Anyone have any specific favorites? I like Alfred Newman's The Robe quite a bit, but I want to hear it performed again (identically, if possible) using today's brilliant advances in sound recording. Perhaps Varese would do it? The quality of the recording on the original Fox release is just not good enough for as something as important and holy as this! Alternatively, Fox's liner notes were on the plus side, that's for sure.

Anyone else?

Jarre's Jesus of Nazareth, Rozsa's many Biblical epics, there are many!

PeterK

NP - "Ever After" by Fenton

Love,
Chris

Like you, I not only wore out my LP of this music...I HAD TO BUY THREE MORE LP'S TO WEAR OUT!!!

When the 3 CD set became available a year or so ago, I snatched it RIGHT AWAY!

What's yours is mine.

I'll mail it to you.

Double double dare!

PeterK

The score carries the film magnificently, with a handful of thematic motifs that blow me away everytime I listen to them. I'm not attempting to discount Alfred's "The Greatest Story Ever Told," as that would just be a film music sin. That and other greats, such as the ones mentioned throughout this thread are definitely awesome - and I can in no way rank them in any order. It's just whatever floats your boat. For me, Bernstein hit the nail on the head and turned out a timeless score that is keyword: ONE of the greatest Biblical film scores of our time.

Jeron

NP Stripes

Anybody here think of anybody else they would like to have seen (sorry...HEARD!) do a big biblical epic?....

I'll tell you two...

John Barry...in his Lion In Winter mode.

...and Basil Poledouris...a man more than capable to the task!

Alright, so I still think, if you compared both The Ten Commandments with my favorite Jesus score, King of Kings, I would have to place Kings on top. They both have a zillion themes, that's for sure, but so do lots of movies. That doesn't necessarily make them better scores. Because I personally feel Rozsa was more dedicated to finding the right historical and emotional moments in his music (as a whole) than any other composer, the power the imagery and music in King of Kings is unbeatable.

Just as an example, take Rozsa's main theme for Kings. In all of the defining moments of Christ's life, Rozsa's treatment of the music is miraculously fused into the picture. Sure, it's a large theme and takes on rentlentless power as the soldiers prepare the Cross for Christ's death, but in those more telling moments of Christ's life, Rozsa's quiet use of the theme delivers in a way that can only be imitated in the future, never bettered: The solo oboe over strings as Christ's eyes meet John the Baptist's in the Jordan; when Jesus looks at the disciple Peter after his three-fold denial.

Need I say more, other than to rent this film and watch these scenes? Remarkable. King of Kings is the best Jesus film score.

one could argue that even the Ten Commandmends had something to do with Jesus.

I'm amazed Rozsa took the King of Kings job when he did, because he had just completed Ben Hur. In Kings, he was faced with rescoring specific scenes from the same story, namely the Nativity, the Passion of Christ and the Resurrection. Of course, James Horner would've taken the easy way out here, but Miklos Rozsa would not. He was thankful the film was made in a different location - Spain - and was able to write his score there. This helped him think differently, as he says in the Varese release of the score's re-recording.

Shows his commitment. His genius is that he wrote Kings in a month -- with Ben Hur, he had 18!

So by that schedule, he might have produced an hour's of music inside a month (no doubt more, but I don't know how much music is in the film.)

It IS a pretty tight schedule compared to 18 months! What would that come out to, ten minutes a month?

PeterK, I KNOW that you want me to stay ON-TOPIC, and discuss only music here, but this is a piece of BAIT you have tossed my way that is nearly impossible for me to ignore!

It is a commonly held belief that The Saviour Jesus Christ makes His first appearance in the New Testament Book of Matthew.

Not so.

JESUS APPEARS in each and every one of the Old Testament Books from Genesis through Malachi!

For the sake of brevity, I will only tell you about His appearance in The Ten Commandments.

He is the Cross on the Passover Door.
His Redeeming Blood was applied to the doorpost of each of God's Children before the Exodus.
The blood was applied to the left, right and top of the doorway, forming the Sign of the Cross.
He is The Passover Lamb. The Hebrew Children were instructed to slaughter only the most perfect lambs, to roast the bodies, and to consume every morsel of them, allowing not one bit to remain unconsumed.
That was the foreshadowing of what was to occur in the life of Jesus.

Also: The Hebrew name of Joshua (Moses' partner), is "Yeshua", translated...JESUS.

I'd group Bernstein's contribution along with the kind of thing that maybe Victor Young would have done in the late 40s/early 50s as opposed to the later Rozsa and Newman works.

I don't know, I don't want any hate mail for this, but The Ten Commandments sounds to me rather dated and corny. The perfect accompaniment to a Cecil B. De Mille cartoon as opposed to the marginally more mature tone of Wyler and Stevens...

Now we're REALLY off-topic!

GRAHAM! This is all YOUR fault!