earlier in the decade, mainstream
British comedy was ready for a series of similarly themed and humored
romance films. Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts were juxtaposed in a
British/American tale of love for
in which a British
guy who is a nobody improbably wins the heart of a top-name American
actress who is starring in a film shooting in his home town. You can
guess who plays which roles, with several twists of humor and basic plot
ideas repeated from
. Propelled by its
star power,
was a date-movie success, so much so
that the soundtrack began to take on epic proportions in its variations
around the world. Several songs by the likes of Shania Twain and Elvis
Costello are positioned wisely in the film, with one montage sequence
involving the changing of seasons utilizing "Ain't No Sunshine" to great
effect. Mixed in between the songs is a predictably contemporary and
tender score by Trevor Jones. These situations aren't often composers'
favorites, for you can't tell if the post production of the film will
lead to a whole slew of songs replacing score that had been tailored
specifically for certain scenes. Jones does exactly what you would
expect to hear from any composer in the same situation, writing an
underscore that could be moved around, replaced, downsized, or repeated
without much loss to the integrity of his music. Hearing the composer
write music for a light comedy probably isn't what his fans expected to
hear anyways, with Jones scoring a wide range of fantasy and action
films that usually featured enormous, sweeping themes or dramatic,
dynamic constructs with the London Symphony Orchestra.
Collectors of Jones' music need to consider
Notting
Hill in the same regards that Alan Silvestri fans had met with that
composer's numerous interludes into the romantic comedy genre.
Silvestri, known widely for his action themes, was perhaps the most
experienced such composer to tone down his writing for films like
What Women Want and
Serendipity at the time. The half an
hour of music that Jones presents for
Notting Hill is as pleasant
as it is surprising. He is a man who has literally studied and taught
methodology in every conceivable genre of music, and the effectiveness
of his work for
Notting Hill is undoubtedly successful. He begins
with a solo acoustic guitar and weaves it in between clubby bands, solo
sax, solo piano, and occasional orchestral backing. His title theme is
simplistic and repeated often to compensate for the score's lack of
screen time in the film. It maintains a soft, upscale barroom
atmosphere at every turn, although a few cues with modern loops of
percussion and rhythm keep the score moving at a listenable pace. The
"Car Chase" cue near the end of the film features some light rock with
electric organ, but the tone is generally consistent in instrumentation
and personality with the remaining, softer underscore. Orchestral
enthusiasts will likely enjoy the several cues in which the woodwinds
and strings (and perhaps two or three brass players) of the orchestra
offer a deep, lush accompaniment to the material. Here the group is used
for one of the traveling scenes (to and from the hotel) and in
performances of the theme in full, symphonic force, which work well in
the magical, movie-business scenes in the film. The acoustic guitar
writing sounds similar in many ways to John Du Prez's work for
A Fish
Called Wanda, although Jones always maintains a heavier, dramatic
mix. He also wrote the source music for the film, whether it is heard in
the bar, the hotel lobby, or elsewhere. The hotel lobby scene involves
some gorgeous solo piano work that you'd expect to hear live upon
entering a high class department store.
Due to the film's success, several different song
albums were pressed by various international branches of Polygram. The
U.S., U.K., and Japan all had slightly differing collections of songs,
and score fans can keep the situation simplified by knowing that the
same eight minutes (in two suites of combined cues) of Jones' score
material appears on all of them. For the most part, these eight minutes
offer all you really need from the score, and you may very well enjoy
the songs, too. But for die-hard Jones collectors, the somewhat
redundant full score is an option. The composer originally pressed a
promo (this was just before the Contemporary Media Recordings label he
released scores under semi-promotionally starting doing essentially the
same thing later that year with
Cleopatra) containing the usual
disclaimers on its packaging. This album had seventeen untitled tracks
following a shorter Costello performance of "She," which has a
foundation of piano that works seamlessly with the score. The purpose of
the promotional pressing was not certain, although awards consideration
may have been the thinking given the popularity of the film. As could be
expected, the score then made several trips around the bootleg market,
sometimes with the seventeen score tracks appearing by themselves (with
the "She" song unfortunately stripped from the package). On other
bootlegs, it was combined with material from Jones'
Arachnophobia, which obviously doesn't fit with the tone of
Notting Hill on the same album. The sequencing of tracks is
different on nearly all of them. There are some downright beautiful solo
performances on the expanded promo or bootlegged albums of Jones' score,
especially involving the piano writing. But is either of these
full-score options worth the search as opposed to commercial song and
score combination album? For most listeners, no. The songs are really
quite enticing, and since they fit the mood of Jones' underscore very
well, they make a nice overall balance. In those eight minutes on the
commercial album, the most significant of Jones' orchestral outbursts of
theme is presented. Still, though, Jones continues to impress in the
entirety of his work, proving his versatility once again.
@Amazon.com: CD or
Download
- Commercial Albums: ****
- Promotional Album: ****
- Bootlegged Albums: ***
- Overall: ****
| Bias Check: |
For Trevor Jones reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.78
(in 18 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.44
(in 26,057 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
