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| Barry |
Dances With Wolves: (John Barry) According to the
studios during the production of
Dances With Wolves, actor Kevin
Costner did everything wrong for a first-time director. He sought to
make a historical drama with expansive vistas, utilized various
challenging animals in an era prior to special effects, insisted upon
faithful interpretations of a dying language, and, most importantly, ran
over budget. Costner's faith in the story, however, caused him to invest
his own money in the 1990 production, and, against all odds, the movie
not only proved to be an overwhelming critical and popular success
(winning seven Academy Awards and earning over $400 million on a budget
of roughly $20 million), but it revived Westerns in Hollywood and
allowed other reinventions of the genre to gain similar notoriety soon
after. With Costner in the lead role,
Dances With Wolves tells of
a disillusioned Union lieutenant during the American Civil War who is
sent to man an abandoned fort in Colorado, only to become enamored with
the local Sioux tribe, learning its language and marrying one of its
members. When the American Army catches up with him, he is defended by
his newly adopted community and seeks permanent seclusion in the West,
completing an unlikely journey that includes much sorrow along its path.
Costner knew from the start of production that he wanted a massive
symphonic score for
Dances With Wolves, the film's tribute to the
disappearing Western plains requiring music of significant scope to
accompany its striking scenery. The logical choice at the time was Basil
Poledouris, whose "Lonesome Dove" television music was considered a
standard for the genre at the time. After being contractually bound to
the picture, however, Poledouris withdrew from
Dances With Wolves
because its recording schedule was set to overlap that of the ridiculous
action flick
Flight of the Intruder. Poledouris felt so strongly
about his friendship to director John Milius that he abandoned
Dances
With Wolves only to discover, later, that the Milius film would be
delayed by half a year, opening up the entire time in which
Dances
With Wolves was scored. Such was the inglorious end of Poledouris'
best hope of ever capturing an Academy Award.
Into the equation stepped British veteran John Barry, who
was in the latter stages of the prime of his career. In the late 1980's,
the composer had already begun to experience a lengthy series of
illnesses that would largely sideline him as the 1990's progressed.
After winning an Academy Award for
Out of Africa, he suffered a
ruptured esophagus and later dedicated his score for
Dances With
Wolves to the doctors who saved his life. Artistically, Barry's
shameless self-repetition in style was beginning to take a toll on his
career, ultimately leading to several rejected scores in the 1990's.
With everything from
Somewhere in Time to
Out of Africa
all beginning to sound very alike in structure and instrumentation,
Dances With Wolves really represented Barry's last attempt,
whether he knew it at the time or not, to parade his broad string and
simple melodic style at its best. If ever there was a perfect cinematic
match for Barry's trademark symphonic romanticism of the 1980's,
Dances With Wolves is that film. It's a blend of sound and sight
that requires music critics to turn off the intellectual sides of their
brains, because there is much in Barry's very simplistic approach to the
movie that will frustrate any student of composition. His insistence
upon repeating each phrase of a theme twice, utilizing static, slow
tempos and instruments in the same roles in almost every circumstance,
and rarely manipulating or layering his melodic ideas with any technical
acuity all cause a score like
Dances With Wolves to make cynics
roll their eyes. Make no mistake about it, this is not a spectacularly
complex score, despite the fact that Barry wrote more themes (and the
most sheer quantity overall) for this assignment than he usually did for
other productions. Each theme is applied like a mini-movement in a
symphony, rarely interacting satisfactorily with other ideas or evolving
in such a way, singularly or as a whole, to form a convincing narrative
arc. The predictable progressions in those themes will remind you of
half a dozen prior scores from Barry (including some of his later James
Bond work, no less) and a few still set to come later in the 1990's. But
if you're stuck lamenting the arguably problematic circumstances just
described, then you're missing the point of
Dances With
Wolves.
