{"id":1699,"date":"2010-11-30T13:49:38","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T18:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=1699"},"modified":"2010-12-20T21:53:44","modified_gmt":"2010-12-21T02:53:44","slug":"cd-exorcist-the-1973","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=1699","title":{"rendered":"CD: Exorcist, The (1973)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack \u00a0Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>E<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Rating: Very Good<\/p>\n

Label: Warner Home Video\u00a0\/ Released: 1998<\/p>\n

Tracks & Album Length: 10 tracks \/ (51:17)<\/p>\n

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Special Notes: \u00a0Limited gold CD available with 25th Anniversary VHS (1998) or DVD (2002) boxed sets.<\/p>\n

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Composer: various<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

The Soundtrack Album<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s actually funny how the original\u00a0Exorcist<\/strong> LP sold so well, considering\u00a0Mike Oldfield<\/a>\u2019s \u201cTubular Bells\u201d was merely excerpted, the first 2 tracks had sound effects from the film, and none of Jack Nitzsche\u2019s bridge cues were featured (although the composer is credited for the opening track, with shimmering \u2018glassy\u2019 tones and Arabic vocals from the intro Iraqi sequence). Moreover, director William Friedkin used very small sonic slivers and precise sections of the represented cues, so hearing the more complete versions on CD (or the original LP, for that matter) offer a different emotional listening experience.<\/p>\n

In the extract, Oldfield\u2019s signature motif begins and ends with ridiculously low fades, and once we\u2019ve passed the oft-repeated section from the film, the track\u2019s tone becomes decidedly light, with gentle Celtic harmonies more evocative of folk music than a devilish infestation in Georgetown. A shorter extract (:27 seconds) heard near the end of the album offers nothing new.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive Easy Pieces for Orchestra, Op.10\u201d has a curious mood but gives no portent of nastiness, whereas\u00a0Krzysztof Penderecki<\/a>\u2019s \u201cPolymorphia\u201d (the CD\u2019s longest cue, running nearly 12 mins.) is more representative of the film\u2019s shock waves.<\/p>\n

Penderecki\u2019s composition is a beautiful thing, starting with low vibrato murmurs, building an unsettling mood with bow taps, slashes, grungy chords, and breaks of dead silence, and sections which move from mundane stereo to a horrific pseudo-surround sound swarms of chaotic notes. The piece closes with string notes warping and evoking buzzing insects, but they recede into a series of distant tonal waves, trembling and spiraling into a formidable sonic surge with bowing resembling moaning notes and swarming clusters of sounds, before a single sustained harmonic tone from all strings closes the piece.<\/p>\n

The second Penderecki composition, \u201cString Quartet,\u201d moves through distinct sound clouds: an unspooling whirl of tapping and plucked notes, notes resembling sonic rain drops, and shrill bowing. The second half is made up of impressions from the first, sort of deconstructing itself from quotations to skeletal sound remnants prior to a quiet, barely perceptible ending.<\/p>\n

\u201cKanon for Orchestra and Tape\u201d is the third and final Penderecki piece (running shy of 10 mins.), and it feels like an immersion into deep sonic clusters, moving towards clouds of plastic notes from shrill strings, before the piece drifts through textures that wind down towards silence.<\/p>\n

Harry Bees\u2019 \u201cWindharp\u201d is so abstract \u2013 shimmering, neo-atonal sound waves – that it\u2019s easy to see why Friedkin experienced an eureka moment and included the piece in the film\u2019s sound mix. George Crum\u2019s \u201cNight of the Electoric Insects\u201d is equally brief, but it\u2019s memorable for evoking the sounds of whining, buzzing insects, albeit semi-abstract; Crum\u2019s piece plays like a frenetic discourse that\u2019s restricted to a narrow tonal zone, hence the variations in performance urgency rather than notes, tempo, or dissonance.<\/p>\n

The album\u2019s closing track is\u00a0Hans Werner Henze<\/a>\u2019s thrilling \u201cFantasia for Strings,\u201d heard at the beginning of the film\u2019s End Credit music, which offers a dose of semi-harmonic closure.<\/p>\n

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The Rejected Score<\/strong><\/p>\n

These were the full, sampled, and extracted cues that comprised the original soundtrack album which represented the collage of music mixed with effects and Nitzsche\u2019s bridge material after Friedkin rejected Lalo Schifrin\u2019s score.<\/p>\n

