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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
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Composed, Conducted, and Produced by:
Orchestrated by:
Bruce Fowler Ladd McIntosh Walter Fowler Suzette Moriarty Rick Giovinazzo
Vocals by:
Lisbeth Scott
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LABEL & RELEASE DATE
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ALBUM AVAILABILITY
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Several different releases exist. A song compilation was
released a month before two simultaneous score releases. The regular
score CD and the 'Limited Edition' contain the same 17 tracks of music.
For a few extra dollars, the 'Limited Edition' album includes several
extras (read more about them below).
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AWARDS
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The song "Wunderkind" and the score were nominated for Golden Globes. The
song "Can't Take It In" and the score were nominated for Grammy Awards.
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ALSO SEE
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Buy it... if you have a very open mind to Harry Gregson-Williams'
significantly modern and genre-bending interpretation of a classic
religious allegory.
Avoid it... if Howard Shore's straight-laced epic scores for the
J.R.R. Tolkien universe shaped your expectations for C.S. Lewis' largely
similar universe.
BUY IT
 | Gregson- Williams |
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe: (Harry Gregson-Williams) The author of the Chronicles of
Narnia books, C.S. Lewis, said very publicly in 1959 that he did not
want his books to ever be made into films, because the talking animals
would "turn into buffoonery or nightmare." Hollywood has since changed
all that, of course, and in light of the recent overwhelming success of
Peter Jackson's realization of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the
Rings stories, an adaptation of The Chronicles of Narnia was
shortly inevitable. The first entry of the series on screen, The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe is brought to life by Shrek
director Andrew Adamson, and while the production values of this C.S.
Lewis adaptation clearly had The Lord of the Rings in its sights,
it's achieved only a lower step of (still financially huge) success.
Like Tolkien's tales, The Chronicles of Narnia are religious
allegories, and the similarities between their universes, and the
friendship between the two authors themselves, begs for a comparison
between the two eventual adaptations to the big screen. Lewis and
Tolkien taught at Oxford together, frequented the same pub, and
exchanged their serious thoughts on Christianity... all while smoking
pipes and debating each other's fictional universes. The setting of one
was Middle Earth and the other was Britain during the Second World War,
but the overarching ideas for the stories, as well as their fantasy
environments, were remarkably the same. This sharing of inspiration
would make the job for Adamson even more difficult, because Jackson had
very obviously hit the nail right on the head with the Tolkien films.
The same would apply to composer Harry Gregson-Williams, whose work for
the genre would compete with Howard Shore's highly acclaimed efforts for
The Lord of the Rings as well. Add to this pressure the usual
pop-culture injections by Disney, and you get a dangerously untenable
position for Adamson and Gregson-Williams to negotiate. Unfortunately,
the haphazard result of all these disjointed ideas is a score that would
make the proper C.S. Lewis cringe.
What is made blindingly evident from the very opening of
the score for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is that one or
more of the involved parties (Disney, Adamson, or Gregson-Williams) made
a conscious choice to move away from Howard Shore's already tried and
tested sound for the similar Tolkien stories. Gregson-Williams, being a
man of immensely diverse talents, was therefore able to insert a
plethora of different world sounds into the score while still giving in
to the necessary bombast of the kind that Shore had provided. Shades of
Gregson-Williams' Media Ventures days shine through in the first half of
the score, with distinctly modern synthetic elements providing theme,
rhythm, and depth to an otherwise orchestral underscore. As with his
previous successes, Gregson-Williams works with a decent ensemble; the
75-piece Hollywood Studio Symphony is accompanied by a whopping
140-voice choir in London, a separately recorded percussion section, the
usual vocals of partner Lisbeth Scott, and an array of synthesizers.
With the musical scope of the 125-minute score wandering seemingly
without clear direction through different genres, it's possible that the
hectic recording process disrupted in later sessions by post-production
special effects led to some degeneration on the finished product. The
reason for this speculation is that the music for The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe, while reaching spectacular heights of orchestral
majesty in its concluding cues, lacks focus and consistent imagination.
Specific effects, such as the airplane engine sounds in the opening
"Blitz, 1940" cue, are truly interesting, but the pounding simplicity of
the Media Ventures sound that sets the rhythm in that cue is sadly
lacking any British or historical sensibility that Lewis would have had
in mind. Likewise, the "Evacuating London" cue, with its
Mediterranean-stylized rhythm and vocals, is so remarkably out of place
in the story that someone --whether it's Gregson-Williams, Adamson, or a
studio producer-- should be flogged. Failing to meet audience
expectations is one thing, but totally disregarding the historical
setting and character demands of the story is simply unacceptable.
The fact that the music's most genre-bending elements
occur before the wardrobe is even encountered is cause enough for some
considerable head-scratching. The electric violin in "Lucy Meets Mr.
