Kasey Kockroach

Young! My man!

Intrada announces the premiere release of Christopher Young's stunning score for The Piper. Writer/Director Erlingur Thoroddsen sought out the veteran composer not only for the task of scoring The Piper, but to compose the three-movement Concerto for Children, which is rehearsed and performed in several pivotal scenes in the movie and whose motifs haunt the soundtrack of the movie and its characters. The filmmaker tasked Young with creating a work that was sophisticated enough to convince as a concert hall composition, maddening enough to compel characters to stab their ears as it unfolds, dynamic and dramatic enough to work as underscore during some of the film’s most frightening and powerful moments, and so compelling in its unearthly beauty that it seems capable of holding characters—from unscrupulous conductors to innocent children—in its spectral grip.
 
“It turned out to be a 30-minute, three movement concerto that I had to write in advance,” Young says. “Erlingur basically told me that he needed one movement that was going to be crazy, because it was going to be played toward the end of the movie when the whole theater is going to pot. But beyond that, it was pretty open ended." The concerto employs standard flutes with the performer providing more exotic timbres through his playing. “I used piccolos through the lower C flute, alto flute, into the bass flute range, for these lower chords. For the Piper himself, when we see him play, it’s a normal flute that has been completely altered through electronic modification.” As Young notes, all these factors add up to one problem: “My flute concerto can never be performed as written. I’d have to make changes because the performer is required to move from the alto flute to the C flute to piccolo all within a handful of bars. It was easy to punch in and record them, but I’m going to have to make some revisions if I ever want to have this performed live.”
 
The result is a powerful and sophisticated work that would stand up well in the concert hall ... if only it could be performed as written!
 
Thoroddsen’s supernatural horror film follows Melanie Walker (Charlotte Hope), an ambitious young flautist, composer and single mom working under the auspices of imperious conductor Gustafson (Julian Sands), who leads the orchestra at the fabled but financially troubled Virgil Hall. Struggling to maintain her first-chair position in the orchestra, Melanie hopes to impress Gustafson with a flute concerto she’s composed, but she’s being undercut by the equally ambitious flautist and composer Franklin (Philipp Christopher), who has his own concerto in front of the demanding conductor. Gustafson also has a connection to another troubled composer—the late Katherine Fleischer, whose Concerto for Children No. 1 was given but a single, disastrous performance in 1975. That uncompleted rendition resulted in the Virgil Hall Tragedy, a fire that killed over 100 children. Katherine had been Melanie’s mentor before the elder composer took her own life by burning herself to death—after Gustafson tried to browbeat her into another performance of the concerto. Struggling to maintain her position with the conductor, Melanie Walker insists that she can find Katherine Fleischer’s written music so that Gustafson can conduct it at a crucial upcoming fundraiser for the hall and orchestra.
 
FLUTE CONCERTO: A Concerto for Flute, Children's Choir and Orchestra
01. Movement 1 (11:12)
02. Movement 2 (07:33)
03. Movement 3 (11:24)
Concerto Time : 30:11
 
THE SCORE
04. Suite (21:11)
CD Total Time: 51:13
 
THE PIPER (intrada.com)

Wow. Is this great or what? Young is blasting out career-best work left and right.
 
Movement 1 is brilliant, truly capturing Young's melodic skills and detail in orchestration and, especially, his ability to play with horror tropes - but then the last 4 minutes from 8:00 are a brilliantly dark fable with children's choir and all the best Young orchestral tropes at full display. I love the fact that he ends the movements with that crazy blast of mayhem!
 
Movement 2 is another encapsulation of a magnificent career that keeps escalating into stratospheres - the detour at 4:10 is touching and epic. Makes me wonder what Young would have done with The Lord of the Rings.
 
Movement 3 is very impressive, very much Young exploring horror tropes and going very Goldenthal at times.
 
It is now wonder he has had such a fan resurgence recently. We all know what he does so well. It is fantastic to see producers funding him to do this. I mean, The Empty Man is a great film but it was a massive flop. The Young score, again, is fantastic.
 
So happy I supported the Nosferatu incentive!
 
 
 

I like the first three tracks - concerto adaptations of the score. The suite from the score itself doesn't do that much for me. Hopefully, it will be released in due time. You can always rely on Young for providing a melodic approach to horror films (or "delicious darkness", as I like to call it).
 
I'm more anxious to hear his NOSFERATU work.

Musically right?

This is out of order, here is as intended:
 

He doesn't intrigue me, I'm afraid. Leitch seems like a run-of-the-mill journeyman director. Can't discern any particular trademarks or interesting aspects. Then again, so is Joe Johnston and Colin Trevorrow. The only exception was Bayona, but his trademarks were mostly eaten up by the franchise machine (except, marginally, in the gothic haunted house last act). I don't expect the post-Spielberg JURASSIC PARK movies to have the same auteur stamps as the ALIEN films or anything, but a slightly more interesting director would have been preferred. Gareth Edwards would have been great. Or old-school action auteurs like Paul W.S. Anderson, Neil Marshall, David Twohy....or, for a woman, Kathryn Bigelow.
 
But we'll see. The proof is in the pudding.

Jurassic Park’s end credits do not play twice in the film (missed opportunity, Spielberg you hack).

John Williams would like a word with you... 

It’s more that I like seeing film score fans be made, given what a niche interest it is. Sure, we notice and appreciate music, but imagine a NORMAL person noticing these things!

Or a prequel named .

Latest physical CDs opened up and listened to:
 
James Horner - Sneakers (La-La Land)
 
Wow. I  listened to the OST album disc one day, and it was great.  I listened to the new main program disc another day, and it was also great.  I prefer the new main program, it has excellent flow and not a dull moment.  Also the chronological order means the big moments hit at a better time.  You gotta play disc 2 though for Marsalis going wild on the sax in the SNeakers Theme Alternate!
 
