Thomas Newman's 1917 (2019)

[A. A. Ron 1,738]

2 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

 

Mention in Dispatches chronologically should be the second track. Or if not, it is an alternate of the some kind of the first track.

 

Milk would come between Quarry to Orchard and First Truck.

 

Are you sure "Milk" is the music for the farmhouse and not for the scene where the main character offers his flask full of milk to the French woman?

[TheUlyssesian 2,473]

29 minutes ago, A. A. Ron said:

 

Are you sure "Milk" is the music for the farmhouse and not for the scene where the main character offers his flask full of milk to the French woman?

 

Ah. Good point. Could be. I didn't think of that scene. Though because the cue is 10 mins I wonder if it could be that scene. The first milk scene is much longer. The second milk scene seems to me shorter than 10 minutes.

[Bilbo 3,709]

Haven’t really listened to the soundtrack yet but just saw the film. A lot of the score is tension building stuff that probably isn’t very rewarding on its own but there are a couple of great elegiac moments that really stood out. 
 

Great film though, really enjoyed it, the two hours flew by. 

[MedigoScan 324]

On 1/10/2020 at 7:41 AM, TheUlyssesian said:

 

Ah. Good point. Could be. I didn't think of that scene. Though because the cue is 10 mins I wonder if it could be that scene. The first milk scene is much longer. The second milk scene seems to me shorter than 10 minutes.

 

Its definitely for the first scene. The second scene already has its own music track.

 

Having just seen the movie I also have to say I really enjoyed the build-up for Gehenna.

[Richard Penna 3,671]

I just saw the movie and the score for the most part works really well in the film. A lot of it is just pure tension-building but I can see why they scored it they way they did - most sections of the film are in real time (for those who haven't seen it, almost the entire movie is made to look like one continuous shot) and it kind of makes sense that most of the score is either a drone or something ticking away.

 

At least the complete score, or close to it, appears to be on the album/FYC. I don't remember anything that's not on one of them.

[Edmilson 7,392]

1 hour ago, Richard Penna said:

At least the complete score, or close to it, appears to be on the album/FYC. I don't remember anything that's not on one of them.

 

I was already going to ask this. Burligame's report about the score says it is 95 minutes long. The OST is 77 minutes, so, if there is indeed 95 min of music on the movie, then there's 18 min of unreleased material. 

 

But I think the 95 min stated by Burligame refers to the amount of music recorded by Newman, so on these 18 min of so not included on the OST could be earlier versions of cues, alternates, etc, which I think is more likely.

 

Of course, there are certainly unreleased music, but I guess it's probably not exactly interesting stuff. Newman's OST fortunately tend to include all the major highlights.

[Richard Penna 3,671]

On 1/5/2020 at 6:06 PM, TheUlyssesian said:

 

The song is a miss. It should have been on the OST. A lot of people are going to buy the soundtrack hoping for that song and they won't find it.

 

Yep, someone I was with commented that they'd love to have that song. Unless there was some legal or financial reason it couldn't be included, it was a bad decision not to.

 

The closest you can get for now is this music-only version of the trailer:

 

 

[Richard Penna 3,671]

On 1/10/2020 at 6:11 AM, A. A. Ron said:

 

Are you sure "Milk" is the music for the farmhouse and not for the scene where the main character offers his flask full of milk to the French woman?

 

Check out the scene here. The brass moment where the plane crashes is about 4 mins into Milk. The scene with the French woman is Les Arbres.

[artguy360 1,843]

There is some lovely music in this score, especially the final track on the FYC album. 

[Arpy 4,145]

The music in the Truck scene (A Bit of Tin) was like something from Lincoln, I loved it.

[Richard Penna 3,671]

I've been loving the ending cue and Night Window a lot. Still a bit Thin Red Line Zimmer-ish in a lot of places but it's more listenable after seeing the film.

[artguy360 1,843]

Night Window, A Bit of Tin, and Come Back to Us are highlights of the OST for me. Sixteen Hundred Men is good too and the rest is good underscore. 

[Arpy 4,145]

Intrada has this score listed as a CDR, what's that about? I ordered it from Amazon but that doesn't say anything about it being CD or CDR.

