive ‘PAH!’ from Edwards amidst that fantastic ‘glass-twisting’ sound.

Synthetic orchestration is finally brought to the fore in the penultimate ‘Civilisations brought by Sea’, the synth brass managing to sound more than a little anaemic after all that came before, and the synth string arpeggiations over acoustic percussion come off like a weak Master and Commander. Of the two deus-ex-machina invoked by Gibson during his protagonist’s ordeal (the earlier being ‘The Eclipse’), this second one motivated a less interesting accompaniment from Horner. On the other hand, the contrast between a real orchestra and the use of synthetic orchestration up to this scene would have likely been too great, and this probably motivated Horner’s choice.

My feelings are mixed about this as a workable album. For those who have seen the film, I’m sure that experience will help them structure the music and get the most out of it. As someone who hasn’t seen the film, I can say that this album is a lot of work to get into – and the score’s spartan packaging is no help. If ever a score could do with notes describing the process, and the characteristic sound and use made of each instrument, or even the dramatic context of each cue, it’s this score. With the most exciting palette of instruments used in a film score recently, I don’t really come away with a strong sense of what any of them sound like, or what motivated the usage of each. One senses that confronted with so much choice, Horner leant on the woodwinds he’s most comfortable with – pan flute, and shakuhachi – and that seems like something of a missed opportunity to me.

While a part of me anticipates with glee the trauma awaiting those who buy this on the strength of Horner’s lush romantic scores like Titanic or The New World, I must admit this isn’t entirely my cup of tea either. I’ve grown to like it (or become accustomed to it, perhaps truer), but this is the antithesis of easy listening. Fans of Horner who count the catchy pleasures of the composer’s Legend of Zorro or Braveheart as favourites should keep away, but those who weathered the harsher passages of Four Feathers, Beyond Borders and The Chumscrubber will find something totally different from the composer, yet wholly familiar at the same time. And if you can’t stand his ‘voice’ – stay away! It’s very much in evidence here.

One final note – this really is such a texturally-driven score. Lacking the kind of melodic focus that might survive under audio compression and limiting presentation, this score needs a good set of speakers to really deliver a satisfying listening experience.

Music Composed by James Horner; Vocal Solos by Rahat Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; Music Recorded and Mixed by Simon Rhodes; Album Produced by Simon Rhodes and James Horner; Label: Hollywood records, (D000015802); Availability: In-print; U.S. Release Date: December 5, 2006.

01. From The Forest… (1:52)
02. Tapir Hunt (1:28)
03. Storyteller’s Dreams (3:38)
04. Holca Attack (9:25)
05. Captives (3:04)
06. Entering The City With A… (6:02)
07. Sacrificial Procession (3:38)
08. Words Through The Sky (5:08)
09. The Games And Escape (5:12)
10. An Elusive Quarry (2:12)
11. Frog Darts (2:42)
12. No Longer The Hunted (5:47)
13. Civilisations Brought By Sea (2:17)
14. To The Forest… (7:28)

Total Playing Time: 59:53