Although the cues on the soundtrack album have been re-ordered for a more dramatic flow, the CD is still a solid suspense score that grabs us and forces us along the path as a group of old-guard soldiers set up plans to assassinate Hitler and end WWII.

Besides editing the film, John Ottman also scored Valkyrie (2008), and designed his score to suit the film’s seventies thriller style. The writing is lean, the motifs are sparse, and the score really doesn’t stray too far from an ongoing, menacing theme (“Operation Valkyrie”) until the end, when the film closes with the gorgeous elegy “Long Live Sacred Germany.”

The primary ‘plotting’ theme is based around a heavy string ostinato and waves of muted, silky brass tones. The banks of heavy percussion sound like thick logs being struck with heavy mallets, and the reverberating sounds are an excellent substitution for a full orchestral onslaught because it infers a mounting insurgency that must reconnoitre and regroup in absolute secrecy; the tonal shades that intersect over the ongoing ostinato perfectly capture those secretive movements, and the sudden need to blend into a murky background when the danger of discovery is around the corner.

This may be one of Ottman’s most mature scores because of what he creates using highly selective sounds from a limited instrumental scope. The emphasis isn’t on busy writing, but the cues aren’t merely atmospheric swathes of tones and rhythms.

There are some excellent nuances Ottman uses between more grandiose statements, and a good example occurs near the end of “Operation Valkyrie.” The string bass maintain a continuous pulse, subtle tones arise and fade in the distance, and a small rhythmic variation (perhaps on vibes) adds to the drama by its irregular appearances.

Ottman also has a violin play eddying, spiralling patterns that unspool and tighten, with the vibrato sounds varying in tempi to create a great deal of unease. It’s a similar tactic Jerry Goldsmith used in The Boys From Brazil (1978): you introduce a pattern long enough to get the listener hooked, and any fracturing and variation mentally jostles the listener, perhaps forcing him to pay extra attention, and playing into the composer’s hands as further sounds are altered and manipulated with no firm resolution.

The use of discrete synth pulses in cues like “Bunker Buster” and “The Way it Should Go” is also quite reminiscent of John Williams’ later cues (Nixon and JFK come to mind), but like many of the album’s suspense cues, the music keeps evolving with the drama, changing shades and letting Ottman play with subtle and dissonant sounds.

Percussion tend to be close-miked, although there’s huge spatial depth in every hit, creating a nice shock when the preceding bars dealt with low tones on unresolved chords. The CD has some excellent dynamics, and each cue is crisply engineered with a broad range of high and bass-friendly frequencies.

Ottman is also a classicist at heart, so the score does have some covert references to the elegance of Wagner’s sombre tones, as well as a tragic piano theme (“Midnight Waltz”) with gentle orchestra support.

In addition to the source vocal “The Officer’s Club” (a cocktail orchestra version of “Fur eine Nacht voller Seligkeit” by Peter Kreuder and Guenther Schwenn), there’s the beautiful “They’ll Remember You,” with tragic harmonies and mixed chorus of male and female voices. Placed first on the CD, this is the film’s end credits, which make use quotes from a Goethe poem. Slight aspects are also referenced in the CD’s final cue, the instrumental “Long Live Sacred Germany,” which also attempts to comment on the heroism and the tragedy of the unrealized plot which led to a further 2,000 lives lost as Hitler’s security forces routed out and exterminated further co-conspirators.

Bryan Singer’s film got a mixed reception from critics and didn’t become the audience and Oscar favourite the studio may have hoped for, but the score certainly nails the filmmakers’ aspirations, and forms a moving tribute to a daring effort by members of the German military to stop Hitler’s madness.

Note: to read an interview with the composer regarding Valkyrie, click HERE.

© 2009 Mark R. Hasan