Schifrin, originally engaged by Friedkin as the films\u2019 solo composer, had actually written music for the film\u2019s trailer – the impressionistic one consisting of rippling solarized flash frames of faces\u00a0 \u2013 and it\u2019s a style the composer furthered in his score, working as well from the 20th century music samples given by the director. Friedkin\u2019s desire was modernism, abstraction, and minimalism, but Schifrin only delivered just the first two, opting for an emphasis on grand, narrative horror \u2013 wholly contrary to the director\u2019s musical vision of \u201cloud silence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schifrin\u2019s trailer music consists of sounds that give a sensation of drowning, swarming, and being rendered catatonic from assaults of plunging tones, shrill strings, and string bass tones that evoke not singular but the intersecting harmonies reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann\u2019s post-murder\u00a0Psycho<\/strong> music<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even from the 14 mins. of score \u2013 more was composed, but only a fragment was recorded \u2013 it\u2019s obvious Schifrin\u2019s music just doesn\u2019t suit the film\u2019s design of quiet\/loud contrasts.<\/p>\n

The rejected cues are a curious mix of a child\u2019s opening solo vocal, an abstract string cue, furtive notes on double-bass, eerie two-note suspense motifs, and delicate chromatic patterns where Schifrin gathers all of his abstract elements \u2013 piano, water chimes, and a fattened chamber orchestra \u2013 and creates a lengthy cue representing a force infiltrating and worming its way into the physical and psychological framework of a person (Regan).<\/p>\n

Plaintive strings and tense figures develop into an action-saturated section where there\u2019s a sense of deep urgency as a force \u2013 high register, gliding figures on strings – seems to slip through the efforts of the priests, and low figures on double string bass infer where there\u2019s a physical struggle onscreen.<\/p>\n

The last fragment from the surviving recording session is a single source cue, intended for a party scene, and it\u2019s a semi-melancholic piece with electric bass, strumming acoustic guitar, and a melody played by a romantic piano \u2013 really out of place, particularly with the lush string backing. It\u2019s a conventional music tune designed to support a sense of normalcy in a party scene before another shock, but it just doesn\u2019t fit \u2013 and that\u2019s the basic problem with the rejected score.<\/p>\n

As Jeff Bond recounted in his excellent 1999\u00a0Film Score Monthly<\/a> article (Vol.4, No. 2) on the score\u2019s troubled reception and immediate rejection, Friedkin\u2019s confrontational approach was rooted in a rage stemming from a sense of betrayal, and that\u2019s probably why the rest of the score was never fully recorded after less than a full day\u2019s session of what should\u2019ve been 3 with a 52-piece orchestra.<\/p>\n

Schifrin himself never re-recorded the score \u2013 which is a shame \u2013 but elements are found in two particular scores. The child vocal and sense of innocence being assaulted by devilish forces made its way into\u00a0The Amityville Horror<\/strong> (1978), and that eerie 2-note motif on strings was central to the unhinged, destructive nature of the killer who plants bombs and taunts police in\u00a0Rollercoaster<\/strong> (1977). Neither score contains extracts or themes from the rejected\u00a0Exorcist <\/strong>music, but there are ideas which clearly suited these specific films (and whose scores\u00a0were<\/em>released, albeit in short albums with source music rubbish).<\/p>\n

Schifrin\u2019s score is only available on a limited gold CD [pictured at top] that came with the 25th Anniversary VHS boxed set, and the 2002 limited DVD boxed set. That disc also includes 7 of the 10 tracks from the original album due to licensing issues. The missing cuts \u2013 the two \u201cTubular Bells\u201d extracts and Crum\u2019s \u201cNight of the Electric Insects\u201d are only available on the original LP and import CDs (including German and Japanese discs).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2010 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Related links:<\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0Exorcist, The<\/a><\/strong> (1973)<\/p>\n

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Related external links (MAIN SITE):<\/p>\n

BR \/ Film: \u00a0The Amityville Horror<\/a><\/strong> (1978)<\/p>\n

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External References:<\/p>\n

Soundtrack Album<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Soundtrack Reviews<\/a> \/<\/em> E<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s actually funny how the original Exorcist LP sold so well, considering Mike Oldfield\u2019s \u201cTubular Bells\u201d was merely excerpted, the first 2 tracks had sound effects from the film, and none of Jack Nitzsche\u2019s bridge cues were featured…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[178,51],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-rp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1699"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1928,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions\/1928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}