Music Composed by Brian Tyler
Rating: ****

Few careers in this industry are more fascinating than the career of a composer who hasn’t quite made it to the top of the A-list. Where the careers of uber-successful composers like John Williams and Hans Zimmer often seem so limited to films with huge prestige and/or franchise potential that you can predict their projects years in advance, a composer like Brian Tyler who hasn’t quite been locked down yet can jump between so many different genres that he’s almost impossible to predict. Thus we find his latest score, the period romance epic Partition, sandwiched between the rock-heavy Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, the psychological William Friedkin thriller, Bug, and new entries in the AVP and Rambo franchises. Can you imagine those huge leaps in John Williams career?

With so many projects approaching on Tyler’s plate, Partition, an obscure Canadian-produced romance concerning the partition of India, could easily get lost in the crowd. I sincerely hope this will not be the case, however, as Partition is one of the finest things Tyler has given us in his first decade of film scoring. It’s the score I’ve wanted to hear from him ever since he first caught my attention (and the attention of the film music community at large) with Children of Dune. The bold epic romance and warm humanity of that score has never quite had another opportunity to flow forth in all of its glory until now. Partition finally gives Children of Dune’s best ideas the chance to blossom and explore in ways that haven’t been possible before. This is the sort of lush romance that film music listeners lap up, saturated with memorable themes and the perfect balance between epic sprawl

Brian Tyler

Bold themes abound, the first of which gets its introduction in the titular “Partition.” The melody is a lush piece of desert romance, evoking fan-favorites like Arnold’s Stargate and Goldsmith’s The Mummy (to be fair, I don’t actually know if any part of Partition’s story is actually set in the desert, but it’s hard to think of anything else when I hear this theme). The theme goes through a good deal of guises, and is perhaps at its most effective when Tyler pairs it down to more intimate settings. Acoustic guitar readings of the theme in tracks like “Naseem’s Journey” show a great deal of intimate sensitivity without sacrificing that sense of wonder and mystery.

The second big theme is warmer and more emotionally vulnerable – the love theme, I imagine. We hear it first in “The Crossing,” and it’s never far away after that point. It’s very similar to Tyler’s theme from Children of Dune, but it’s slightly more mature and fully developed. This is beautifully, beautifully moving music, and no matter how many times the theme appears across the album, it never looses its impact. The perfect orchestrations add immeasurably, of course. In “The Crossing,” for example, Tyler manages to place both solo flute and a surprisingly lush string section on the melody line – amazingly, the latter never overpowers the former. I’m sure careful mixing is at least partially responsible for this, but the exquisite expressiveness of performers shines through regardless.

These two themes occupy the lion’s share of the album, but as the score progresses, a melody that at first seemed like a bridge for the love theme emerges as an independent idea in its own right (it’s given its fullest reading in “Death Train”). Often used as a liaison between the two big themes, the melody serves to anchor the romance in a slightly more somber and stoic vein. At times, as in “Sirsa,” it lends an element of raw anguish, adding further depth to the pristine surroundings. That said, raw anguish never stays long before its relieved by the warm hand of the love theme – Tyler maintains that balance between light and dark gracefully throughout.

Generally, when the score isn’t airing one of these gorgeous melodies, it’s deeply immersed in more regionally authentic “Indian” pieces. To be sure, Tyler’s spent enough time scoring in a Middle Eastern idiom that it almost seems to come as second nature to him here, and his cavalcade of ethnic percussion from Children of Dune and other scores does him well here. In other hands, the harsh (to Western ears) textures of traditional Indian music could clash horribly with the romantic orchestral music. Tyler, however, maintains a calm dreamy sense throughout the source cues that never grates on Western ears. He occasionally integrates the romantic themes into the ensemble, which contributes greatly to the sense of unity. And even when he uses the ethnic idioms for darker currents, like in “Shimla,” he never upsets the tonal flow of the score. I don’t know if the music looses authenticity as a result, but it certainly flows the better for it.

The only real problem with this ethno-source music is that there’s too much of it. The big themes always come in to break things up eventually, but you reach a point around the middle of the album where it feels like the traditional Indian music will never end. Individually, these are all fine pieces of music, but some 20 minutes of this material could easily have been dropped (or at least more evenly dispersed throughout the album) to keep the score from lagging in the middle.

But then again, others have expressed the same complaint for the score’s endless variations on the love theme, material that I couldn’t bear to loose. In fact, I could hear variations on Tyler’s love theme all week and never grow tired of it – I value his opportunity to explore these beautiful ideas as thoroughly as possible. So if I had my way of loosing some of the source music, others could just as easily have their way of loosing the romantic material – not a risk I’m happy with. Surely then, there’s some sense in Tyler just giving us everything and allowing for our individual programming buttons to hash it out.

If I’ve run a bit off track, allow me to return – overlong or not, Partition is one of Tyler’s finest achievements, and his most purely enjoyable score album since Timeline. The criticism that I frequently direct at Tyler’s score albums – not enough narrative shape – feels irrelevant here, because the score plays more like a tone-poem than a straightforward film score, one that allows you to drift into dreamily gorgeous and tender emotional landscapes. If you fell in love with Children of Dune, consider this an extension and even fuller exploration of the core ideas that Tyler laid out in that score, merged with even an even more mature sense of romance and drama. As such, this is not one that anybody should miss.

Music Composed, Conducted and Produced by Brian Tyler; Orchestrations by Robert Elhai, Brad Warnaar, Andrew Kinney and Brian Tyler; Music Recorded and Mixed by Stephen Krause and Brian Tyler; Label: Varese Sarabande, (302 066 786 2); Availability: In-print; U.S. Release Date: January 30, 2007.

01. Partition (2:52)
02. The Crossing (3:25)
03. Attack At The Crossing (3:35)
04. Naseem’s Journey (2:44)
05. Transformation Of Gian (3:23)
06. Water (1:47)
07. Sirsa (6:13)
08. Coming Of Age (3:26)
09. Death Train (2:31)
10. Tears Of Joy (3:30)
11. Bombay (1:58)
12. Hilltop Decision (2:58)
13. New Delhi, 1942 (2:25)
14. Gian’s Plea (1:53)
15. Rain Dance (3:43)
16. Crossing The Border (2:00)
17. Festival Of Holi (2:08)
18. Confrontation (1:47)
19. Vijay (2:14)
20. Gian To Margaret’s (0:54)
21. Naseem And Gian (5:03)
22. Free (4:12)
23. Separation (3:20)
24. Shimla (1:58)
25. Villagers Demand Naseem (2:40)
26. Partition End Title (5:28)

Total Playing Time: 78:07