Overall, Goldsmith's return to the genre of animation put Menken's music to shame at the time, and the score has aged well. Long after Wilder's songs have been forgotten, the massive orchestral score by Goldsmith sets this 1990's Disney musical apart from the rest. After starting 1998 with two generally poor scores, his music for Mulan could have been mistaken for a dramatic epic, and that alone is the best compliment anyone could give to any Disney musical's score. While most film music collectors predicted an easy Oscar win for Goldsmith (only his second overall), he was beaten by Stephen Warbeck's Shakespeare in Love as it swept through the awards. Sadly, Mulan would be Goldsmith's final Oscar nomination before his death in 2004. Also enormously frustrating for fans of the composer was the album situation for Mulan, a situation that remains confusing at best. Goldsmith wrote just over 50 minutes of score for Mulan, a lengthy effort for a Disney musical, but that material was cut an rearranged badly for the commercial albums. When subtracting the seven minute suite arranged for the album, only 25+ minutes of actual underscore from the film was present on the American album release. That material was also badly cut into pieces and placed together to form mini-suites of each type of music for the film, meaning that the music heard in "Attack at the Wall" or "The Huns Attack" will include material not relating to those scenes. The international commercial release of Mulan (mainly sold in Europe) contained an extra five minutes of material, including the most notable omission of score --albeit short-- from the American album. The minute-long "Haircut" cue was the most troubling for Goldsmith and the filmmakers to agree upon, and with several variants of the cue recorded, this album provides one of the variants (along with "Mulan's Decision," which is the same cue but without the rock rhythm and instrumentation). The other addition to the international album was the inclusion of yet another vocal performance the Wilder song "Reflection."

As you might expect, Goldsmith fans were not pleased with either of these albums. To both the delight and frustration of Goldsmith fans, a promotional release of Mulan was officially pressed by Disney Records and sent to Academy members in early 1999 for their consideration in the voting for Best Original Comedy/Musical Score nominees. Only a limited number of these were pressed, and an original copy has always been difficult to obtain; it is noteworthy as well for containing only a picture disc and no front cover to the jewel case (tracks are listed with limited information on the back). Goldsmith himself had no involvement with this promo. It contains the full 52 minutes of his score, minus the suite arrangement presented on the commercial releases, as well as the six songs that actually appear in the film. As a faithful representation of the music in the film, the promo is superior in the fact that it is unadulterated. Cues are understandably short and will jar some listeners accustomed to the suites of score cues on the commercial albums. Because the promo came directly from Disney, the sound quality is crisp and bold. For the majority of people familiar with only the commercial products, the most important additions on the promo (outside of "Short Hair," which you may have already heard if you bought a non-American product) will be the final three tracks, which include the choral climax of the score (the only section to contain any exclusive choral work in Mulan). Also more evident on the promo will be some of the lighter percussive sequences and solo woodwind performances likely deemed too uninteresting for the commercial products. On the other hand, the promo's major weakness was that it did not contain that 7-minute suite that Goldsmith recorded for the commercial CDs. Because that suite contains some of the best recorded music from the film (and forms the bridge between the score and songs), fans of the film will be best served by seeking both the commercial and promo albums.

The only difference in presentation quality between the various albums relates to the end credits pop song. Aguilera's performance seems to be mixed more poorly on the commercial product, with better balance at the end of the promo. Score fans shouldn't fuss about this difference, though. The promo was perhaps the last great collectible before the era of CDr's began making bootlegging an easy endeavor. The frustration regarding that promo often related to its market price. When it began floating in auctions and at specialty outlets, it fetched prices in the range of $150. By April, 1999, however, the promo was selling at online auctions for sums around $400, eclipsing the prices paid for any other Academy promo at the time (in fact, it was speculated that a price that high would never again be paid for an Academy promo given the debut of CDr's). The score probably wasn't worth that amount of money regardless of its strengths, and popular Academy promos have since regularly sold in the $50 range. Fans, of course, took it upon themselves to solve some of their own problems by once again rearranging the music into a Goldsmith-only product. In the following years, a bootleg claiming to be promotional emerged, and this product dumped the Wilder songs completely, arranged the score back into some of Goldsmith's formats for the commercial albums, and tacked on eight alternate recordings of various cues at the end. The sound quality of this product is once again very good, though the alternate performances are really the only reason to seek this bootleg. The most significant hype here surrounds the three overall performances of the cue played when Mulan cuts her hair. Alternately titled "Mulan's Decision," "Haircut," and "Short Hair," you can hear Goldsmith struggling with this cue to find the right sound of "coolness" for the scene of defiance. The bootleg contains the variants heard in the film and on commercial album, as well as another performance that exists in between them in their electronic emphasis. The majority of listeners won't be blown away by the alternate takes (much like the Star Trek: First Contact bootleg albums), and most will even be satisfied by the commercial albums. If you appreciate the film's version of the haircut sequence and the two primary choral performances at the end, though, the original promo will suffice. Joel McNeely's fine score for the straight-to-video Mulan II would include none of Goldsmith's thematic material.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download