The Aviator: Original Score [Soundtrack]

There is a song that is not included on the CD, which is first used in the Hells Angels War Scene. It is also used at the beginning of the XF-11 Test Flight Scene before the plane crash. It is:

Composer: J.S. Bach

Song: Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565

The part in the movie is actually the Fugue portion of the piece. There is good and accurate version of it on the album Bach Greatest Hits which is sold on amazon.com at:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000003F5A/qid=1141862907/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/103-9310035-0679004?s=music&v=glance&n=5174

Enjoy!

Howard Shore was one of Hollywood's most underrated composers for years before the Lord of the Rings trilogy finally brought him the wide acclaim he had always deserved. Any man who can summon up the bleak hopelessness of Seven and the charming whimsy of Mrs. Doubtfire is a true musical genius.

The Aviator is yet another Shore masterpiece. Listen to the first track and you could be forgiven for thinking you are listening to the work of a great classical composer. In truth, you are. The movie studios are the new patrons of orchestral composing, just as wealthy individuals and the church were in the time of Mozart and some of the best music in the world is out there among film scores if you look for it.

Shore's score is bold and joyful. His main theme for the film especially is muscular and propulsive and beautifully orchestrated. His use of castanets is dazzling, hinting at both the Spanish influence on Hollywood at the time and at Hughes's growing madness.

This is one of the great modern film scores. The film's producers should be commended for releasing it, and not just tacking a few score tracks at the end of the soundtrack album, as happens all too often.

Martin Scorsese's new epic film "The Aviator" makes broad use of a good deal of source material, songs and music from Hollywodd in the transitional period from the 1920s to the 1940s, a period also considered the "Golden Age" of Hollywood in general, and film scoring in particular. The source music is well represented on the "soundtrack" album. The film is also very indebted to an orchestral score by Howard Shore who has clearly now come into in his own. In the wake of "The Lord of the Rings," Shore would have been allowed something of a weak encore, but instead we have another musical triumph. Though not on a scale with "The Lord of the Rings," Shore's music for "The Aviator" proves again that Howard Shore is one of the great composers of film music(we cannot wait for his score for Peter Jackson's "King Kong"). The underlying motif here is the early growth of aviation in general and indeed in film through the life of Howard Hughes, all spectacular stories in and of themselves. Shore's score does indeed soar to this end with a grand main theme that is in the heroic category. The opening of the album has been described as a take on the Baroque, but in fact as that section and the rest of the score develops it is much more akin to what could be called contemporary classical music such as that of Paul Hindemith who did some of his best work in that so-called "Golden Age," the 1930s and the 1940s (note Hindemith's "Symphonic Metamorphisis of Themes by Carl Maria Von Weber" for instance-especially the "March"). As such Shore has done something quite remarkable, original but subtly reflective of the period depicted in the film (his inclusion of Spanish motifs is also in this vein). This is a dynamic, exciting and dramatic score that seems perfect for the time, the place, the figure, and the story. Sadly, some of the Shore music was replaced in the film with classical and source material. The album works quite well on its own, and is nicely produced and packaged by Decca. By the way, Shore conducts The Flemish Radio Orchestra. The performance is flawlewss, but this will be the answer to a trivia question sometime this year. A Golden Globe winner for Best Score, but amazingly left out of the running for the Academy Awards. The soundtrack album is ok but quite different than the "Original Score" album reviewed here.