By JASON COMERFORD Up until this spring’s Shutter Island, it had been an awfully long time since the #1 box office hit in America boasted a soundtrack full of avant-garde classical excerpts. Director William Friedkin famously tossed out Lalo Schifrin’s original score two days into the recording sessions (according to some reports, he angrily threw the reels into the recording studio’s parking lot), and relied instead on needledrops from a wide array of preexisting classical and experimental music. Most prominent among the selected musicians was the Polish classical composer Krzysztof Penderecki, whose nerve-jangling concert works including “Kanon for Orchestra and Tape” and “Polymorphia” were perfectly matched with Friedkin’s bludgeoning directorial style. Despite the film’s reputation as a punishing shocker, Friedkin uses music quite subtly, placing it gently underneath carefully selected moments, some sedate and some more overtly horrific (as when Father Karras helplessly watches a message from the possessed Regan appear like scar tissue on her stomach). Other pieces from composers including Hans Werner Henze, George Crumb, Anton Webern and Harry Bee are blended skillfully into the soundtrack, sometimes in fragments, sometimes even edited together; the film’s opening cue, for example, features a portion of Jack Nietzsche’s experimental piece “Crystal Glass and Voices” blended with a fragment of Penderecki’s “String Quartet No. 1.” Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” remains closely associated with the film, but Penderecki’s twisted tone-cluster assaults dominated the film’s original LP soundtrack, despite being used with relative sparseness in the final film. The Exorcist was Lalo Schifrin’s temporary loss, but Penderecki’s gain; Penderecki’s international audience multiplied, and his influence, intended or not, has been felt in an untold number of genre entries since, particularly in John Corigliano’s Altered States, and the early horror scores of Christopher Young, Elliot Goldenthal and Marco Beltrami.
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Brian Reitzell runs out of daylight. |
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| Basil | William Friedkin didn't seem to get along too well with his composers, it seems. I did not know that Lalo Schifrin's score was rejected - though I was previously aware that most of James Horner's music for Jade went unused in his 1995 movie. The posted sound sample is indeed chilling! |
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| Peter L. | Is there a truly complete soundtrack available? From what I've seen there are still portions of music that are unavailable. There's something about this score and the Penderecki sound in particular! Creepy stuff (which apparantly sounds great on the upcoming Blu Ray Release of the movie). |
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| iZombie | there have been several versions of this score, as far as it ever being complete... that is a great question. i love it 'cause the well balanced pairing of music, that in my mind does it's job as does the film... scare me! |
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| Jason C. | Peter L: Surprisingly, "The Exorcist" has never seen a commercial CD release in America, although it has been released on CD in Japan and Germany. The 1997 CD release from Warner Home Video was produced in small quantities for a laserdisc box set; it was available from Film Score Monthly for a time, but has long since sold out. It included about 15 minutes of the original, rejected Lalo Schifrin score, but because of rights issues it did not include Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" or George Crumb's "Night of the Electric Insects." Despite being long sought-after, "The Exorcist" presents a legal challenge for reissue, as many of the selected composers are still with us, and the contracts would have to be renegotiated for a new CD release. I'm given to understand that this is what has prevented the release of the soundtrack to "The Shining" as well; Penderecki is still very much alive and his estate controls his recordings very carefully. Also, for those that care, the recordings used for the original soundtrack LP of "The Exorcist" were recorded especially for that release, conducted by Leonard Slatkin. I tried to dig up some more info as to exactly what recordings were used by Friedkin in the final film (Jon Burlingame's notes to the Warner Home Video release are a bit vague on that point), but I was unsuccessful. |
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| Howlin' Wolf | CONGRATULATIONS Peter L! You are the winner for this installment - Thanks for your participation! We will be emailing you to get shipping info. The winning name was pulled out of a The Nightmare Before Christmas bowl. Thanks also to Basil and iZombie for adding to the discussion - the odds are pretty good for winning these prizes so please enter again! The next installment premieres Wednesday. |
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| David Kessler | I dont know about The Exorcist....it has never been a favorite of mine as I don’t believe in either God or the Devil and hence never thought this was scary...The music I own on an old vinyl and sure Tubular Bells is great, but the rest is soso... Parasite is a CD I have that never gets a playtime...Why, I don’t know, but it is standing in my shelves glowing with its green cover :) |