Buy it... if you maintain at least a moderate collection of Jerry Goldsmith's most robust action scores, because First Knight valiantly connects the styles of his 1970's classics with the bombast of his best scores of the late 1990's.

Avoid it... on any album if you have little tolerance for Goldsmith in unintentional parody mode, for he pushes the nobility and melodrama to downright silly heights here, and especially avoid the incomplete and badly rearranged 1995 commercial product.

Goldsmith

First Knight: (Jerry Goldsmith) Outside of Sean Connery's casting as the famed King Arthur, nearly everything about the 1995 film First Knight was both an artistic and intellectual disaster. So embarrassing was director Jerry Zucker's mutilation of the Arthurian legend that Camelot became humorous in parts where it was not intended. A ridiculously dumb script, poor special effects, the lack of magical elements, and absolutely wooden performances by Richard Gere and Julia Ormond rounding out the love triangle were the doom of First Knight. Aiding in the discontentment were comparisons at the time to the more fiercely original Rob Roy and Braveheart, increasingly realistic, vivid movies still fresh in the minds of audiences and critics at the time. Worldwide grosses helped First Knight fare reasonably well despite scathing reviews, and after the dust settled, the production was widely remembered with more forgiveness by film score fans for Jerry Goldsmith's heroic music. The project marked the second time in the matter of two years that Goldsmith would replace Maurice Jarre in the action and adventure genre, confirming (among other factors) Jarre's slow and unfortunate descent into relative obscurity at the end of his career. The assignment was one of extremely short scheduling for Goldsmith, who tackled his return to the mainstream action genre with a good sense of humor and only three and a half days in which to record the music. What he provided for First Knight is so epic in proportion and noble in tone that some might have wondered, given the suspect quality of the film, if the composer was subconsciously writing a parody score. But with his tendency to tackle substandard projects with the utmost serious enthusiasm, it's far more likely that Goldsmith was over-compensating for a film that lacked scope and nobility in its other production elements. His music is quite memorable in its blatant statements of each of its ideas, with several extremely obvious primary themes typically sounding off amongst many smaller motifs of equal power. It's a score dear to the hearts of many Goldsmith fans if only because it is saturated with fondly remembered techniques that span from The Wind and the Lion and The Omen in the mid-1970's to Air Force One and The 13th Warrior later in the 1990's. While First Knight may not be packaged quite as well as those other scores, it nevertheless entertains fans of the composer with unyielding bombast and romanticism.

The greatest strength of Goldsmith's approach to First Knight is his plethora of easily recognizable, often intertwined themes. His handling of each of these ideas is extremely well considered, even going so far as to assign Arthur and Camelot identities with common progressions to suggest their shared interests. The overlapping of themes in counterpoint roles is frequent and well executed in a variety of circumstances. Most often referenced in this form is Arthur's fanfare, the film's primary identity and an ultra-noble brass idea that would seemingly influence Goldsmith's forthcoming theme written specifically for Academy Awards telecasts. Nearly everything in First Knight is permeated by its easily-identifiable, octave-spanning structure, its high tones on trumpets occasionally becoming obnoxious in their source-like applications. Straining itself to almost parody levels is the theme's bubbly and upbeat rendition over oddly mixed metallic percussion at the end of "A New Life." Also larger than life is Goldsmith's theme for Lancelot, an idea often missed completely even by Goldsmith collectors because of its curious absence from the original 1995 soundtrack album for First Knight. Sharing the first three notes as Arthur's fanfare, the Lancelot theme is heard in swashbuckling tones throughout the first half of the score, heard only in its first phrases until bursting forth with exuberant playfulness in "The Gauntlet/No Kiss." Befitting a vintage Errol Flynn film, this idea injects the score with wide-eyed enthusiasm but also fails to really provide anything other than a cartoonish identity for the character. As the character hands over his loyalty to Camelot, the theme is eventually overtaken by broader representations, but it remains an intriguing footnote in this score. Often connecting Arthur and Lancelot is the overarching theme for Camelot, one that could in many ways be considered an interlude to Arthur's fanfare. Heard at the very outset of the film and in full glory in "Camelot," the additionally ultra-noble theme is plain fodder for trumpets and snare drums in outright royal mode. Appended to this theme is sometimes a closing fanfare sequences marking Guinevere's role as queen, and after Arthur's death, this pair of Camelot identities close out the score with an overwhelming sense of honor. The final main theme is the beautiful representation of Guinevere's allure to both leading men, a throwback to the gorgeous high string romance themes from Goldsmith in the 1980's. Constantly teasing the listener with its smooth, melodramatic progressions, this theme culminates in "Never Surrender," where it reminds of the elegant finale of Total Recall and foreshadows the more fluid movements of the composer's later Star Trek scores.

	1995 Album: Only $9.9

While the four aforementioned themes dominate First Knight because of their hand-fed representations of the main love triangle, some of Goldsmith's most interesting music in the score comes in the various themes for the villains, Malagant and his army, and the totalitarian action cues that contain them. All of these elements are paraded early (starting in "Raid on Leonesse") and are dedicated to the evils of the movie in each of their appearances. A devious theme for Malagant is eventually overshadowed by a rhythmic motif representing his army that would play an important role in setting the pacing in the score's later action cues. It wouldn't be surprising if a snare drum was damaged during this recording, for its sharp pronouncement of each note also gives these action cues a distinctive, deliberate sense of movement. Much positive banter can be found about the robust "Night Battle" and "Arthur's Farewell," though each of these sequences features stock Goldsmith action material, perhaps betraying inspirations while the composer was attempting to complete the score in extreme haste. Most of this music points back to Lionheart, Goldsmith providing a somewhat refined version of the pompous and loquacious form that impresses with volume rather than unique substance. With the pride of Camelot at stake, Goldsmith pulls all the stops in the bombast department in "Arthur's Farewell," a scene originally to feature Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" but eventually re-written by Goldsmith with Latin chanting that resurrects The Omen and makes for a stunningly deep and massive climax. This cue would serve as compilation bait, The City of Prague Philharmonic and Crouch End Festival Chorus offering a very impressive performance of this piece on their best-selling Cinema Choral Classics album (under the title "Never Surrender"). Ultimately, the entirety of First Knight is the kind of listening experience that force-feeds its personality in the same way as Air Force One does, but it is exceptionally good at that task. It's fun but predictable, and it would make a great bridge in a compilation with Lionheart and The 13th Warrior. At only 40 minutes on the 1995 album, fans have always grumbled about its brevity, and after years upon years of bootleg activity, La-La Land finally issued 78 minutes of the score (along with the original presentation and many alternate takes) in 2011. While the score itself may skirt the edge of parody too closely to receive a full five stars, the 2011 album can be rated with nothing less. Perfect sound quality, an abundance of impressive new cues revealed, and detailed analysis finally explain and replace Goldsmith's very poor personal rearrangement of the score for the 1995 product. For collectors of the composer's works, it doesn't get much better than this.   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Music as Written for the Film: ****
Music as Heard on the 1995 Album: ***
Music as Heard on the 2011 Set: *****
Overall: ****

Bias Check:

For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26 (in 113 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.32 (in 133,461 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.