 |
| Horner |
 |
| Franglen |
The Magnificent Seven: (James Horner/Simon
Franglen/Simon Rhodes) Filmmaker Antoine Fuqua struggled mightily with
how to translate the love and respect for 1954's
Seven Samurai
and 1960's
The Magnificent Seven into 2010's cinematic
sensibilities, and many critics assailed his 2016 version of the tale
for remaining predictably morbid in its outcome without embellishing
enough of the heroism in its midsections to remain a satisfying tale.
Indeed, the "grittiness" of 2016's
The Magnificent Seven was
necessary but possibly the element of the film's undoing, though it
still managed to draw substantial box office returns. The story of a
gang of seven gunslingers in the Old West saving a town from a ruthless
industrialist is nothing new, of course, and the execution of the
character depth and fighting sequences are the point of interest in the
2016 Fuqua telling. Ultimately, the film will not likely be remembered
for its merits, but the situation with its soundtrack will remain an
important point of emphasis. Fuqua had overcome doubts about taking on
The Magnificent Seven in part because of insistence by composer
James Horner during their collaboration on
Southpaw. Naturally,
when Fuqua decided to proceed with the Western project, Horner was
slated to join him. The famed composer had grown disillusioned with
mainstream Hollywood projects in the 2000's and had taken to writing
concert music and scoring only obscure films that spoke to his personal
interests or, in many cases, simply turning down major assignments not
involving directors whom he considered a friend. His sudden increase in
film music output in the mid-2010's marked a celebrated return to his
1990's level of activity, though that rejuvenation was cut short by a
airplane crash that took his life in 2015. Horner had taken to flying as
an escape mechanism, and by all reports, he simply conducted a maneuver
at too low an altitude in Southern California when his vintage aircraft
hit the ground. Because of the immensely busy schedule that Horner had
signed for between 2014 and 2016, he was stacked with projects in
various states of completion and release on film and album at his death,
and
The Magnificent Seven represented the one score for which he
had written material but not had a chance to tailor it to completed
footage.
The story of how Horner's rough sketches for
The
Magnificent Seven came to exist in the final film are well told but
deserve repeating. Knowing he would be swamped with work on
Hacksaw
Ridge and
The Great Wall in 2016, not to mention the
Avatar sequels always lurking around the corner, Horner decided
to start hashing through themes for
The Magnificent Seven during
the week of his preparations in London for recording his concert piece,
"Collage." After that recording, he returned to California to escape to
the skies in his airplanes. Upon learning of Horner's death, his team of
arrangers, editors, and orchestrators decided to arrange and record the
fledgling themes with a London orchestra as a gift to Fuqua. This group
of frequent Horner collaborators was helmed by Simon Franglen, veteran
synthesizer arranger who had worked with Horner since
Titanic.
Also involved were editors Simon Rhodes, Jim Henriksen, and Joe E. Rand,
orchestrator and conductor JAC Redford, and performer Tony Hinnegan, who
had yielded many of the most famous woodwind performances throughout
Horner's recordings. All of these men dated back to the late 1990's with
Horner, and Rand, Henriksen, and Hinnegan go back further.
Understandably, Fuqua was overwhelmed when hearing what was literally
the final composition by Horner, and he insisted, with the surprising
backing of MGM, upon an ensemble arranging effort by the team to flesh
out this Horner material into a final score over the subsequent nine
months. The two Simons made the bulk of the compositional arrangements;
Franglen's background extended from synthesizer programming for James
Newton Howard and Alan Silvestri in the early 1990's while Rhodes has
become a renowned recording and editing engineer and got his feet wet
with Trevor Jones at the same time. Both, along with Redford, have a
history with Thomas Newman, and that comes to play in
The Magnificent
Seven as well. They decided to treat the film organically, recording
an 80-member ensemble together and only electronically manipulating live
recording of specialty elements with sparing frequency. They desired a
gritty environment to match Fuqua's passion for Horner's music from
Thunderheart but sought to produce that effect with real
instruments and voices. The film ultimately featured 107 minutes of
music, making the score almost a wall-to-wall presence on screen.
Horner's only major reservation about
The Magnificent
Seven before his death was how his music would be perceived against
that of Elmer Bernstein for the 1960 film, a significant worry given the
memorability of the famous classic theme and its major-key heroism that
quite frankly wouldn't fit into Fuqua's version (or modern Hollywood).