[Richard Penna 3,671]

It's not being sold at the regular kind of price on Amazon on CD so I abandoned any attempt to buy it physically for now and got a copy from Google Music. I'll buy it when it appears really cheap on marketplace.

 

Ironically I was more keen to own this on CD than TROS because this isn't missing music.

 

At work today I was listening to the latter part of A Scrap of Ribbon on repeat - such a beautiful piano melody.

[Edmilson 7,392]

Indeed. I love when Newman does atmospheric music like this with synths and melancholic piano, and A Scrap of Ribbon and A Bit of Tin were some of my favorites from the OST.

[Richard Penna 3,671]

Although I've renamed all but the last two tracks to the FYC names as it's easier to remember which scenes they're from. I don't remember a ribbon in the Quarry/farm scene - what's that about? However, Sixteen Hundred Men and Come Back To Us are cool track names.

[MedigoScan 324]

Scrap of Ribbon is a reference to them talking about what a medal is.

[Richard Penna 3,671]

Ah right, all 'poetic'.

[Edmilson 7,392]

Most of the tracks on Newman's OSTs are references to stuff the characters said on the movies. My favorite is "Choking the Bishop" from American Beauty 

[Caliburn 72]

For who is interested in my thoughts. I have reviewed 1917.

 

https://soundtrackworld.com/2020/01/1917-thomas-newman/

[Gustavo Joseph 29]

Just saw the movie, the score is good, helps the movie a lot. The obvious highlight is the Night Window scene indeed, with an almost Lord of the ringish, otherwordly colour. Not a big fan of the cue for the signature shot (the final run scene) though. 

[Lord Zimmer 211]

Someone just linked me “Sixteen Hundred Men”, this sounds like a discount Journey to the line. 

[Edmilson 7,392]

Even Silvestri has his own Journey to the Line impersonation! lol

 

 

Also tracked (or re-recorded) on Endgame when Thanos and his army turn to dust.

[KK 3,307]

19 minutes ago, Lord Zimmer said:

Someone just linked me “Sixteen Hundred Men”, this sounds like a discount Journey to the line. 

 

A number of your own compositions could be described the same way milord!

[publicist 4,643]

Newman's excuse is that he was forced to do it.

[Lord Zimmer 211]

14 minutes ago, KK said:

 

A number of your own compositions could be described the same way milord!

 

Blame Lorne.

 

Fine with Newman winning the Oscar, weak year overall tho. 

[DAK 2]

On 1/28/2020 at 1:41 PM, publicist said:

Newman's excuse is that he was forced to do it.

Source?

[Arpy 4,145]

1 hour ago, DAK said:

Source?

see 1917 (2019) dir. Sam Mendes. runtime appx 119 mins

[DAK 2]

3 hours ago, Arpy said:

see 1917 (2019) dir. Sam Mendes. runtime appx 119 mins

yes I’ve seen the film. where is the article in which Newman says he was forced to do it. 

[publicist 4,643]

You're a newbie. You only see sources after contributing at least one substantial review of either Blade Runner or 2001.

[MedigoScan 324]

Having seen the movie again, I can at least definitely say the Gehenna track (for the No Mans Land scene) is a lot longer in the film. But the OST basically trimmed the fat of the moody first half.

Mentions in Dispatches does indeed play at the end, instead of the scene where that line is used.

[Edmilson 7,392]

14 hours ago, MedigoScan said:

Having seen the movie again, I can at least definitely say the Gehenna track (for the No Mans Land scene) is a lot longer in the film. But the OST basically trimmed the fat of the moody first half.

Mentions in Dispatches does indeed play at the end, instead of the scene where that line is used.

 

Would you say there's much unreleased music? Burligame's report says Newman recorded 95 minutes of score, which means that the movie (119 minutes) doesn't have wall to wall score (like Dunkirk) and that there's missing about 20 minutes of unreleased material (which I guess it contains some alternates, early versions, etc).

 

Also, is Mentions in Dispatches before or after Sixteen Hundred Men? Because the OST appears to be in chronological order from Ecoust-Saint-Mein onwards.

[MedigoScan 324]

Mentions in Dispatches is after. 

 

The Gehanna sequence goes on for 7/8 minutes instead of 3/4.

