A place devoted to soundtrack and movie score lovers.

Montag, 31. März 2008

"Schindler's List" (1993) - John Williams


"Schindler's List" is one of the most beautiful, and best scores ever written for a motion picture. It's also one of the most classical sounding scores ever composed by John Williams. Forget William's usual big swashbuckling style, with bold brass. There are few scores except "Schindler's List" that are so subtle, and so sad and haunting.

The score is based on two different themes - one sad, lyrical theme, mostly performed by Itzhak Perlman on the violin. The other theme, what I would like to call the remebrance theme, is more dramatic and desperate sounding, and is used to great effect in cues like "Remembrances".

The music is primarily orchestrated for strings, with subtle woodwinds (which are given a supportive role only, except for the clarinet, which in some cues are given a more prominent role) and of course Perlman's wonderful violin playing. There are almost no brass, which is a little surprising, perhaps. The violin is really an important voice in the score, and is used to create many different moods; sometimes it's sad (sometimes it even sounds like it is crying) or lyrical and other times it's almost playfull and upbeat. The only negative I have to say about William's arrangement for the violin is that it sometimes seems to get a little too high - I think the violin sounds the best somewhere in the middle range, and just above, and not when it's used to play high, screaming, flageolet tones.

I wouldn't call "Schindler's List" an easy, entertaining listening experience. But don't get me wrong here. It's not that the music in any way is hard to listen to, from a musical point of view. As I've already said, few scores manage to create the same feeling of sadness and desperation, so it's almost impossible to not get affected by the music. Meaning that this is not one of those scores you pop into your CD player when your feeling all happy and satisfied with life, and want some good feelings to accompany your feelings. Therefore this is perhaps not a score you listen to especially often. But when you feel like listening to some of the best movie scores ever composed, "Schindler's List" is the soundtrack for you.

The link is to be found in the comments

3 Kommentare:

estephano (ADMIN) hat gesagt…

http://rapidshare.com/files/103827286/Schindler_s_List_OST__1994_.zip

Please report dead links

Radio Nowhere hat gesagt…

For some reason, the link doesn't work for me. Part of it is missing.

cascanan hat gesagt…

hi. link is dead. thanks