It remains a classic score by nearly all definitions
because of its perfectly tailored emotional appeal in the context of the
film and its harmonic resonance on album, precisely the characteristics
you hoped for when Barry was able to take this assignment. The
instrumentation of the score included 95 orchestral players and a
12-member chorus for slight dissonant shades during moments of anxious
nerves. Barry chose to score the film from the lead's (John Dunbar's)
point of view, dismissing any idea of recording authentic Sioux music
and instead sticking to his comfortably symphonic approach on a massive
scale. The composer's only earlier 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 the truth remains
that Barry probably would have been incapable of attempting any other
style of score than the one he wrote. Despite the notoriety afforded to
the full-blooded orchestral majesty of the score's largest themes,
Dances With Wolves, like many Barry scores of the era, is best
tempered when toning back the ensemble to simple woodwind melodies over
strings and harp, the most intoxicating moments actually reflecting
lovely solo flute performances of subthemes in this score, mixed at an
echoing distance from the rest of the ensemble to convey the somewhat
otherworldliness of the West for Dunbar. The many themes of the
Dances With Wolves score are its greatest strength, regardless of
their inability to mingle appropriately or evolve significantly. The
primary identity, the John Dunbar theme, can reliably be heard in
elevators or department store atriums, and anyone who watches American
football on television will have immediately recognized it during the
prolific United Way commercials in which it was featured for over ten
years. It was even a favorite tune of Pope John Paul II. The score opens
with an eerie trumpet performance of this theme, immediately associating
with the character's disaffected relationship to the war. It later
recurs with Costner's journal reflections and as the highlight of the
end credits. A lonely arrangement for harmonica rather than violins is a
nod to the Western genre's usual tones, and the album version of "The
Buffalo Hunt" gives the prior trumpet performance a bold and victorious
tone over lightly tapped snare rhythms.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the John Dunbar
theme is the fact that it defies Barry's usual method of operation by
not repeating each of its main phrases twice. Instead, it follows a
longer lyrical flow but features, curiously, no secondary interlude or
bridge sequence. After a decade of endless performances and re-uses of
this primary theme from
Dances With Wolves, many listeners are
likely to seek out the more obscure themes of the score for their
enjoyment. The love theme, for instance, similarly extends from previous
Barry scores as well, but manages to capture the same grand melodic
grace of the rest of the score in more intimate and accessible tones.
Heard in "Falling in Love," "The Love Theme," "The Return to Winter
Camp," and the end title suite, this material only amounts to under ten
minutes in length, but it is a satisfying diversion from the score's
more muscular inclinations. Also serving as a tender interlude is
Barry's idea for Dunbar's adopted wolf, Two Socks. In "Two Socks/The
Wolf Theme" and "Two Socks at Play," he conveys woodwind lyricism that
combines, ironically, the alluring solo flute performances and
underlying chord progressions of his love themes for
A View to a
Kill and
Moonraker, respectively. A theme for the Sioux takes
quite some time to develop, though it is initially easily identifiable
by the slapping percussion underneath its stark brass melody. The mix of
the drums in this cue was reprised, not surprisingly, by Barry almost
verbatim in
The Scarlet Letter. The actual theme here takes hold
in the late cues, highlighting "Rescue of Dances With Wolves" and
without the percussion in "The Loss of the Journal" and "Farewell." This
identity adopts the characteristics of Barry's early 1980's adventure
themes and will likely please his collectors. One of the most enduringly
frustrating aspects of
Dances With Wolves is that one of its
seldom referenced subthemes is actually its finest idea. The journeying
theme itself became prolific in its re-use in the public arena along
with the John Dunbar theme, in part because of its remarkable horn
counterpoint. Its performances throughout "Journey to Fort Sedgewick"
also occupied obvious placements in the movie, increasing its profile as
well. It's a more generic Barry theme in terms of its repeating phrases
and derivative instrumental applications, but some enthusiasts of the
composer consider it to be superior to the John Dunbar theme and the
singular highlight of the score. Disappointingly, you never hear it
again in the work.