I think that the 'Up the Down Trench' starts with some very soft tense underscore (basically the first 20 seconds extended to a couple of minutes)

Ditto with 'Sixteen Hundred Men', except the ending goes on for another 3 minutes that I didnt even notice the first time around.

Also I think the Trench Sequence itself is generally longer than whats on the album (like a full 2 minutes were cut or so)

There may be some minor edits as well, but I didnt catch those.

 

All else I can think of is a short bit of music that would go between Bit of Tin and Lockhouse. Though that might have been non-score music.

 

Finally I am pretty sure the Milk-track is different from whats heard in the movie. The scene doesnt start out the same way (maybe some music was tracked in from earlier though)

 

[Edmilson 7,392]

Watched the movie today.

 

I know it's destined to be hated because it will win the Oscar over Parasite, but I really liked it. It's an impressive technical achievement of special effects, production design, editing, Deakins' cinematography and Mendes' direction. I just thought that, considering this is a WWI movie and not a WWII, the movie was very anti-Germanic. I mean, on WWII movies they're the nazis, but WWI was a much more complex conflict, no clear heroes or villains (in a sense that we can apply such a simplistic concept as good and evil to real life), but on this movie the Germans are almost as orcs from LOTR. It works to build tension, but the movie could've been a little more realistic and complex if all the Germans weren't bad guys.

 

The cameo from known actors was a little off putting. When Cumberbatch appeared, I almost expected him to tell that there is 14 millions of realities that they loose the war, and only one of them that they win.

 

But still, I think the movie does an amazing job as a historical recreation of the horrors of the Great War.

 

Newman's score is mostly droning, which adds to the atmosphere of the movie, but has already been done by Zimmer on Dunkirk and others. Where I think Newman actually works better than Zimmer is on the emotional parts. Watching the movie, you can notice that the more tragic parts of the movie, for which another composer would've written an elegy or something, like

 

Spoiler

Blake's death, the French girl and the baby

 

are scored with the same atmospheric synths, while the sadder cues (A Scrap of Ribbon, A Bit of Tin, 1917) are used for when the soldiers are talking, telling jokes to each other, bickering. It's almost as if the score is lamenting the humanity and the innocence of the soldiers lost to the hardships of war. Only on the ending (Come Back to Us) his score is a little more obvious, but still very beautiful for the scene. 

[Edmilson 7,392]

Just listened to the OST again, Mentions in Dispatches goes in the end indeed, when

 

Spoiler

Schofield is looking for Blake's brother and finds him with no harm.

 

So here's the OST chronologically:

 

10. Blake and Schofield (4:21)

02. Up the Down Trench (6:19)

03. Gehenna (3:35)

06. The Boche (3:22)

07. Tripwire (1:41)

04. A Scrap of Ribbon (6:30)

11. Milk (10:10)

08. A Bit of Tin (2:03)

01. 1917 (1:17)

09. Lockhouse (4:04)

05. The Night Window (3:41)

12. Écoust-Saint-Mein (2:37)

13. Les Arbres (3:37)

14. Engländer (4:29)

15. The Rapids (1:30)

16. Croisilles Wood (2:07)

17. Sixteen Hundred Men (6:32)

18. Mentions in Dispatches (3:44)

19. Come Back to Us (5:40)

 

All in all, I think this is a pretty good OST, the unreleased material mostly at the beginning is just moody underscore and some droning, effective on the movie but not exactly great away from it. And I like the way Newman programmed the album, with an atmospheric interlude separating two pieces of mostly action music.

[TheUlyssesian 2,473]

I still think there is more music in the OST program than needed. They could have a smaller cut better suited for listening consisting of the thematic highlights and some of the standout atmospheric underscore.

[Richard Penna 3,671]

There are some bits that don't do much, such as most of Milk and some bits of the cathedral sequence, but I'd rather have them than not.

 

I've been listening to Night Window, A Scrap of Ribbon and Come Back To Us so much lately. The rest of the score fits nicely around those highlights.

 

TBH, most of Newman's OSTs have music that doesn't need to be there. He's like the antithesis of Zimmer or JW. I think it's partly why we get very few expansions - most of his scores don't need expanding very badly.