by Swashbuckler on 4/27/2004
favorite track: 11
 
Trevor Jones' score for The Dark Crystal essentially cemented his position as a wonder boy; while he has done quite a few good scores, nothing since has quite been at the level of this early work.

Jones bases his score on several related themes, the most prominent and memorable being the fanfare for the Dark Crystal itself, usually played on trumpet by frequent Jones collaborator Maurice Murphy. Most of the music in the score is in one way or another descended from this motif, and it is instantly recognizable.

There are several other main themes, including a beautiful love theme for the Gelflings, a rhythmic and harsh motif for the Garthim, serene strings for the Mystics... the score is full of detail.

Of special note is "The Pod Dance," an exotic, medievally-influenced source cue. Jones excelled at composing this type of music (just previous to The Dark Crystal he had composed similar source cues for Time Bandits and Excalibur), and this piece of music is vivacious.

The principle orchestrator was the legendary Peter Knight, and it is probably his touch that gives the score its supremely lush quality. The performance by the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Marcus Dods is quite passionate.

The first disc is a remastered presentation of the original LP. This is one of the best re-imaginings of a film score, and so is worth preserving. Several cues that didn't make the film ("The Storm," "The Funerals"), a montage of cue that make up the "Overture" and a concert arrangement of the love theme are unique to this version of the score, and it is probably this disc that one will listen to when one pulls out the album. The sound quality is superb.

The second disc is the complete score as it appears in the film. It is identical to the isolated score track that was on the original Columbia/TriStar DVD release, albeit with better sound quality. This means that there are edits, dips and whatnot, along with some noticable dropouts. The lack of access to the original masters means that many of the tracks are voluminous, encompassing several cues.

That said, there is quite a lot of music here that would not fit on the original LP that is quite wonderful, including Jen's entry into Aughra's observatory, the Dreamfasting sequence and the build-up to the finale. For my own personal use, I took several of the more important cues off of this disc, and incorporated them into the LP edition.

This release was certainly worthwhile for its content, and the packaging is decent (although there are a few typos), but a definitive release of this score is yet to materialize.