For those looking for some highlights from the many Murray Gold Dr. Who scores, this BSX Records release (available from their website www.buysoundtrax.com) may just scratch the right itch.  Dominik Hauser has pulled together a number of classic musical moments and themes from the series for this first volume.  The blend of electronic and studio work (by the Meridian Studio Orchestra) manages to traverse the music fairly well.  One does have to suspend any familiarity with the original sources only on occasion to allow for the interpretations here.  This is really only the case in the opening “Season 5 Main Title” which is wholly convincing musically and serves as a great opening to the disc.

Later the season 8 theme will help bring the variety of selections to a close with a brief performance of “Martha and Rose”, a medley of these character themes put together by pianist Mark Northam who performs here.  The album is a sort of “greatest” hits and bits of the rebooted series.  Included are themes for “The Doctor” and “I Am the Doctor”, “Martha”, “Amy”, “Melody Pond”, and  “Clara”.  The romantic music for “Madame de Pompadour” makes for an equally nice addition.  The farewell music for Rose appears in the poignant “Doomsday” music, and there is also the music for the introduction of Donna Noble in “The Doctor Forever”, and some of her theme which is used in “A Noble Girl About Town”.

The program also features some unique tracks from the series.  First of these is the “Song for Ten”, the first original song written for a Dr. Who series since 1966 and which appeared when David Tennant assumed the role of the Doctor.  There is also the swing number, “My Angel Put the Devil In Me”.  The wonderful “Song of Freedom” and “The Wedding of River Song” are also good to have here mixed in with the themes and other memorable musical moments.

As a sort of bonus to an already ample album, BSX includes some music from the 1996 Dr. Who movie.  The film, which had great potential to reboot the faltering series cancelled as Sylvester McCoy was just hitting his stride in the role, saw the short-lived Paul McGann regeneration in what ended up as a low-budget TV production.  Interestingly though, John Debney, just gaining attention after his superb work on Cutthroat Island, was hired to provide the score with additional music added by Louis Ferbe and John Sponsler.  Three selections are included here: “Night Walk”, “Open the Eye”, and “Farewell”.  The release ends with a version of Ron Grainer’s iconic theme.  Sort of bringing us full circle back to the beginning after hearing the theme in its many updated and varied forms from the film and Gold’s own alterations.

Dr. Who fans will likely already have the original scores for the new series.  This compilation is a great overview of Gold’s work, perhaps a bit more intimate at times than the big orchestral sound that has gradually been brought to the series.  But the inclusion of the selections from the 1996 film does indeed make this a bit more desirable.  The program notes here are also exemplary with good, brief explanations of the concept for the album and where the pieces fall in the pantheon of episodes.  Soloists (for songs and vocalizes) and ensemble musicians are not identified however.

The news of James Horner’s tragic death in a plane accident yesterday was an unfortunate loss to the film music world.  We offer our condolences to his immediate family and friends.  His music has touched many lives throughout the past 35+ years of his career.

When I first began reviewing film music in the 1990s though, James Horner was sort of the lightning rod for film music critics, soon supplanted by Hans Zimmer’s Media Ventures crews.  Part of the reason for the invective, and again this was mostly from film music fans, was that quite often he seemed to reuse material.  This is a bit of a problem for someone steeped in the more traditional orchestral style of grand thematic ideas.  Today of course, with many non-theme scores in abundance, one could lay this claim at any number of artists.  But for Horner, this seemed to be a common complaint among fans.

That said, there is still no denying that he wrote some truly wonderful film music.  For children of the 1980s and early 1990s he was certainly a composer whose work touched their lives through films like An American Tale (1986), Willow (1988), and The Land Before Time (1988).  Most of these young fans would then come to truly appreciate the work he would do with James Cameron, especially that for Titanic (1997)—a film that he could have ended a great career on.  More recently, it was Avatar (2009) that raised his name up again in blockbuster capacity.

I tend to be one of those reviewers who had their share of frustration with Horner’s music over the past 30 years.  I can recall hearing the score for Willow and admittedly thinking this was just a knock-off of John Williams’ style.  That was a bit too dismissive, and also somewhat uninformed for the time.  That said, this is one of the first really big scores that I noticed—having missed two much grander endeavors.

The first of these, a score I do thoroughly enjoy, is Aliens (1986).  While this took a lot of the edges of Goldsmith’s score for Ridley Scott’s film, the action sequences here were really pulse-pounding and helped create the sort of perfect match for the screen.  Gaining a better appreciation for Star Trek as an older adult, I also then discovered Horner’s “breakout” score, 1982’s The Wrath of Khan.  This is a sort of touchstone score in a couple of ways.  First it has some fabulous memorable themes.  However, it also incorporates a lot of music that certainly bears resemblance to a score that first got Hollywood’s attention: Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).  Of course, who would ever have thought that earlier score would have seen the light of day on CD anyway?

What film made me rethink Horner’s work and check out these earlier pieces?  It was his fascinating score for Glory (1989).  There is something about this film with this music that really resonated for me at the time.  The Americana touches, things that would be expanded in Horner’s other Americana styled films (like the superb Field of Dreams), were given further impact by some beautiful choral writing.  This remains one of my favorite scores of the period.  It seems to have incorporated some of Horner’s wonderful text-setting skill, with excellent matching to film with the score.  It was likely a great experience that prepared him for an equally wonderful piece for Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (1995).  One need listen to the more recent Apocalypto (2006) though to really see how far his art had come.

The 1990s were fruitful for Horner with interesting scores, many for critically acclaimed Ron Howard films.  This is another of those great matchings of director and composer, one of several Horner had throughout his career.  The early 21^st Century found him luxuriating in good projects.  Many of the films he scored tended to do well at the box office with a few noticeable disappointments (The New World and even Apocalypto could fall into that category).  Even then, there was no denying Horner’s ability to find an emotional core for a film.

Among these later scores, his music for Iris (2001) was striking.  Continuing a thread of minimalist-like writing that appeared also that year in A Beautiful Mind, Horner’s music melded so well with this film and is an equally fascinating listen.  Ironically, these two works have their roots in another less seen film, Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993).  Or, perhaps these three films represent Horner’s particular approach to scoring music dealing with the inner life of our thoughts and brain patterns?  Perhaps here is where we see that all those earlier complaints of self-plagiarism were perhaps simply examples of a composer re-using similar approaches for similar narrative themes.

As the film music community today mourns the loss of this popular and sometimes controversial composer, perhaps we will now be able to fully reflect on this vast body of work.  It will be time to start seeing how specific themes and musical approaches were common departures for what is still some wonderful music that stands on its own time and again.  For all of the many film music fans who understand this, they can help us see how one man did his job so well again and again.  The music will live on.