Later, “The Long Walk” uses voices to add yet another layer of regional faithfulness, while pieces like “Desert Trek,” “Dark Caravan,” and “Ngola’s Court” are a little more dark and moody, capturing the geographical and environmental difficulty of exploring Africa at that time, and the dangers and hardships they faced. Cues like “Journey” and “Return to Africa” are wonderful combinations of tribal drums and shakers, and mysterious and exotic woodwinds, often blended with a more subdued orchestral accompaniment. Small actually recorded all the percussion rhythms with a small band of African musicians in New York, separately from the rest of the orchestra, which resulted in a sound that is steeped in the musical traditions of the region. The African tribal music is wonderfully authentic. It all ends with a cacophony of tribal ideas and layers of orchestral suspense which speak a little to the increasing rivalry between the two great men at the heart of the story. Later, in “Speke and the Great Lake,” the theme is fittingly refined, noble, and majestic, considering that it underscores the pivotal scene where the source of the Nile is discovered. The subsequent statements in cues like “Escape to England,” the second half of “Return to Africa,” and “It’s the Lake,” are appropriately adventurous and triumphant. Statements of Burton’s theme are plentiful, beginning with the one in the “Main Title,” which is epic and sweeping, and features soaring strings and trumpets accompanied by important-sounding percussion rumbles and cymbal clashes. For Burton’s theme Small intentionally tried to emulate the English sound of Elgar and Vaughan-Williams, whereas the African theme is very much rooted in the traditions of east African tribal music, a myriad of percussion and woodwind ideas offset by the orchestra. In approach it has quite a lot in common with several of the great ‘African adventure’ scores that followed it later in the 1990s – things like Jerry Goldsmith’s Congo and The Ghost and the Darkness, or Hans Zimmer’s The Power of One, spring to mind – but obviously with different melodic ideas upon which the score is based. The score is built around two major themes – one specifically relating to Burton, and one for the continent of Africa itself – as well as a love theme representing Burton’s relationship with his wife Isabelle. Mountains of the Moon was one of the few Small scores which received an album release concurrent with the film playing in cinemas, and was also one of the few traditional ‘big symphonic’ scores he wrote in his entire career.įor the score, Small incorporated genuine traditional African music into a large and sweeping traditional orchestral palette.
There has been a mini-renaissance of his music recently thanks to the sterling efforts of labels like Intrada and FSM, but for the most part his music remains relatively unknown by contemporary film music fans. Small scored many of those great 1970s and early 80s thrillers like Klute, The Parallax View, Marathon Man, The China Syndrome, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and The Star Chamber, and was an expert at neo-noir and contemporary symphonic jazz, but he died in 2003 at the age of 64 of prostate cancer, with very few of his scores having been released on CD. The score for Mountains of the Moon was by the great Michael Small, who is another composer who is almost entirely forgotten today. Grant, Fiona Shaw, Omar Sharif, and Delroy Lindo in a very early role. Although it was well received when it originally opened in February 1990 – it was described as ‘an epic of sweep and intimacy’ by Peter Travers in Rolling Stone – it is virtually unknown today, which is a shame because it is a film of genuine visual grandeur (it boasts cinematography by Roger Deakins), and has a terrific supporting cast including Richard E. A passion project for the director, it starred Patrick Bergin and Iain Glen as the real-life explorers Richard Francis Burton and John Hanning Speke, and is a dramatic chronicle of their expedition to Central Africa in 1857 which culminated in Speke’s discovery of the source of the River Nile. Mountains of the Moon is an adventure-drama directed by Bob Rafelson, based on the novel Burton and Speke by William Harrison.
0 kommentar(er)
