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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Debate continues, meanwhile, about the success of Williams' score for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It is certainly sufficient in the film, and maintains a high quality standard that Williams' fans and employers have come to expect from him. There has been wide-spread speculation, however, that the score for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was lacking the fresh magical touch that was evident in all of Williams' powerful adventure scores of the early 1980's. Not since the highly acclaimed score for Jurassic Park had Williams begun a blockbuster, sure-sequel series, and debate exploded in 2001 about whether or not Williams had the continuing ability to start such series with a bang. Ultimately, perhaps the best method of judging of the success of Williams' Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone score arises from its comparison to Howard Shore's The Lord of the Rings pilot score and Williams' own Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. When analyzing those three series for only their music, both The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars fared better in the record stores with hardcore film music collectors. Even fans of John Williams have prefered, on the whole, the new Star Wars scores over those in the Harry Potter series. The love theme from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones alone exceeds the combined music from the Harry Potter films in scope. So is Williams putting as much effort into the Harry Potter scores? Was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone simply a slightly lacking score by Williams' standards? Or were the expectations for it too high? An analysis of the music for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets would seem to answer some of those questions. The music for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, like its predecessor and a large portion of the newer Star Wars cues, is an odd, clearly identifiable return of Williams to his 1989-1991 style of composition. If you take the Harry Potter and Star Wars music (without the references to the 1977-1983 themes in the latter), and listen to them in the same afternoon as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Hook, you would find great difficulty determining that there was a ten year difference of release between those works. In the specific case of the Harry Potter scores, they are, without a doubt, an amalgamation of Last Crusade, Hook, and Home Alone. Pieces of the 1992 score Far and Away appear in the Star Wars scores of late, but not so much in the Harry Potter ones. The reason this comparison is noteworthy is because Williams' music for the Harry Potter series sounds, to the trained Williams ear, to be nothing more than rehash. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, unfortunately, continues that trend. On the bright side, having music that is rooted in Williams' 1989-1991 styles does ensure a consistenly strong standard of music, and this is why the Harry Potter scores, despite what they could have been, are still sufficient (if not excellent) in their films. You have to remember that John Williams, no matter what era since the 1970's that you put him in, composes at a level that exceeds many of the best works of his contemporary counterparts in the industry. In short, Williams rehashing old ideas is still better than practically any other composer today as his or her best. Nevertheless, for the amount of talent involved, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets begs even more questions about musical magic and originality. It is a fine score for an equally interesting story. The recording quality is superb, as are the performances of the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Voices. And yet, it still fails to adequately capture the gravity and awe-inspiring nature of the films and, especially, the books. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets contains a much scarier and sinister storyline, and yet the score never invokes the true power of the orchestra or voices to extend that fright to a level even equivilent to the chess game scene in the first film. The third book is even more frightening, which makes the issue of substandard action music even more weighty. The second story also, interestingly, has a great deal of comical elements that have been worked into the film. From the bumbling Gilderoy Lockhart and his pixies lesson to the celebrity status of Harry and the quirky actions of Dobby, the film and score for the second book seem to include a great deal more comedy, and these cues also pull the score further from the dark untertones that run throughout the book. There are moments when Williams seems as though he's getting ready to unleash the adult voices of the chorus in a slow-tempo drama of horror from the likes of Chris Young's Hellraiser II genre of magnificence, but Williams always lets the energy fizzle. The attention of Williams' music shifts so often from cute sub-theme to cute sub-theme that the overall cohesiveness of the score suffers. Just a few examples of the split attention of the score include separate themes, with development, for Lockhart's character, Fawkes the Pheonix, Moaning Myrtle, the brat Colin that follows Harry around everywhere, the villain Tom Riddle, Slytherin fools Crabbe and Goyle, the house elf Dobby, and the spiders in the forbidden forest. None of these themes is particularly strong, though with the Fawkes theme, you begin to finally hear some of that Gryffindor pride. The lengthy emphasis on the Fawkes theme, which isn't particularly memorable in the first place, is a curious aspect of especially the album of music from the film. The Tom Riddle theme, arguably the theme for the Chamber itself, is the most intriguing of the score, offering a simple, single chord shifting theme that presents itself in only two prominent cues. The others, as evidenced by the silly harpsichord in the Lockhart cue and the whooping female voices for Moaning Myrtle, are very lighthearted and cute at best. Williams has become almost too predictable in his instrumentation, with the fat tuba bubbling along for Crabbe and Goyle, the high-pitched strings for the spiders, and a sharp snare roll for the dueling club scene. There is no special instrumentation of note in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, nor are the voices used to any great extent. Nearly absent in key cues are the timpani and other drums that brought excitement to the climax of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. With the album for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets containing less music than the album for the first film, there are obviously several interesting cues that did not make it onto commercial CD. But the hour of substantially new music on the album does clearly indicate that Williams is playing it safe with the Harry Potter series. The only theme remaining from either score that could last the length of the series with any memorable notice is the theme for the Hogwarts castle itself, which makes a particularly grand appearance in the fifth track on this album as the flying car approaches the end of its journey. The album presentation of music is somewhat curious in its selection and order of offerings. The cues are out of order, alternating serious and humorous cues in such a manner that diminishes the overall cohesiveness of the music. The album also ends with a suite of music from only the first film --nearly identical to the "Harry's Wondrous World" that appeared on the previous film's album. There is no magnificent suite of themes for this film, and the listener is left at the hearing what is, essentially, a rehash of music that provides no fresh look at the series. It is a conservative score once again, with plenty of stylistic motifs for Williams fans to recognize from a period earlier in his career. It is less complex than the Star Wars scores, and therefore less alluring for repeat listens by the trained Williams listener. It is doubtful that Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets will extend its critical success beyond the level of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and if Williams receives award nominations, they will likely point towards his other fine music of the year. Williams misses the mark of a classic for a second time, but nevertheless produces a strong base of functional music for a bluckbuster film series. ****
Insert includes extensive credits and offers a note from director Chris Columbus. The packaging also unfolds into a rather unattractive poster of Dobby. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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