LEGENDS OF THE FALL (1994) - James Horner - Soundtrack Score Suite

The 1994 film Legends of the Fall is for the big screen what romance novels are for old ladies. It is limitless, brute romanticism against the painted skies of Montana, primordial in its appeal and doomed by those who are not swayed by tear-jerking character dramas. If anyone doubted that director Ed Zwick was trying to yank at the emotional chains of audiences with his 1989 stunner Glory, then Legends of the Fall is proof that you can succeed at it not just once, but twice. Heroic and tragic, honorable and sorrowful, Legends of the Fall combines the most potent elements of a British period production with the vast expanses of Big Sky Country. Its cast was remarkably strong, led by a headstrong and painfully humorous performance by Anthony Hopkins as the father of three adult sons split by ideals, ambitions, and one woman. As he had accomplished for Glory, composer James Horner matched Zwick's engrossing melodrama with an unashamed powerhouse of a score, and while the music for Legends of the Fall doesn't quite equal the ethereal qualities of Glory, it comes damn close. The early 1990's were a time of few hits and numerous misses for Horner, scrounging around in the trash bin of video-quality animated films and failed light dramas. With Legends of the Fall came a sudden and overwhelming resurgence that would launch the composer into a year of incredible success in 1995, led by Apollo 13 and Braveheart. These three scores together would yield two Golden Globe nominations and two Academy Awards nominations, and yet none would win either award. Still, these three scores together (and you can even throw in the decent Casper and Balto in the middle of the timeline) represent one of the greatest periods of production that any composer has ever enjoyed. As the first in line, Legends of the Fall caught listeners by surprise with its sheer weight of performance and rich variety of themes.
Horner has reveled in his fair share of dramatically thematic scores, but never before or since Legends of the Fall did he accomplish the same level of gravity... not even with Titanic. And it's the strength of the themes in Legends of the Fall that leads to its success. The meaning behind Horner's several ideas for the film overlap in conceptual use on screen, so the following labels for the purpose of this review could be up for debate. The title theme, introduced in the latter half of "Legends of the Fall" is the broad representation of the story's overarching mores and location. It accompanies the beauty of the land and is the soul of the score. It isn't heard perhaps as much as the second major theme of the score, but it definitely bookends the proceeds with a lovely and extremely deliberate performance at the very end of the film. That secondary theme is the one that ties the Ludlow family together, used most frequently by Horner as the story constantly reminds the viewer of the bond that culminates in bitter vengeance and sweet victory at its conclusion. This theme receives the same string-dominated weight as the primary theme for the landscape, and the two interact in a few places. Softer variations of the theme for piano and fiddle are a melancholy representation of Hopkins' austere character.
One of the strengths of Legends of the Fall is the fact that every moment of thematic development is conveyed with the same heavy heart. The orchestration work of Thomas Pasatieri and Don Davis presents the London Symphony Orchestra in a form that eclipses even the Americana spirit of Dances With Wolves.
Another important point to consider with Legends of the Fall is that despite the connections to the shakuhachi rhythms in the aforementioned previous score, this work is relatively unique in Horner's career. There are interludes for tinkling percussion and piano that would foreshadow The Spitfire Grill and the opening of "Samuel's Death" would mirror the frantic action of the "Master Alarm" cue in Apollo 13. A later, more harmonious line of action in the same cue would resemble the finale of Balto. But these similarities are not as obnoxious as they tend to be in many of Horner's other large-scale scores. The album for Legends of the Fall continues its strangely "cult" status more than a dozen years after its release, branching out well beyond the normal Horner collector base in its appeal. An isolated DVD score track has added more material to the bootleg market, but the 75-minute commercial album provides more than enough magnificent material for all film score collectors to sink their teeth into.
(http://www.filmtracks.com/titles/lege...)