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Dances With Wolves: (John Barry) In the late 1980's,
John Barry was already beginning to suffer from a lengthy string of
illnesses that would largely sideline him as the 1990's progressed. After
winning the Academy Award for
Out of Africa, he would suffer a
ruptured esophagus and would later dedicate his score for
Dances With
Wolves to the doctors that saved his life. Already, Barry's shameless
self-repetition in style was beginning to take a toll on his career. With
Raise the Titanic,
High Road to China, and
Out of
Africa (among others) all beginning to sound very alike in structure,
Dances With Wolves was really Barry's last attempt --whether he knew
it at the time or not-- to take this broad string, simple theme style and
parade it at its best. While Barry would continue scoring large-scale dramas
and garner an Academy Award nomination two years later for
Chaplin,
the quality of his production after 1995 would decline rapidly and he would
suffer from rejected scores, a nasty court battle over the ownership of the
James Bond theme, and continued illness. That said,
Dances With
Wolves was a simple, yet classic score by any standard of the
imagination, and is still recognized as such today. Three main themes --all
of which memorable-- are combined to make a powerful, yet tender and epic
score. The John Dunbar theme (the main one) can be heard in any elevator or
department store atrium. Technically speaking, it is extremely similar to
Barry's other heavily dramatic themes of the 1980's, but as fortune would
have it, the theme was the right melody for the right film at precisely the
right time (reinvigorating the entire of the concept of the Western for the
1990's). After a decade of endless performances and re-uses of this primary
theme from
Dances With Wolves, however, many people (and even a few
Barry fans) seek out the more obscure parts of the score for their
enjoyment. The love theme, for instance, extends from previous Barry scores
as well, but manages to capture the same magic as the other themes.
Arguably the best of the themes is the journeying theme
(associated with Fort Sedgewick), which can be heard primarily in the third
track. Barry, in a curious composing manner, sometimes manages to write a
small, secondary theme for his assignments that is actually better than the
main theme for a film... and
Dances With Wolves is no exception. This
is not to discredit the John Dunbar theme, though. Any person who watches
American football on television immediately recognized it mixed in during
the United Way commercials for over ten years. As previously published by
Jerry McCulley with great accuracy, "Utilizing Wagnerian structure, Barry's
three main themes recur in magisterial symphonic form. The memorable "John
Dunbar" theme alone has become an almost subconscious part of modern life,
utilized as Muzak and underscore for public events great and small. Barry's
skills as an arranger color his themes in subtly shifting orchestral hues,
giving even the most repeated melodic passages new emotional weight. Barry's
rich music is living proof that the art of orchestral film scoring is still
alive and surprisingly vital in the '90s." Barry chose to score the film
from Dunbar's point of view, dismissing any idea of recording authentic
Sioux music and instead taking a strictly symphonic approach on a massive
scale. Cynics have raised the point that Barry's only attempt at Native
American music (
White Buffalo) was by no means a success --in fact,
many would consider it a monumental failure in his career-- and that Barry
would have been incapable of any other type of score than the one he wrote.
And yet, his approach worked wonders, and today, many of the tracks from the
score have been re-recorded by various recording groups for other labels.
The last recording of the 1990's came from the City of Prague Philharmonic,
who performed the film version of the "Buffalo Hunt" sequence in stunning
surround sound (available on the Silva Screen label). Again, however, the
powerful journeying theme has remained unfortunately neglected in the
majority of the re-recordings so far. The original recording by Barry has
had its own long story on album.
Several releases of the score are available. The original
release that accompanied the film's popularity in 1990 contains all the
necessary music, and is readily available many years later. The Gold release
of
Dances With Wolves in 1995 (the "Definitive Collector's
Edition,") was one of a string of "gold" releases made available for
highly popular, best-selling scores (eventually including
Schindler's
List and
Apollo 13). This (supposedly) limited gold release has
three additional tracks of music, none of which appear directly in the film.
The last two tracks are pop versions of the themes from the film. The first
one, encompassing the John Dunbar and journeying themes, is quite nice, but
the second one is a rather awkward combination of James Bond style and John
Dunbar substance. These two cues are the same tracks contained on a promo
circulated to radio stations for mass appeal. The third previously
unreleased track (at least on
Dances With Wolves CDs, that is) is the
"Fire Dance" track from the Narada album,
Last Frontier, and it is
very misplaced in the middle of Barry's score. In 2004, as part of a
celebration of Barry's 70th birthday, Sony released
Dances With
Wolves once again, removing the pop tracks and featuring about twenty
minutes of previously unreleased material and alternate versions of famous
cues that were also previously unavailable in original form. The extended
material is sprinkled through the album with a few negligible extra minutes
in existing cues. The full film versions of the "Buffalo Hunt" and "John
Dunbar Theme," as well as an extension of the love theme in "Falling in
Love," are welcomed additions. Unless you are a serious John Barry
collector, however, this expanded album may not offer you much more
satisfaction than the gold one from 1995. Despite the press stating that the
2004 Sony album is the "entire" score, Barry reportedly recorded 100
minutes of music for
Dances With Wolves, and thus it is likely not
complete. Sadly, if you put all of the pop and other alternate versions of
this music together on one set, it would have to encompass two CDs. No
matter which version you find and enjoy,
Dances With Wolves remains
the crowning achievement in Barry's career, and stands as a score of
historical and popular influence for an entire generation.
*****
| Bias Check: | For John Barry reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.87 (in 23 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.71
(in 20,815 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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On the 1995 gold release, the pop tracks (20 and 21) were reorchestrated by Barry and released in 1991. Track 11 ('Fire Dance') was also released initially in 1991. The gold CD packaging features a slip cover and different artwork on the insert The CD itself is 24-Karat
Gold and the sound is a "20-Bit Digital Transfer using Sony's new "Super Bit Mapping" (SBM) Process." The 2004 album contains expanded notes about the score, but a return to traditional packaging.