As Franglen and Rhodes started work on arranging Horner's ideas for the
remake, they ran into the same problem, testing drop placements of
Bernstein's theme into various places in the movie. Ultimately, while
you hear hints of the rhythmic foundation of the classic tune in a few
cues throughout the score, the only obvious placement is saved for the
end of the film. Even in these interpolations, the switch to the major
key will be potentially jarring for some listeners. Fortunately for the
team, Horner's annoying but lovable habit of self-referencing throughout
his career made the task of interpolating his compositional style into
the score a comparatively straightforward task. Some listeners might
view this music for
The Magnificent Seven to be a rather tedious
copy and paste job, taking passages from a plethora of Horner works and
layering them with the composer's usual performance elements. But,
ironically, the consistent voice within Horner's writing style is what
made this score possible, and, for better of for worse, this final work
is a tribute to those dozens of prior Horner scores referenced, the
ultimate Horner copy and paste job that ends up functioning quite well
as a score on its own because of the precision with which the team
accomplished the emulation. The instrumentation and texturing of
The
Magnificent Seven is all very familiar, soloists on acoustic
baritone guitars, banjos, qenas, shakuhachi, and horsehead fiddle joined
by various vocalists ranging from across the sonic spectrum to provide
tones common to many Horner endeavors. Every instrumental application is
carefully included to recall a prior Horner work, from the military
snare rips to the ethnic woodwinds, the twinkling piano to tapped
cymbals, the echoing trumpets to the noble French horn layers in the
finale that inspired his "Collage" work. Banjos and guitars, manipulated
and "distressed," as Franglen explains, are largely the basis for the
grittier tone of the work, and for the two minorities in the gang of
seven, you hear echoes of the composer's ventures into Latin and Eastern
realms. The only Horner staples totally absent from the soundscape are
his applications of fuller, upper-tone choir and the realm of
electronics.
The stylistic connections to Horner's past are too
constant in
The Magnificent Seven to identify in full in this
review, but a few choices made by Franglen and Rhodes are particularly
poignant. The return to Horner's early 1990's atmospheric suspense mode
for much of the first half of the score is no surprise given the tone of
the film and Fuqua's desires. A combination of
Thunderheart,
Patriot Games, and
In Country, among others, eventually
heightens with rhythms and coloration from
Avatar,
The Four
Feathers,
Windtalkers, and
Black Gold and stops
briefly along the way for dramatic influence from
The Spitfire
Grill and
Legends of the Fall and a touch of nobility from
For Greater Glory and
Apollo 13. Although the four-note
"danger motif" of
Willow fame appears in "Lighting the Fuse" as a
pace-setter, the more interesting singular tribute comes in the echoplex
trumpet technique heard throughout (and immediately at the outset) as a
nod to
Battle Beyond the Stars, originally a tribute to Jerry
Goldsmith's
Patton. The devastating solo voice at the end of
"House of Judgment" extends from the composer's expanding applications
of that tool, as heard in
The Amazing Spider-Man. Fuller ensemble
performances are not plentiful in
The Magnificent Seven before
the closing suite of action and drama cues, and none of them features
the kind of sweep that graces
Legends of the Fall. Some Horner
enthusiasts will likely prefer the scope of grandeur in
Wolf
Totem as the closing expression of that mode for the composer. But
these moments are sincere and arranged with a little more care as to
avoid simple rehash. The themes of
The Magnificent Seven are both
a highlight and a frustration, as their development is careful and
rewarding but not always obvious enough for a simple "good versus evil"
tale like this one. This is an area in which Franglen has remained coy
in his discussion of the score's development. At the time of the work's
release, there was no way to know just how much the final themes
resembled Horner's original ideas. Franglen only admits the natural
evolution process of the ideas in any score, and that potentially
suggests that the themes themselves share less of Horner's direct voice
than the counterpoint, orchestration, and other rendering elements that
are truly defining of the composer's style. There are few moments in
The Magnificent Seven when the base melodies truly sound
distinctly familiar as a product of a "Hornerism."
