AMG Review of Greatest Cinema Choral Classics

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

Reynold da Silva's Silva Screen Records specializes in re-recordings of the scores of films, usually using the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra and, when choral parts are called for, Britain's Crouch End Festival Chorus. Silva Screen then packages and repackages the results in a variety of forms, including collections organized by composer or by some theme. Da Silva's concept for this particular compilation is simple: he has singled out a group of choral pieces, drawn from music written for or used in a wide range of films from Alfred Newman and Ken Darby's "Prelude" to #How the West Was Won (1962) to Richard Harvey's "Kyrie for the Magdelene" from #The Da Vinci Code (2006). At least from the selections here, it seems that when film composers write for choruses, for the most part they have one of two ideas in mind. Adapting their music from traditional choral styles, they are usually going for something inspiring, if not downright quasi-religious, in tone, or they are trying to scare the bejesus out of moviegoers. In the former category, a good example is Ennio Morricone's "On Earth as It Is in Heaven" from #The Mission (1986), a film that, after all, concerns Jesuit missionaries. Perhaps the best example here of the latter is Jerry Goldsmith's "Suite" from #The Omen (1976), for which annotator James Fitzpatrick thoughtfully prints a few lyrics, such as "Hail the anti-Christ, Hail Satan." (Why haven't those Christian fundamentalists who harried Ozzy Osbourne and Judas Priest ever gone after Goldsmith?) There are, however, exceptions to these generalizations. John Williams' setting for the poem "Dry Your Tears Afrika" from #Amistad (1997) sounds influenced by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and is warmer and more intimate than most of what is found on the album. And Danny Elfman does some characteristically off-beat and imaginative things with "Main Title & Ice Dance" from #Edward Scissorhands (1990). But for the most part, the movie view of choirs, as represented here, seems to be that they exist to ooh and ahh or intone something that sounds like Latin to call down the wrath or the glory of God (or his counterpart) on the poor movie characters.