Tumnus" is awkward, but serviceable in its background application. Where
Gregson-Williams' score beings to take flight is when he introduces the
themes for Narnia, Aslan, and the Witch, running with several fully
rendered statements of those themes throughout the second half of the
score. In the closing battle sequences, the symphony pulls you into the
world that Shore and Jackson created despite the electronic
accompaniment in rhythm, and ironically, only then does
Gregson-Williams' score truly succeed. In several of the cues that exist
in between "vista statements" (the defining moments for scores like
these), Gregson-Williams's music meanders without much spark or life,
leaving you wondering what kind of wondrous universe would be occupied
by such a drab environment. As correctly stated by other reviewers,
Gregson-Williams' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has the
tendency for underachievement in its overall sound, leaving you wanting
more. One problem with the recording is its unfortunate mixing. In two
of Gregson-Williams' previous outstanding efforts, the mix wasn't an
issue: in Sinbad, a close mix throughout caused a good balance
between rhythmic elements (mainly percussion), choir, and orchestra, and
in Kingdom of Heaven, the same massive choir was balanced well
with the orchestra for a more wet, epic sound. The difficulty with
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is that the orchestra is
badly undermixed (or undersized, if you just want to go that direction
with it, but more likely undermixed). Take "The Battle," for instance...
At its height, you have all the elements working at once. The choir is
full, ethereal, and slightly echoing with a satisfying wet sound (closer
than anything to Shore's somewhat controversial mixing for the Tolkien
music), but the synthetic rhythm and percussion rips/snaps are in your
face, mixed to the forefront so that the choir is stripped of its
flowing majesty. Almost completely lost are the steadily performing
strings, often chopping uselessly in the far background. Only occasional
brass accents reach around the percussion to attention. Overall, while
enjoyable, even this cue is evidence of poor mixing choices.
So when you hear complaints that Gregson-Williams'
music for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is not "magical,"
you have to take a hard look at lousy instrumentation choices and a poor
mix as being the culprits. The themes are there, the ensemble seemed
ready, and Gregson-Williams has proven himself as an outstanding
composer in recent years. And to be absolutely clear, there are snippets
of this score that will impress you with their momentary brilliance of
harmonic resonance. Melody and harmony abound, and for this alone, the
score makes for an easily listenable album. But the music's
effectiveness for you will hinge on your feelings of modern, synthesized
music in this particular C.S. Lewis universe. For those of you who read
the stories as children and understand the religious allegories at work,
Gregson-Williams' score is going to be a stretch. On the other hand, if
you enjoy vivacious, modern scores without genre boundaries, then it
could easily be a riot for you. It wouldn't be surprising to see
Gregson-Williams earn himself an Academy Award nomination for his
efforts here, though given that this score hasn't seemed to bring both
film score collectors and average movie-goers together with the kind of
universal appeal that Shore's music for The Lord of the Rings
created, Gregson-Williams' success at the awards ceremonies will likely
be tied to the fate of the film. Overall, the studio probably had some
hand in this disappointment, with the songs at the end of the album
serving as atrocious reminders of what happens when you take a perfectly
good traditional fantasy film and "popify it." After only 55 minutes of
score, the songs are a disgrace to this album, despite the fact that
Gregson-Williams foreshadows them with some of his own "popification" in
preceding cues. If you thought Annie Lennox's voice was to harsh to
represent Middle Earth, then wait until you hear Alanis Morissette belt
out her classless pronunciation of "Wunderkind." Even the concluding
song by Gregson-Williams and Lisbeth Scott has a souring effect. A
"limited edition" album version contains no additional music, and beware
of the obligatory song compilation album. In the end, you can't help but
get the feeling that this entire musical project got derailed somewhere
in the creative process. Sometimes, you really do have to take
expectations of the masses into account, because if you stray too far
from those expectations, you end up with a score like this: an
experiment with some bright moments, but one ultimately gone wrong. *** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check: |
For Harry Gregson-Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.94
(in 36 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.98
(in 52,113 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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All Score Albums Tracks ▼ | Total Time: 74:27 |
1. The Blitz, 1940 (2:32)
2. Evacuating London (3:38)
3. The Wardrobe (2:54)
4. Lucy Meets Mr. Tumnus (4:10)
5. A Narnia Lullaby (1:12)
6. The White Witch (5:30)
7. From Western Woods to Beaversdam (3:34)
8. Father Christmas (3:20)
9. To Aslan's Camp (3:12)
10. Knighting Peter (3:48)
11. The Stone Table (8:06)
12. The Battle (7:08)
13. Only the Beginning of the Adventure (5:32)
14. Can't Take It In - performed by Imogen Heap (4:42)
15. Wunderkind - performed by Alanis Morissette (5:19)
16. Winter Light - performed by Tim Finn (4:13)
17. Where* - performed by Lisbeth Scott (1:56)
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* bonus song not featured in film |
The regular album's insert includes no extra information about
the score or film. The 'Limited Edition' product includes a 40-page
collectible souvenir booklet with film imagery and liner notes by
director Andrew Adamson, as well as a 45-minute DVD with a 'Making of
the Score' feature including an interview with Gregson-Williams,
interviews with song performers, photo gallery from the production, and
the film's original trailer.
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