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•	1998 Album

•	1997 Album

The composer's striking, experimental instrumentation and highly charged, angry dissonance is the defining element of The Mephisto Waltz. He approached this project the same way John Williams would later tackle Images, with the obvious intent to create music as horrifyingly unpleasant as possible to ensure fright, even down the bevy of sound effects that make you sometimes wonder what the hell you are listening to. Goldsmith's ensemble is highly diverse, the orchestra dominated by strings, piano, and percussion but with other sections contributing piercing lines at times as well. The fiddle is the representation of the Devil, as expected, and that voice of evil sometimes quotes from the Liszt piece and is performed by the respected Louis Kaufman. While the shrieking violin stabs in "The Latest Victim" resemble Bernard Herrmann's famous Psycho killing music, the instrument is usually conveying the dastardly presence of the Devil through Goldsmith's own motif for the character. Manic plucking of strings is extremely prickly underneath these performances, too. Joining the ensemble is a plethora of strange noises that may seem like vocal sound effects at first but are actually the groaning of unusual percussion, likely Brazilian cuicas or friction drums. These sounds can be highly intrusive and actually pretty funny in the middle of "Part of the Bargain" and "The Latest Victim." (Again, these noises bring back memories of the awkward hilarity of Images in just how awful the music can be in some portions.) Not surprisingly, Goldsmith also employs extreme synthetic contributions, too. Some of his sound effects mimic the beeping noises on spaceships, though an electric organ is a bit more tasteful, especially when it joins the violin emphasis openly in "The Funeral." Perhaps the metallic scraping and shimmering noises throughout are synthetic, but they may also be the work of the percussionists. His sweeteners included slowed tapes and backwards tapes carefully applied after the recording. Goldsmith was nervously uncertain about how the electronic manipulation would translate from paper, with much experimentation and adjustment required during the sessions. Several synthetic embellishments exist in the film but are missing from the legacy album release. The combination of all this wild experimentation with the atonal sound of The Mephisto Waltz yields a fascinatingly unlistenable result, perhaps the single most challenging Goldsmith score in existence.

Aside from purely atmospheric cues like "The Library" and "The Hospital," however, the composer keeps the motific representations churning, and that intelligence may win the day for the few listeners not disturbed by the horrifically abrasive dissonance of the whole affair. The composer's motif for Satan is almost always conveyed on the sly fiddle, introduced 0:14 and 0:45 into "Main Title" over chugging cello lines, increasing intensity and players later on. It recurs at 1:15 into "A New Miles" and in wilder incarnations at that cue's end. The Devil's motif then offers fragments early in "The Funeral" amongst the "Dies Irae" references, interrupts the relatively soft tone at 1:51 into "A Night in Mexico," and forces itself at the end of "The Hospital." With giddiness, the idea prevails at 1:18 into "End Title" against the Liszt references, finally victorious at 3:29 on piano. The adaptations of the Liszt piece are plentiful, though be aware that the original album does not include the piano performance overlaid onto the "Main Title" cue. That said, Liszt is provided in highly manipulated form at 0:51 into "Main Title," and it then playfully toys with the darker surrounding material in "A Night in Mexico" and informs the quiet panic in the latter half of "Part of the Bargain." On quasi-theremin and then more elegant strings at 3:08 into "The Latest Victim," the Liszt piece guides the culmination of the horror material in "Dogfight" and barely tiptoes through the latter half of "Roxanne's Demise" as well. It truly emerges in "End Title," starting on cello and achieving more cohesion on flutes before the perverse fiddle carries the tune more clearly in the latter half, launching the material to a monumental crescendo of pounding force at the end of the cue. Even more prevalent is "Dies Irae," which punctuates the death element and appears at 0:24 and 1:16 into "Main Title" amongst much distortion, the violins stating it over sickening atonality at the end of the cue. It persists lightly at the start of "The Funeral," closes "Part of the Bargain" with more clarity, and turns to chimes at 4:04 into "The Latest Victim." Its tolling effect on those chimes accentuates the suspense early in "Roxanne's Demise" and closes out "End Title." In the end, all this usage is extremely clever, but its rendering is wildly overwrought. The score is too obvious and distracting in the picture, Goldsmith trying too hard and thereby cheapening the concept further. Only one album presentation from 1997 has represented this score, and that product does not match much of what is heard in the film. In either recorded version, though, The Mephisto Waltz is a fascinatingly intelligent but completely unlistenable score.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

• Music as Written for the Film:  **
• Music as Heard on Album:  *
• Overall:  *

Bias Check:

For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.18 (in 150 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.21 (in 156,058 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.