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Review of The Dark Crystal (Trevor Jones)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... on either of its two album pressings of the 2000's if you
appreciate only the most melodramatic and orchestrally romantic style of
music that the 1980's fantasy genre has to offer.
Avoid it... on the 2003 collectible set if you do not require the complete film score (with additional source material and suspect edits) and would be satisfied by the 40-minute suite arrangement with superior sound that was re-issued on the 2007 album.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Dark Crystal: (Trevor Jones) Famous for his
puppet and animatronic appeal to children, Jim Henson decided in 1980 to
produce a feature length film aimed solely at adults. None of the
offerings to come from Jim Henson has achieved a cult status greater
than that of The Dark Crystal, a tale of innocent Gelfling
creatures who, with the assistance of benevolent Mystics, must battle
evil Skeksis rulers and their henchmen to restore the famed crystal that
binds their destinies together. While the story may not seem wildly
original by today's standards, there were several aspects of The Dark
Crystal that made it stand out as a superior effort when compared to
similar projects at the time. First, the puppet effects, while obviously
lacking compared to computerized wizardry today, were surprisingly
convincing. Second, the film had a distinctly dark and frightening style
about even its brighter and more heroic parts that solidified it as
solid entertainment for older viewers. Third, its score by Trevor Jones
is a classic in the genre of animated features. Long before becoming
famous for his brassy fanfares in such modern favorites as Last of
the Mohicans and Cliffhanger, Jones was a regular composer
for the Jim Henson productions of the 1980's. His initial reaction to
the concept of The Dark Crystal was to write music that was as
instrumentally and harmonically challenging to the senses as the visuals
(and for film score collectors, shades of Alex North's somewhat
controversial score for Dragonslayer come to mind). When Jones
sat down with film producer Gary Kurtz long before photography
commenced, though, he recognized that the animated film genre had
reached the point where the stories and imagery on the screen were so
foreign to the eye that the music needed to be rooted in an orchestral
tradition that audiences could relate to. Interestingly, Don Bluth and
Jerry Goldsmith would be making same realization at exactly the same
time for The Secret of N.I.M.H. Thus, a successful style of lush
orchestral romanticism was adopted industry-wide as the acceptable
standard for modern animation music, an important beginning to a trend
that continued many decades later.
Jones, who had just finished a rigorous series of collegian degrees in film music composition and whose career was rich in student film scores, still approached The Dark Crystal with a keen sense for unconventional instrumentation when called for by the numerous scenes involving source material. Jones would become well versed in writing music for fantasy films over the years, but his effort for The Dark Crystal resulted in a score that remains as much of a cult favorite as the film itself, not to mention arguably the strongest entry in the composer's career. Along the way, Jones established several themes and motifs that would resurface in other composers' fantasy works over the next decade. As fans of Trevor Jones' compositions of the 1990's recognize, he is a master of creating sweeping themes. The ironic aspect of The Dark Crystal is that his multitude of themes for this film is far more diverse and complex than his grand style of simplistic brass fanfares as heard in the more popular Last of the Mohicans. You can't help but marvel at the sheer quantity of themes and motifs for the wide ranging characters in The Dark Crystal, and the quality is often not far behind. Each set of characters has a strong theme in The Dark Crystal (including the pleasant love theme for the two Gelflings), and Jones intentionally leaves the performances of the two primary themes separate until the crystal is unified to fulfill the prophecy at the end of the film. These ideas do share common progressions, as Jones will proudly detail, including a rising and descending series of three notes that is, in the score's most valiant performances, its most famous calling card. The congruence of the themes in the last few minutes of the film is spectacular, with a harmony in counterpoint that clearly showed Jones' talents at this early stage of his career. It's possible that the composer's handling of these themes will be opaque enough that a casual listener may not discern easily between them, but that prospect doesn't really detract from an appreciation of the score. The aforementioned love theme is as melodramatic in its elongated structure, bold brass, and timpani foundation as any of Basil Poledouris' most romantic ideas. The score is hyperactive in its consistently accelerated and layered levels of activity, with