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•	1994 Album

•	2011 Album

•	1994 Album

The demeanor of the score for Days of Heaven is dramatically pretty but restrained, never blossoming into outright melodrama and the diversity in the soundtrack's personality coming from the source-like inclusions. Almost all of the score aside from the fire sequence is tied to one of Morricone's themes, and they are all quite effective at their task and offer much to like on album. The composer's main theme is known as the "Harvest" theme or "Theme 5" on Morricone's cue sheets, and it's also known as being labeled for the "Main Title" despite not being heard there. It's an explicit adaptation of the Saint-Saëns source piece also heard throughout the picture, recognition by Morricone that the two would likely live side-by-side in the final product. Indeed, it's the most commonly heard theme in the film after Malick's editing. When allowed to flow gracefully, the piece's supporting piano lines carry over as the main attraction. The "Main Theme" cue (7M1) quietly explores the idea on strings over subtly rambling piano, though the poor sound quality of this take on album really inhibits this part of the recording. A bit more voluminous and almost flourishing during "In the Field (Theme 5 Long Version)," this idea is twisted downward in its opening piano figures at the outset of "Bad News" (3M1). Flowing on piano under flute in the second version of "Main Theme" (2M1), this melody exhibits much more life in this performance, especially with its accelerated pacing. It's pushed to despair on strings in "Bad News" (4M3) and remains muted in "After Wedding" despite achieving a bit more life. The main theme is distilled down even further in "Empty House" (a.k.a. "The Honeymoon"), turned to slight suspense over a drone in "They Should Leave," plucked in the rhythm of "Bill Returns" (aka "The Return"), and eventually revisits its opening murkiness in the deep strings of "His Death." A significant number of variations of this theme were recorded for Malick to use, and the rejected renditions have more dramatic depth in general. The rambling secondary lines of action in "Insect Noises with Main Theme" and a few other performances with more subtlety are intriguing, because they suggest that Morricone was thinking about the biblical aspect of the plot outside of the fire sequence.

Another major theme in Days of Heaven is one for traveling, known as the "Happiness" or "On the Road" theme. It's the score's most charming, major-key identity of innocence and contains the aforementioned Delerue connection. After flowing with the unrestrained ensemble romanticism in "On the Road," this idea is twisted for darker purposes in the middle of "They Should Leave" (a.k.a. "Ashes & Dust"). An acoustic guitar joins a lead flute in "On the Road (Long Version)," and among the raw cues Morricone recorded for this theme, "Train Ride" is an unused highlight. The score's comforting love theme is known as the "Days of Heaven" theme despite not being the main identity, and it's also deemed the "Farmer and the Girl" theme or "Theme 18" in Morricone's notation. (It was not atypical for Morricone to write dozens of numbered themes for the general concept and present them for the director to choose among.) Performed by Morricone himself in the piano solo of "The Farmer and the Girl (Theme 18)," this identity develops out of sadness on winds and strings in the latter half of "Bad News" and struggles to reassert itself in the middle of "Bill Returns" over dissonant shades. It achieves renewed dramatic heights in "The Farmer and the Girl (2nd Version)," this mode continuing nicely in "The Farmer and the Girl (Days of Heaven)." Although impressively struggling against the suspenseful ramblings of "The Chase," this passage was not used in the film. A variety of alternate renditions of this theme were recorded by Morricone, some more compelling than others but most of them retaining a similar personality. The only other theme of note in Days of Heaven is that of labor, known as the "Threshing" theme from the album. Heard only in far more sparse tones in the brief "Non-Stop Work" in the film, this theme didn't receive as many notable alternates. Together, these themes mesh well to convey the romantic heart of the picture. They make for one of the most easily listenable and consistent Morricone scores to exist, matching with the demeanor of the much later Love Affair to yield an equally attractive album. As for the non-Morricone music in the film, "Aquarium" is a fantastic composition and is recognized for its influence on Christopher Young, James Horner, and movie trailers for years. The solo guitar folk music in "Enderlin" by Leo Kottke is used for several scenery-oriented shots while "Swamp Dance" is the fiddle source piece played and sung by Kershaw on screen.

Some of the auxiliary music in the soundtrack may have contributed to Morricone winning a BAFTA award and earning his first Academy Award nomination for Days of Heaven, because Malick certainly interchanged these aspects of the overall soundtrack liberally in his editing. The original LP record album presentation assembled the four themes into recordings that were sometimes specific to just that group of cues, and that relatively brief survey of the score, alongside the non-Morricone pieces, long represented the soundtrack alongside the unrelated Two Mules for Sister Sara on a 1994 Legend CD from Italy as well. It took until 2011 before Film Score Monthly finally obtained the original stereo tracks for the recording and reconstructed an outstanding 2-CD set with three different arrangements. The first CD contains the original LP album arrangement, but the label managed to license the 1975 recording of Camille Saint-Saëns's "Carnival of the Animals" actually heard in the picture whereas the LP had used an alternate performance. That CD then moves on to provide the cues selected by Malick for use in the film, supplying them chronologically for 36 minutes of material that doesn't dwell on repetition but does honor the various alternates used by the director for certain scenes. (This sequence of tracks, alongside the original LP presentation, is the basis for the cue analysis in this review.) The hidden gem of the 2011 album, however, is the second CD, which contains over an hour of music Morricone recorded in slate order for the picture. It is presumed that these cues were provided to Malick for rearrangement, but had the director simply used the ordering of material that Morricone had provided him, the score in the picture likely would have been improved. On the set, this second CD affords the best overall listening experience, not only because of this better ordering but also because it exposes the composer's thought process about the insect-oriented sounds that Malick ultimately rejected in totality. Given the unusual circumstances of how this score was manhandled after its recording, the 2-CD product is as good as anyone will get for Days of Heaven, and the sound quality is about on par with expectations for the period in the composer's career. The score remains a well-respected and dramatic expression of romance for Morricone, one that largely eschews his tendency towards creative flair for straight, interpersonal contemplation and wholesome Americana.  ****   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Ennio Morricone reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31 (in 16 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.3 (in 10,813 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.