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Young Sherlock Holmes
(1985)
Album Cover Art
2002 Promo
2014 Intrada
Album 2 Cover Art
2019 Intrada
Album 3 Cover Art
Composed, Conducted, and Produced by:

Orchestrated by:
Mark McKenzie
Don Nemitz
Labels Icon
LABELS & RELEASE DATES
Intrada Records (Promotional)
(March, 2002)

Intrada Records
(March 31st, 2014)

Intrada Records
(July 16th, 2019)
Availability Icon
ALBUM AVAILABILITY
The 2002 2-CD set was a limited promotional product assembled by Intrada Records. That label's 2014 set existed as part of its regular catalog and was a commercial release that sold initially for $25. After falling out of print, it sold for over $100. Intrada's 2019 3-CD set is a limited CD product of unspecified quantity, originally available through soundtrack specialty outlets for $30. Various bootlegs also exist for this score on the secondary market.
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   Availability | Viewer Ratings | Comments | Track Listings | Notes
Buy it... on either the 2014 or 2019 album if you seek a dynamic blend of Victorian character themes and challenging writing for conflict at the height of Bruce Broughton's ascendance in the mid-1980's.

Avoid it... if the striking atonality of the suspense and killing cues is too disparate from the pretty and innocent themes for the protagonists, this score maintaining a split personality from start to finish.
Review Icon
EDITORIAL REVIEW
FILMTRACKS TRAFFIC RANK: #2,225
WRITTEN 3/18/24
Broughton
Broughton
Young Sherlock Holmes: (Bruce Broughton) With the combined talents of Steven Spielberg, Chris Columbus, Barry Levinson, and John Lasseter all channeling the best intentions that Amblin Entertainment could have at the time, it's surprising that 1985's Young Sherlock Holmes turned out to be such a misfire. Little had been explored about the early lives of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famed characters of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and Columbus's completely original story sought to illuminate the motivations of the men as most audiences later knew them. In this story, Holmes and Watson meet at a boarding school and solve their first murder mystery together, one that exposes an Egyptian cult that is killing people in London for a reason the boys must discover. At this point, Holmes is in love with a young woman whose fate in the film ultimately guides the master detective's solitary life thereafter. Cool inventions, weird temple rituals, and an abundance of Victorian style all firmly place the picture in the perfect Spielberg frame, but critics and audiences ultimately rejected the film as unnecessary and dissatisfying. Still, Young Sherlock Holmes will be remembered for two distinct positives: its inaugural introduction of CGI character effects on the big screen and Bruce Broughton's score. The latter was a risky decision by Spielberg's studio, as Broughton was far from a known commodity at the time. Mostly relegated to television scoring, the composer was in the process of creating his outstanding score for Silverado at the time Young Sherlock Holmes was seeking its own scoring path, and Broughton was recommended to Levinson for the job because of the prior work. No doubt, 1985 proved to be the most notable year of production on the big screen in Broughton's entire career, the composer blasting onto the scene with sudden momentum that never translated into an established career on front-line films. Regardless of that opportunity lost, Broughton fondly recalled the production of Young Sherlock Holmes as one of his smoothest. The relatively long score not only required him to write quickly but do so immediately after exhausting himself on Silverado. To his fortune, Levinson was highly supportive of his strategy for the music, and the recording in London was among the composer's easiest and best career experiences.

The score for Young Sherlock Holmes remains highly respected and popular in the film score-collecting community, a dynamic orchestral action and adventure romp that pushed the boundaries in a number of historical musical genres. For its characters, the score espouses the sound of a 19th Century British romance, but that demeanor is countered with more challenging 20th Century tones in the chord structures used for suspense and action. For every cue of sweet and innocent tonality is another one or two of difficult, often atonal explosions more akin at the time to Alex North's or Leonard Rosenman's methodology. The orchestra is sometimes sufficient for this task but often finds itself underwhelming, especially in the dramatic and tender passages. The spread of orchestrations, with the help of future composer Mark McKenzie in one of his earlier orchestration jobs, makes the London ensemble sound larger than it was, but the strings seem particularly underpowered in the score. Most of the personality of the leading themes is guided by woodwinds, and these are sometimes left hanging too far back in the mix. There isn't an abundance of instrumental creativity in the score, though Broughton does explore a unique rattling sound effect, one that emulates the shuffling of boots on a stage floor, for his opening and closing title cues. A 16-member choir is employed to represent the chanting of the Egyptian cult group on screen, though these performers don't have any impact in supplemental duties in other, more traditional cues. Broughton wrote a bevy of themes for Young Sherlock Holmes, and some of them are really quite attractive. Although each is certainly sufficient for what they represent, these ideas have difficulty adapting to the suspense and action scenes prior to the climax, and Broughton sometimes doesn't attempt to really adapt them for purposes of true conflict in some cues at all. The atonal portions of the work therefore seem disconnected from the broader narrative in several cues, the heroic identities not forced into obvious discomfort when needed. As a result, the suspense portions tend to be atmospheric and nondescript. While these passages are respectable, listeners are left gravitating towards' Broughton's thematic constructs in their more accessible forms. These cues were assembled together for the original LP record of the score and are highlighted by the fabulous early cue, "Solving the Crime."


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VIEWER RATINGS
113 TOTAL VOTES
Average: 3.53 Stars
***** 30 5 Stars
**** 32 4 Stars
*** 27 3 Stars
** 16 2 Stars
* 8 1 Stars
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Track Listings Icon
TRACK LISTINGS
2002 Promo Album Tracks   ▼Total Time: 83:25
CD 1: (32:57)
• 1. The Gamecock/The Bird is Alive (2:56)
• 2. Flaming Hat Rack/Main Title (3:43)
• 3. The Heart of London (1:02)
• 4. A Deductive Mind Never Rests (0:48)
• 5. Library Love/Waxflatter's First Flight/The Visitor (2:54)
• 6. Fencing Lesson (1:08)
• 7. I Never Want to Be Alone/Stained Glass Knightmare/Solving the Crime (8:09)
• 8. Waxflatter Flies Again (1:12)
• 9. One Last Duel/Window Parting/Cario Vision (4:10)
• 10. Waxflatter's Death/Holmes Returns (3:40)
• 11. The Hat/Holmes and Elizabeth-Love Theme (3:18)

CD 2: (50:28)
• 1. The Game is Afoot/Tip of the Iceberg (0:43)
• 2. The Ceremony (3:06)
• 3. Stop! She's Alive!/Pastries & Crypts (6:44)
• 4. Caught/Friends of Waxflatter (4:57)
• 5. Warning Shot (1:34)
• 6. Cragwitch's Vision (1:49)
• 7. The Struggle (1:24)
• 8. A Fifth Princess/Holmes in Flight (6:17)
• 9. Waxing Elizabeth/Diversionary Tactics (7:06)
• 10. Ehtar's Escape/The Final Duel/Final Farewell (9:39)
• 11. The Riddle's Solved/End Credits (6:26)
• 12. Moriarty? (0:48)
2014 Intrada Album Tracks   ▼Total Time: 104:45
2019 Intrada Album Tracks   ▼Total Time: 154:51

Notes Icon
NOTES AND QUOTES
The insert of the 2002 promotional album consists of a single page slip and includes no extra information. Its back cover overstates time of track 1 on the second CD because the track was accidentally cut off in the edit. The packaging of the 2014 and 2019 Intrada albums both contain extensive information about the film and score.
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or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Young Sherlock Holmes are Copyright © 2002, 2014, 2019, Intrada Records (Promotional), Intrada Records, Intrada Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 3/18/24 (and not updated significantly since).
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