so much happening at almost every turn that the listener is entertained by the constantly rolling sounds of the London Symphony Orchestra even when a dominant theme is not present. It is no wonder that Jones has established an equally rich career as a professor of film music composition at the college level; the construction of The Dark Crystal is mind-bogglingly complex and well managed in its maturation throughout the narrative. Luckily, the strength of the performers in the famed London ensemble helped translate this score accurately into reality, as it could have been crucified by a less qualified group. Complimenting the strong orchestral presence is Jones' array of electronics, which is used to add such fine points as droplet sounds to "Jen and Kira in the Sewer," as well as religiously inclined highlights, including the powerful electric organ in the funeral cues and the deep, choral chants in the film's finale. The composer's frequent employment of a recorder at its highest registers is a reminder of the innocent side of the story's characters and their inherent beauty. If the score has any weaknesses, then they are limited to the few moments when Henson required ethnically solitary music ("Jen Plays His Pipes") or requested more silly source material for particular characters (the "Skeksis Feast" cues). Jones also takes some inspiration from Bernard Herrmann's knifing string motif from Psycho in parts and inserts a rather humorous borrowing of the opening rhythm to John Williams' Superman theme at the start of "The Landstrider Journey." Ironically, "The Pod Dance" source composition isn't among the weaknesses of the score, acting as a superior and listenable precursor for James Horner's nearly identical writing for the dwarf peoples in Willow. Overall, there a sense of gravity to Jones' music for The Dark Crystal that was not always present in other scores of the resurrected fantasy genre in the early 1980's. There is superb dramatic weight to this score, straddling the line between the complexity of staggered counterpoint and easy harmonic progressions that, when merged, forms a work that is accessible without being derivative in any of its major parts. Part of the mystique involving the music for The Dark Crystal involved its long journey to its first CD pressing. Up until 2003, the only commercially available album released since 1982 had been the original LP record, which featured forty minutes of rearranged music for album purposes. Like many other magnificent fantasy scores, The Dark Crystal is one that plays very well in its suite form, mostly because that format leaves out many of the filler cues, inconsequential source material, and other underscore that weakens the flow of the listening experience on album. Nevertheless, the long-standing demand for the The Dark Crystal score on CD (at any length) was enormous. Remaining very high on film music collectors' request lists, The Dark Crystal largely disappeared from the market on LP, and, in the 1990's, bootlegged CD versions of that 40-minute LP began surfacing (sometimes with music from another collaboration between Jones and Henson, Labyrinth). Prolific in its spread, the bootlegs remained the only CDs of The Dark Crystal for what seemed like an eternity for fans of the cult film. Finally, in 2003, the Jim Henson camp authorized the "Numenorean Music" label to release an ultimate, 2-CD set of music from The Dark Crystal in a limited pressing. The 5,000 hand-numbered copies contain one CD with a remastering of the LP suite presentation and one with the entire 71 minutes of music as heard in the film. The first CD features phenomenal, lively sound quality for a 1982 recording and is worth the price of the album alone. The second CD offers perhaps too much music, with a handful of suspect recording artifacts and some awkward edits. The complete score also suffers from significantly muted sound quality compared to the original, LP album's presentation. The 2003 set does, however, offer a 12-page booklet with extensive information and quotes regarding the score, and will certainly leave no fan of The Dark Crystal unhappy. When that set disappeared from the market, the La-La Land Records label reissued the single-CD suite format album in 2007 as a "25th Anniversary Edition." The contents of this album (and its sound quality) are identical to the 2003 set's first CD, and will suffice for the mass majority of listeners. An isolated score track on the 1999 DVD release is another alternative for desperate fans. In the end, anyone who appreciates the massive orchestrally beauty of the fantasy genre's best dramatic music will be well served by any of the album releases. *****
TRACK LISTINGS:
2003 Album:
Total Time: 112:05
2007 Album: Total Time: 40:29
NOTES & QUOTES:
The inserts for both albums include extensive information about the film,
score, and composer, as well as a list of performers.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from The Dark Crystal are Copyright © 2003, Numenorean Music, La-La Land Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 5/27/03 and last updated 11/24/08. |