Several smaller motifs are meant to represent lesser
concepts in
Dances With Wolves. Perhaps the buffalo motif in
"Journey to the Buffalo Killing Ground" and "The Buffalo Hunt" is the
most engaging of these ideas in its bold expressions, resembling the
ballsy brass unison of
Zulu. The film version of that cue
contains an oddly unique middle passage with a theme that is the score's
only throwback to the Elmer Bernstein style of old Westerns,
orchestrated by Mark McKenzie in a major break for the young composer.
Likewise, a spinoff of the Dunbar theme in "Ride to Fort Hays" is a
pleasant diversion that utilizes the same instrumentation as the famous
theme, but toys with different melodies over a common set of bass
progressions. On the other hand, Barry's choral and string dissonance
for scenes of suspense is rather weak and unmemorable. The overall
tapestry of melodic ideas in
Dances With Wolves may not be well
woven, but it hits the right emotional notes in each case. As previously
published by Jerry McCulley with great accuracy, "Utilizing Wagnerian
structure, Barry's main themes recur in magisterial symphonic form.
[They have] 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 summarizes the John Dunbar theme, love theme, and
identity for the Sioux in the "End Credits" suite, and true enthusiasts
of the score will recall that pop variations of the John Dunbar and
journey themes were commonplace on the radio airwaves at the time as
well. In the decades since, the Dunbar and buffalo hunt themes in
particular have been re-recorded by various performing groups for other
labels. Of particular note is a recording by the City of Prague
Philharmonic available on the Silva Screen label, the film version of
the "Buffalo Hunt" sequence resurrected in stunning surround sound
before the original performance was available commercially.
Unfortunately, the powerful journeying theme has remained strangely
neglected in the majority of the re-recordings through the years. The
original recording of
Dances With Wolves, conducted by Barry, has
endured its own long story on album. The original release that
accompanied the film's explosive popularity in 1990 contains all the
necessary music for novice listeners and has always remained readily
available many years later. It achieved astounding sales statistics on
par with later Digital Age favorites like
Braveheart and
Gladiator.
The "Gold" release of
Dances With Wolves in 1995
(otherwise known as the "Definitive Collector's Edition,") was one of a
string of gold-colored releases made available for highly popular,
best-selling scores of the era, a series that eventually included
Schindler's List and
Apollo 13. This supposedly limited
album featured three additional tracks of previously unreleased music,
none of which appears directly in the film. The last two are the pop
versions of the themes as mentioned before, re-orchestrated by Barry in
1991. The first one, encompassing the John Dunbar and journeying themes,
is pleasant to the ears, but the second one is a rather awkward
combination of James Bond style and dramatic Dunbar substance. These two
tracks are the same ones contained on a promotional CD circulated to
radio stations in prior years for mass appeal. The third track
previously unreleased on a
Dances With Wolves album is the "Fire
Dance" selection from the Narada album, "Last Frontier," and it is very
misplaced in the middle of Barry's score (its more contemporary rhythmic
style is far too disparate to function here). In 2004, as part of a
celebration of Barry's 70th birthday, Sony released
Dances With
Wolves once again, thankfully removing the pop tracks and featuring
about twenty minutes of previously unreleased material and alternate
versions of famous cues that had also been 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," were very welcomed additions, however.
Unless you were a serious John Barry collector, though, this expanded
album may not have offered you much more satisfaction than the previous
offerings. Despite the press stating that the 2004 Sony album features
the entire score, Barry recorded 100 minutes of music for
Dances With
Wolves, and only in 2015, when La-La Land Records offered a 2-CD set
of the score, did a substantively complete product become available.
Once again, nothing spectacularly new is to be heard in the additional
cues on this album, but the newly released ones do tend to further
explore melodic passages rather than reveal simply ambient muck. The
sound quality is top-notch, and the second CD reveals a number of
intriguing alternate takes. The 2015 set is the definitive presentation
of the score, but no matter which album version you decide to enjoy,
Dances With Wolves remains the crowning achievement in Barry's
career and stands as an epic, yet tender score of historical and popular
influence for an entire generation.
***** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For John Barry reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.85
(in 27 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.55
(in 26,768 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The original pressing's insert contains minimal information about
the film and score. 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. The insert of the 2015 product contains
extensive information about the score and film.
