Gabriel Yared has written many, many drama scores, some gaining widespread recognition (The English Patient, Message in a Bottle), some being violently rejected altogether (Troy). His music is typically restrained and subtle, but always very elegant. His latest score for an American film (his first in quite some time), Amelia, somewhat bucks his normally laid-back trend, and is as sweeping and grand an album as you are likely to hear from any film composer in 2009.
Old-Fashioned Hollywood Romance in Amelia Score
Utilizing extremely dated long-lined thematic techniques and structures in extremely pleasant fashion, Yared's music conjures up fond memories of the romantic music composed by John Barry at the height of his career ("Introducing Amelia," "The Call of the Wild"), with deep washes of the string section topped by regal brass chords. Dancing cimbaloms add playful color to the music, and the unabashed use of the woodwind choir ("Amelia and George") provide a low-key but gorgeous intimacy to the proceedings.
Action and Suspense in Yared's Soundtrack
Providing an intense facet of action and adventure to the score are several cues of outright thrilling suspense: "Flight to Wales," "No Longer a Passenger" and "Hawaii Crash" use deep percussion, chopping string ostinatos and slight electronic enhancement simmering under huge brass clusters and normal major-key statements of the main theme to create a wholly unsettling yet very melodic and harmonic atmosphere of danger and tension.
Instrumental Diversity and Audio Effects
Various audio and instrumental effects provide a rich and varied listening experience. Dated, scratchy gramophone effects at the outset of "Flying with Eleanor Roosevelt" give way to warm, crystal-clear sound in a lovely passage for piano, xylophone, prancing flutes and pizzicato strings, which weaves in and out of the main theme with effortless elegance.
Slight ethnic additions to some portions of the score, such as the Arabic flutes and Celtic bagpipes heard in many cues, as well as the African percussion in "Vagabond of the Air," give the score a curious and mysterious flavour, enhancing the mysterious aspects of Amelia's life and career while evoking her ill-fated, world-encompassing ambitions. "Amelia" concludes the score with a stunning, fully-developed piano version of the main theme, backed by delicate strings and flute accents.
Summary
Throughout its duration, the score's emotions are immediate and easily apparent: the subtlety and restraint often heard Yared's music are notably absent, and the soaring passion inherent in Amelia is a true delight. The emotional arc of the story is conveyed perfectly through this music, resulting in a score which does a marvelous job of telling the story on its own.
This diverse emotive and narrative quality to the music, combined with its colorful and exceedingly well-rounded instrumental palette, results in one of Yared's richest and most acessible scores. For one of the year's most stirring and satisfying orchestral film scores, Yared's glorious, old-fasioned throwback effort for Amelia is hard to beat. Definitely recommended!
You can purchase the score to Amelia through its record label, Varese Saraband.
David Abraham Dueck - I live in MN and do not surf or collect Hello Kitty paraphernalia. I instead play ice hockey, write articles for my blog, read tons of ...
