And I'm suddenly excited for Alexander. . .

I'm not generally a big fan of electronic scores. Which means that I'm generally not a big fan of Vangelis. Don't enjoy listening to Chariots of Fire of Blade Runner scores, though when I hear orchestral arrangements of that music I tend to enjoy it very much. My favorite score of his is 1492, which I can actually get into for at least 1/2 of it, though some of it leaves me cold. Again, though, I prefer the purely orchestral arrangements. So when I heard Mr. Electronic, Vangelis, was going to be scoring Alexander, I wasn't particularly thrilled. However, musicfromthemovies reports:

Oliver Stone's upcoming epic Alexander, starring Colin Farrell as the King of Macedonia, will get an epic orchestral accompaniment. Although composer Vangelis is best known for his groundbreaking electronic scores for films such as Chariots of Fire and Blade Runner, the score he has written for Stone's war adventure includes large portions of orchestral and choral parts. "I would say that this is a grand score, both in the amount of music required and its scale. Closest in concept to 1492: Conquest of Paradise, but a more majestic work, " says Vangelis' orchestrator and conductor Nic Raine in a comment to Music from the Movies. "Vangelis decided that, although part of the score for Alexander would be electronic, he also wanted to have an orchestral element. We have wanted to work together for some time and this was our opportunity."

1492: Conquest of Paradise also featured orchestral and choral elements but still with Vangelis' signature synthesizer style at its core. For Alexander, the scoring team recorded about 100 minutes of orchestral music. How much of that goes into the film remains to be seen, Nic Raine says. "The film was still being re-cut after the sessions and it may be that in some instances it becomes more expedient to write a new synth cue than to edit the orchestral version."

Nic Raine played an important role in the creation of the orchestral score. "The way Vangelis works is to improvise at the keyboard to the film. My job was to plan the structure of each cue to fit the picture and to provide a 'click track' tempo that we could record to. Once this ground work was done I could orchestrate the pieces. I conducted the recording at the William Tell studios in Paris with fabulous free-lance musicians. Because of the size of the orchestra, and to retain separation during mixing, we recorded the 60 strings first and then added the brass and woodwind followed by percussion. I wanted a big brass sound so used Wagner tubas as well as French horns. We added a choir last of all. It's a thematic, classically inspired score with some heroic themes."

 

Wow, that sounds great. I too am not a big fan of electronic scores (on album anyway), although I find Vangelis' Blade Runner score to work beautifully in the film.

This should prove interesting.

 

Just curious, what do you think of other electronic scores - i.e. Wendy Carlos (A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Tron, etc)? They're very classical in structure, despite their synth tinbre. Vangelis annoys me too, generall (though I agree this sounds Alexander score sounds interesting).

 

Four-minute clip. I'm enjoying it.

And like that...he's gone.

 

A little repetitive, but not bad.

 

It's going to hard to top Troy's soundtrack. I loved Troy's except for the end song. Gladiator also had a good soundtrack and I did like the end song. Alexander looks good all around. It's obviously oscar-hype. As long as we have lots of percussion and brass, it'll be an epic soundtrack for the epic movie.

 

This is not a good soundtrack even if it's done by Vangelis. It works for some of the film, but most of the film especially the battles and the sequences in Bablyon. The film's good not the music unfortunately. I skip buying this one.

 

The last two tracks on Troy were the best, how can you say the soundtrack was great EXCEPT for the last one?!

 

You liked Remember Me? It was average, but give me the Hands the Built America for a good song to historical epic.

Getting back OT, we needed something more memorable like the theme of Gladiator to carry through the film.

 

Oh, sorry, I don't consider that part of the soundtrack. THe "last track" is Through the Fires, Achilles...

That was a BIG misunderstanding.

 

I'll agree that Through the Fires was a good track for Troy and is better than most of what Alexander had to offer.