 
John Powell - How To Train Your Dragon 3 (OST)
 
Wow!  I was blown away by how good this score is.  While 2 spent a lot of time giving us (GREAT!) new renditions of many Film 1 themes, this score uses them more as cameos at just the right moments, and is largely made up of (wonderful!) new material.  And such GREAT work from the choir!  I can't wait for next month's Deluxe Edition!

I'm listening to a track from #3 that had always passed me by a bit, Killer Dragons and it again struck me, that given what is probably some music under some dialogue with something happening at the end, Powell can compose 5 minutes of music that gives his baddie theme a complete workout with some other theme going on undernearth, and then build up to magnificently end the cue with another couple of themes, switching tempos the entire time, and in this cue, even bits of different themes popping in. You can barely keep up!
 
By the time the cue switches at 4:15 I was practically cheering inside for the quote at 4:30 to do a full statement because it feels like we've earned it at the end of 5 minutes of building Grimmel music.
 
There are times with Williams when I see you guys gushing over something I don't really get (usually his older stuff) but this is one franchise where I'm in awe at how much musical inspiration and sheer thematic detail one composer can achieve.

Wow.
 
WOW!
 
Super late to the party here, but I finally opened up and listened to my physical CD edition of this album today.  I don't recall if I ever listened to it on Spotify back in 2019 or not.
 
What a great score!  I don't know if it hits me the same way HTTYD2 in terms of that one striking me as a perfect sequel score.  This is something different, but maybe even better.  The old themes soar to new heights, and the new material is like, ALL really good.
 
Although, I thought it was kind of funny that one of the new themes reminds me of Williams' Imperial theme from the first Star Wars movie (which Powell had just used right before doing this score, in Solo), and another one reminds of Owen's raptor squad theme from Jurassic World (gotta be a coincidence).
 
I almost can't even say what tracks are highlight tracks, since there's just so much good stuff throughout the ENTIRE album! (Well, except for the final track with the Jonsi song.  Yikes!)
 
I think the track that left the biggest impression on first listen was "Once There Were Dragons", which acts like like a great concluding track for the entire trilogy, really.  Amazing work.  There's so many other highlights of course... Exodus, Third Date, The Hidden World.... wow.
 
My anticipation for the Deluxe Edition has now skyrocketed.  How cool that it was announced only 3 years after the film came out?  I wish every score I loved could get expanded so quickly!
 
I'm poking through the whole thread now as I give the OST album a second listen.  I had completely forgotten that there was a suite track released digitally that wasn't on the physical CD edition.  I'll check it out when I'm done!  I wonder if the exact same suite will be on the DE, of if its component parts will be scattered in different places on the DE...

Amazing that this is coming out. Robert Folk is THE most underrated composer since he never had the resurgence that McNeely had with Orville or Debney had with Gibbo's nuttery.
 
He is in the same league of composers who can do absolutely everything and do it brilliantly. Man, if silly production allocations had not taken place he would have scored Goldeneye instead of Serra - he was hired for it. Imagine this instead of the grinding synth pop that Serra produced (and nothing against old Eric, his work on Joan of Arc is amazing):
 
 

Because narrative musical genres (like opera, ballet, and stage and film music) have less form - the "classical" version of "listening experience" - than traditional "pure listening" types of compositions like symphonies and concertos. For a classically trained composer like JW, that's probably more relevant than many other factors. It's also one of the key reasons for "classical elitists" for why film music is supposedly inferior and unworthy. And to be perfectly honest, for many "lesser" scores it is a valid reason (at least when it comes to a purely mathematical prioritisation of what music you can focus on in a finite lifetime - comparing the bulk of not first rate film scores to the decades and centuries of classical compositions at your hand). More so today, when films are less reliant on music, therefore more sparsely and abstractly scored, so that even a well crafted score often doesn't stand much of a chance to develop a musical unity. And of course the fact that film composers of Williams's generation were classically trained, while most today are not, is also relevant to this particular topic - because the reason why I believe that Williams's scores (and those of many of his contemporaries and predecessors) warrant a C&C release is because they do have sufficient form (stemming from the formal training of their composers and also the fact that the film narrative provides a structure of its own that - if more than just key scenes are scored - does give not just a narrative, but a narrative form to the resultant score). Whereas today we have many composers who have first rate narrative and dramatic skills, but lack a formal training and, as a result, lack form in their compositions.
 
Which boils down to: I partly understand where Williams (and also critics) are coming from, but I also disagree in many cases and believe that Williams is selling himself short by (presumably) trying to fix the (supposed) lack of form for his album arrangements.
 
One might argue that the scores often already are that. Which is why we not only have great scores for lousy films, but sometimes also scores that make you want to rewatch the film even though you know it's not as good as the score suggests.

Makes me happy that nearly any mention of the film (even from normal people who probably don’t listen to film scores otherwise) praises Powell.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1AMGq6v032/

It’s more that I like seeing film score fans be made, given what a niche interest it is. Sure, we notice and appreciate music, but imagine a NORMAL person noticing these things!

It’s more that I like seeing film score fans be made, given what a niche interest it is. Sure, we notice and appreciate music, but imagine a NORMAL person noticing these things!

Makes me happy that nearly any mention of the film (even from normal people who probably don’t listen to film scores otherwise) praises Powell.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1AMGq6v032/

Makes me happy that nearly any mention of the film (even from normal people who probably don’t listen to film scores otherwise) praises Powell.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1AMGq6v032/

Makes me happy that nearly any mention of the film (even from normal people who probably don’t listen to film scores otherwise) praises Powell.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C1AMGq6v032/