Soundtracks and Scores : John Barry's The Black Hole

John Barry's The Black Hole

Chock it up to Intrada Records for doing yet another stellar remastering job on a complete score edition of John Barry's The Black Hole, a feverish trip into the black hole of the 1970s and one of space's most mysterious phenomena, a score to a Disney film that faded into obscurity in favor of Disney's Tron and other fare from filmmakers the likes of Lucas and Spielberg in the '80s.

John Barry's music here is beautiful and very powerful, with a swirling, churning, undulating rythm for the hole itself's gravity well, as well as much sad, tragic music for the mad scientist Reinhardt, played by Maximillian Schell, and much heroic music for the deeds of the crew and little robots from the small research ship Palamino, that culminates in an amazing, moving ending that, to quote a '70s term, is "far out"!

If I have any complaints about John Barry's music, at least in the post-Connery Bond film era, and I have almost no complaints, because I love his music, it's that he tended to like to repeat the same phrase of notes twice, something that other composers from the '70s, like John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith, never did. In their second consecutive musical phrase, they would alter two or more notes. Their music is thus more layered, dense and complex. John Barry's music is relatively simple.

Maybe Barry thought his notes were too brilliant to only be played once. Maybe he was lazy and was milking twice the screen time out of the same set of notes.

Despite the relative simplicity of Barry's compositions, the notes he DID use here are heartfelt and moving! I LOVE this score.

Thoughts?

Re: John Barry's The Black Hole

One of the best movie scores, ever. A joy from beginning to end. And if I'm honest, I still love the film; I was 11 in '79 when this came out and I lapped it up at the cinema. Yeah it is showing its age now, but it still has a special place in my heart. I wonder if Disney really will go through with the remake? :/

Made you look, didn't I?
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