There exist three major themes in
The Magnificent
Seven, and other ideas meander through in lesser duties. Rather than
assigning motifs to each of the main gang of characters, Franglen and
Rhodes apply ideas for the heroes in general, the primary villain, and
the townspeople and the oppression of them. A separate idea for the
positive view of the genre is the only connection the score really has
to the comparatively upbeat Bernstein, Jerome Moross, Basil Poledouris,
and Bruce Broughton vision of the Old West, and you hear this identity
in "Volcano Springs." Interestingly, in this cue and at the outset of
"Seven Angels of Vengeance," the team of arrangers also very clearly
betrays its connections to Thomas Newman, because both of these cues,
along with parts of "So Far So Good," are dripping with Newman rhythmic
figures led by strings. (The majority of these men were involved
together with both
Skyfall and
Spectre.) Otherwise, expect
the themes of
The Magnificent Seven to more closely align with
Ennio Morricone and Jerry Fielding's less rosy but occasionally melodic
music for the genre; a little Goldsmith twanginess also resides in the
softer moments. The theme for the town of Rose Creek and its general
unhappiness is first introduced at 0:21 in "Rose Creek Oppression" with
Patriot Games clearly in mind. This idea wanders through the
background of much of the first half of the score, making a notable
appearance "7 Days, That's All You Got," and it eventually finds its
symphonic voice and its heroic resolution early in "Faraday's Ride." The
latter half of that cue showcases the score's main theme for the gang of
seven. Introduced gloriously at 1:57 into "Seven Angels of Vengeance"
and hinted in "Volcano Springs," the melody doesn't get its full workout
until the final confrontation. Grinding to life with resolve in "Pacing
the Town," the idea dominates from the latter half of "Faraday's Ride"
to "Seven Riders," adapted with remarkable emotional range in all the
cues between. The outright heroic incarnations with rambling guitar
rhythms and brazen brass counterpoint in "The Darkest Hour" and "Seven
Riders" are balanced by somber string performances of the idea (with
nearly Naoki Sato-like melodramatics) in "Horne Sacrifice" and the solo
vocals concluding "House of Judgment." For sheer fun, however, the
combination of the two main themes in "Faraday's Ride" represents the
fullest and most engaging, snare-ripping orchestral performance in the
score. It includes one remarkable, seemingly synthetically-altered
Courage Under Fire effect at 2:11. The slight presence of the
Bernstein rhythms underneath the main theme are a nice touch.
If the
The Magnificent Seven music has a clear
weakness outside of its annoyingly odd (and one must suspect
unintentional) insertion of Tom Newman mannerisms into what otherwise
stands as the ultimate Horner tribute, it's in the sinewy and
understated villain's theme. Heard on violins over tortured banjo and
guitar in "Devil in the Church," this idea was clearly meant to slither
in the background of the character's conversational scenes. That may
function in this cue and "Sheriff Demoted," among others, but the theme
doesn't get translated into a clear action motif when needed. An attempt
is made to take this action in "Army Invades Town" and "The Darkest
Hour," but the connection isn't transparent enough for a common
movie-goer to make. The use of the theme in "House of Judgment" seems to
lack any depth for the character; if ever the theme needed a more
forceful emotional punch, that cue would be the place. Additionally, the
theme for the town receives no final send-off at the end. Still, the
themes are solid and consistent enough to suffice, and their execution,
especially late in the score, is where this soundtrack's highlights are
to be found. Otherwise,
The Magnificent Seven is merely a
fascinating academic study, a thoughtful expression of love for a
composer lost before his time. You can clearly tell that this project
was one of personal impact for Horner's team, a final thumbing of the
nose to those who believe Horner's era to be of yesteryear. Franglen
even went so far as to say about society today, "They forget that four
chords played in repeating sequence, tutti, fff with the 'blastomatik
epic' patch in D minor for ten minutes does not always an Oscar-winner
for best score make," an unmistakable shot at the contemporary Hans
Zimmer phenomenon. For Horner enthusiasts,
The Magnificent Seven
may represent the most pleasing farewell to the composer one could ask
for, but unreleased nuggets remained. Horner's concert works and music
for obscure, short, flight-related films of the 2010's were rushed to
listeners, and his collectors must not forget about the reportedly
gorgeous hidden gem of a romance score he recorded with Sissel
Kyrkjebø for 2013's
Romeo & Juliet that was rejected and
shelved, still awaiting a deserved release after his death. Along those
lines for Sony Classical, don't be surprised if
The Magnificent
Seven receives expanded treatment on album to add the remaining 30
minutes of unreleased material and, more importantly, the original
thematic suites recorded for Fuqua at the outset of the process. It's a
shame that such a 2-CD album wasn't offered up front for a composer who
meant so much to the industry and his collectors. The score is a fitting
tribute to one of the most memorable voices we'll ever hear in this
genre.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15
(in 108 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.23
(in 203,368 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes a list of performers and a note from Simon Franglen about the circumstances
of the score.
