jamesluckard

Just finished listening to my copy, which arrived today. It's a revelation, the sound is spectacular. I've been waiting almost twenty years for this and it does not disappoint one bit.

Thanks! I'll have to check out that scene. I found a rip of the DVD rear channel audio ages ago, but never the sessions or the cue list. Is the cue list up here?

Wow, that clip is bizarre, it seems to be from a PAL source, it's sped up. I saw the film 6 or 8 times in theaters and have watched it a bunch of times since, so the difference hit me in about a second. Great cue though. The whole score is one of Williams's most vibrant of the 2000s, so varied and so aware of the needs of the film.

Yep, that was the one I was thinking about. Which music-less scene do you think that cue was intended for? Since the film probably wasn't recut all that much, it should match up, right?

Ah, true, deleted scenes from his earliest films have popped up, but nothing from his films from Hook forward, as far as I know, except for 2 brief deleted scenes from The Lost World, I think, which got reinstated for network broadcast and are included on the DVD. Hmm, I could have sworn at least one track on the WotW album was from a deleted scene, but it's been ages since I looked.

This release looks spectacular. I've been waiting for it for nearly 20 years I spent hours and hours and hours assembling a quasi-chronological version back in the day. And I spent even longer tracking down the exact film versions of all the source music (classical and pop music). I could be wrong, but it looks like everything is there. Is anything missing? Spielberg seems to be unusually reticent with deleted material though. Aside from CE3K and Hook, are there any other films where he has allowed deleted material out? Empire of the Sun had massive amounts of deleted material, as did Schindler's List, none of which has been seen. And almost all his recent films have had deleted material that he has spoken about not wanting to make public. Obviously most of that material was cut before Williams scored the films. Minority Report was fairly unusual, in that the scene was cut at the absolute last minute. Actually, come to think of it though, I think the War of the Worlds commercial album had a cue that was from a deleted scene, similarly cut at the last minute.

I'm glad to see we're getting the full cue "Anderton in Halo," which includes the score for the deleted scene with Anderton imagining his son at 9 years old. Spielberg has gotten very mysterious about deleted scenes, he never shares them anymore on his DVDs/Blu-Rays, so I wouldn't have been surprised to see this music held back, grateful to see it's included.

Obviously this thread is 71 pages, so I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but while listening to it just now, I noticed something fun: On Disc 1, track 12, "The Journey to Hogwarts", there's a brief quote of a theme from Home Alone 2. Starting at 1:04 there's a very Christmas-y section of the cue, and it concludes at 1:24 with the last 7 notes of the melody from "Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas" from Home Alone 2. Took me a couple of listens to remember why it was so familiar. Fun little Easter Egg there.

Is the album version of "Schindler's Workforce" more richly orchestrated because it was only ever intended as an album version, where it wouldn't have to compete with dialogue and sound effects? Or were the takes that are combined into the album version truly early attempts at the actual film cues?

On that note, I've always wondered if the album suite "Jewish Town (Krakow Ghetto - Winter '41)" was perhaps intended to actually be used in the film in that early portion, perhaps in scenes that were cut, but then it was realized that there should be almost no music that early in the film.

I agree, it's amazing that almost all the score is in the film's final hour. It's really quite brilliant, because it lulls you into a sense that the film is a document, instead of a fiction, and once you're safely hooked by the film, the music subtly emerges, until it absolutely dominates the final portion. This choice Williams makes is extremely similar to what he did in, of all things, Black Sunday, which is one of my favorite films and one of my favorite Williams scores. Back in about 2002 they did a retrospective of Williams films at the AFI in DC leading up to a Williams concert, and they screened both Schindler's List and Black Sunday. I believe I remember reading the films they played were selected or at least approved by him.

Thank you SO much!!! there's such a massive amount of source music, from various sources, that it's really helpful to have a clean spreadsheet like this of JUST the Williams-composed material. I'm sure someone will create something adding in the Williams-conducted pop songs and the many existing recordings that were tracked in as well, but this is HUGELY helpful!

Thanks so much!!!

Does anyone know the story behind the bonus tracks "Reflections" and "Theme for Recorder" from Disc 2? Neither appears in the film, presumably they're album suites that were dropped at the time? Oddly, track 4 on Disc 2, Remembrances, is listed as "alternate," but track 5, "The Perlman Family," is not, although it's definitely an alternate too, the film version is on the album. Perhaps it couldn't be listed as an alternate because the film version doesn't appear under that name, as it's the second half of "Stolen Memories."

Thanks so much for all the amazing info! So great to know the name of the group who recorded that version, the liner notes of the Pour Sacha CD say it's performed by Naomi Shemer, but I suspected that was a misprint. By the way, the song is also spelled as "Chel" on the Pour Sacha CD: I suspect that's where they got that spelling for Schindler's List, since they used the recording from that CD in the film. Then, when they recorded the SL album version, they just used the same spelling. I actually like that about the song, as it's used in the film, because it's a hopeful moment as they all leave the camp and crest the hill toward freedom, and then transition into the survivors in the present, on another hill, in Jerusalem. Obviously the specific Six Day War connotations the song has in Israel made it distracting to audiences there, but without that, just as an ode to the eternal power of Jerusalem, I actually find it really appropriate for that sequence.