Buy it... if you want to hear a triumphant return to the massive, epic scores of Hollywood's Golden Age, as well as a breakthrough effort from an upstart David Arnold.

Avoid it... if you weren't impressed by the similarly rendered score for Independence Day or any of Arnold's other subsequent orchestral work.

Arnold

Stargate: (David Arnold) It was largely by luck that the team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin happened upon Stargate, but by comparison the far bigger surprise to Hollywood was composing newcomer David Arnold. Nobody predicted that the film would be such an influential success at the time, though with its own strong performance and two spin-off television series to its credit, the sci-fi concept by the Emmerich/Devlin team has become a lasting phenomenon. Merging mystical science from the age of the great Egyptians with a modern military and interplanetary travel, Stargate was essentially envisioned as a Lawrence of Arabia on another planet. There are differing viewpoints on how well that plot held up to critical standards; nearly everyone agreed that the first half hour of Stargate was immensely entertaining, while the rest of the film remains debatable. Of no debate whatsoever are the merits of Arnold's score. By the time one lucky connection suggested him to Emmerich and Devlin, young British artist David Arnold had scored exactly one feature film: Young Americans in 1993. Having been impressed by that melodic score and more than willing to give a new, young artist a chance in the industry, Arnold was hired on a whim (without much discussion) to score Stargate. So successful was the score (and not to mention a pleasant surprise for everyone involved with the project) that the same collaboration would lead to the subsequent scores for Independence Day and Godzilla, the first of which is commonly considered a modern classic. Nobody in the industry or in the film score community was expecting Arnold to haul off and produce one of the most impressive ethnic sci-fi adventure scores of all time for Stargate, but he did just that. Listeners cite many different reasons as to why Arnold's score for Stargate would become so enticing for collectors and an important element of the film. One widely accepted possible reason for the success is the score's return to the roots of classic Hollywood music.

It ironically took a young Brit to storm onto the scene and remind the industry of the glory of its own classic epics, drawing several comparisons in reviews to the popular works of John Williams. With sweeping themes and a grand orchestral style, Arnold approached the film from the perspective of Maurice Jarre's Lawrence of Arabia, taking the Oscar-winning sound from that score and spicing it up with a chorus for the fantasy element. In doing so, he captured the high swings of emotion that old adventure scores delighted in delivering to audiences, with themes flexible enough to both grace the quiet interludes as well as explode during explosive action scenes with thousands of CGI extras. With the snare drum and layered brass already in full force, Arnold's flair for patriotic music would serve him well in Independence Day two years later. The action cues heard in the final fifteen minutes of Stargate would indeed foreshadow things to come for the composer, though the sound shared by these two scores would be largely lost by Arnold in the ten years following. A potentially more surprising reason for Arnold's success on Stargate is his seemingly total mastery of orchestral complexity. In addition to textured layers and exacting counterpoint, his effective manipulation of chord progressions to give the score an Egyptian twist is far more effective than its contemporaries... all from a man who had never written a note of anything like it before. Arnold's multilayered approach utilizes every corner of the orchestra and shakes the floor with power more often than not. The main title itself is a Egyptian variation of a somewhat generic heroic theme, with a natural essence of epic scope that greatly compliments scenes that overlook massive landscapes. A sizable adult chorus is beautifully integrated into a few select, key sequences; both "Stargate Overture" and "Giza, 1928" are highlights of the album because of the well-balance mixing of the Sinfonia of London and Chameleon Arts Chorus. The solo voice of Natasha Atlas is sadly undermixed, however, in her two performances. Comparisons between Arnold and John Williams were likely extended by the similarities between "Giza, 1928" and the Ark's theme in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

	2006 Album: Only $9.99

After the film progresses through the gate onto the alien world, the score unfortunately loses some of its grip. Individual playful moments, such as the "Mastadge" cues (another tip of the hat to similar fun in Lawrence of Arabia), are standouts. But Arnold wouldn't completely fine-tune his straight action material until Independence Day, leaving Stargate as a score of two halves. After the sense of awe and curiosity ("Unstable") established early in the score, it seems to finish its journey by simply going through the motions. On the whole, however, nobody expected Arnold to give the world such a adventuresome aural treat, and when combined with the merits of the score's stronger first half, Stargate is an easy recommendation. On album, 65 minutes of the score was available for a dozen years on the Milan label. While more music from the film was available, the demand for that music was never as great as the cries for Arnold's subsequent scores for Emmerich and Devlin. The sound quality of the score was merely decent, however, and the "We Don't Want to Die" cue was included out of order near the end of the album. In 2006, the Varèse Sarabande label would issue a "deluxe edition" of the score, selecting nine more cues (from the 58 recorded for the film... five reportedly remain missing) and placing the overall offering of 72+ minutes in film order. The sound quality would be refined as well, making the album a more tempting product for fans of the franchise. The additional cues, however, are not spectacular inclusions; only seven would be self-contained tracks, and most of them are particularly short. The action-oriented "Execution," "Against the Gods," and "Transporter Horror" near the end of the film are the only notable additions (though the opening to the end credits is a fun repetition to hear as a bonus track), and the insertion of the dissonant and uninteresting "Wild Abduction" in between the score's two best cues at the opening is startling and disappointing. Equally dissonant and irritating is "Bomb Assembly," a sharp contrast to the jubilance in the following cue. Still, the presentation on the Varèse Sarabande album, whether it makes for a better listening experience or not, is more faithful to the score and film. In the line of Varèse's deluxe editions, though, Stargate would be far from the first to seek. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For David Arnold reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.33 (in 15 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.33 (in 42,389 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.