Music Album Review: 'Apollo 13: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Music Composed and Conducted by James Horner'
On June 27, 1995, three days before the theatrical release of director Ron Howard's Apollo 13, MCA Records dropped Apollo 13: Music from the Motion Picture, a 78-minute-long soundtrack album that presents eight songs from the Apollo era (including James Brown's "Night Train" and Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky"), one 1990s cover of a pop standard (Blue Moon by the South Florida retro-country band The Mavericks) seven tracks of dialogue recorded for the record by members of the cast, and seven tracks of composer James Horner's original Academy Award-nominated orchestral score for the film.
Prior to the release of Apollo 13: Music from the Motion Picture, Horner - who wrote the score to the Academy Award-nominated film based on Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger's Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 - had prepared a 59-minute-long "assembly" album for commercial release. This version of the soundtrack presented 12 tracks of Horner's orchestral score recorded by a studio ensemble, featuring solo trumpetist Tim Morrison. Horner presented his "Composer's Soundtrack Assembly" to MCA Records - Universal Pictures' official corporate sibling, as both companies were owned by MCA - for commercial release.
Because Harry Garfield, then the "executive in charge of music" for Universal, initially approved Horner's concept for the album, MCA went ahead and pressed a small number of discs, which were later distributed to members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science (AMPAS) for Oscar consideration. But as the deadline neared for the film's release (it had originally been scheduled as a November '95 offering, but Universal moved it to its slate of summer movies), director Howard, producer Brian Grazer, producer Todd Halliwell, and producer Kathy Nelson fell in love with the idea of a "concept album" with R&B and rock songs from the period, bits of dialogue by actors Tom Hanks, Gary Sinise, Kevin Bacon, Ed Harris, plus some of James Horner's score. In the end, the filmmakers pushed hard for their version of the album, and despite Ron Howard's enthusiasm for the simultaneous "dropping" of both soundtrack albums, Horner's assembly went into the MCA archives and not released commercially to the public.
That is, until Intrada, which is both a record store and a music label devoted to scores from movies, television series, and video games, partnered with MCA's successor, Universal Music Group (UMG) to produce and release an expanded 2-CD album, Apollo 13: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack: Music Composed and Conducted by James Horner. Released in January of 2019, producer Mike Matessino's Intrada Special Collection Volume 425 features "for the first time ever" Maestro Horner's entire score, including the music as it is heard in Howard's 1995 film and the composer's 59-minute "soundtrack assembly."
Per a press release in Film Score Monthly earlier this month:
Intrada kicks off 2019 with a 2-CD set showcasing James Horner's stunning, Oscar-nominated score to the Universal Pictures film Apollo 13. The film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning for Best Sound Mixing and Best Film Editing. The film recounts the harrowing true-life story of the Apollo 13 mission that fails when an oxygen tank explodes, crippling the command module en route to the moon. The astronauts and Mission Control desperately team to prevent the capsule from drifting off into space or burning up during reentry. On film, the Apollo 13 team had composer James Horner along for the flight to envelop the audience in the astronauts' dire circumstances and hope for a safe return to earth.....
.... For this new edition, producer Mike Matessino accessed the 192k 24bit high-resolution transfers of Shawn Murphy’s original mixes on 1/2” tape, with all performance edits meticulously recreated. Disc one features the complete score, with the synthesizer tracks in a suite after the main orchestral program, while disc two recreates the original 59-minute program Horner had originally intended.
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| Animated GIF artwork © 1995, 2018 MCA Records, Universal Pictures, and Intrada Records |
CD 1
ORCHESTRAL FILM SCORE
01. Main Title (Film Version) (1:53)
02. Lunar Dreams (2:40)
03. A Son's Worries and Simulator Crash (4:37)
04. Night Visitors (1:08)
05. All Systems Go – The Launch (10:19)
06. Docking (2:26)
07. Master Alarm (Film Version) (3:31)
08. Into the L.E.M. (Film Version) (5:10)
09. The Dark Side of the Moon (5:18)
10. Carbon Dioxide (5:45)
11. Manual Burn (1:56)
12. A War Story (1:06)
13. Four More Amps (3:22)
14. L.E.M. Jettison (1:37)
15. Re-Entry and Splashdown (Film Version) (9:15)
16. End Credits (Film Version) (6:55)
Total Time: 66:56
ELECTRONIC CUES
17. Marilyn’s Nightmare (0:58)
18. Canister Explosion (0:24)
19. Reactant Valves (1:09)
20. Out of Control (1:08)
21. Power Off (0:57)
22. A Square Peg (3:49)
23. Cosmic Connection (0:44)
Total Time: 9:08
CD 1 Total Time: 76:07
COMPOSER’S SOUNDTRACK ASSEMBLY
01. Main Title (2:40)
02. Lunar Dreams (2:41)
03. All Systems Go – The Launch (10:21)
04. Docking (2:26)
05. Master Alarm (3:06)
06. Into the L.E.M. (5:10)
07. The Dark Side of the Moon (5:17)
08. Carbon Dioxide (5:45)
09. Manual Burn (1:57)
10. Four More Amps (3:20)
11. Re-Entry and Splashdown (9:15)
12. End Credits (6:59)
CD 2 Total Time: 58:58
My Take:
A martial snare drum breaks the silence. Deep below, a pedal tone makes its presence known. And then, the crystal clarity of a solitary trumpet pierces the ether; a rising-and-falling line, outlining the pitches of a major triad. (More specifically, a major triad in major inversion - a stirring echo of the familiar bugle call "Taps," also known as "Day Is Done." - Intrada producer and film score expert Mike Matessino
For over 40 years, I have been a film score buff; ever since I received the original 2-LP soundtrack album of music composed and conducted by John Williams from Star Wars for my 15th birthday, I have acquired many other recordings of music written for various movies and television shows.
Most of these albums, I admit, feature the work of the Dean of Film Composers. Maestro Williams, including his eight (soon to be nine) scores for the Star Wars saga. But I also have albums of movie music composed by the late James Horner for four films: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Clear and Present Danger, Apollo 13, and Titanic.
I've owned the "concept album" version of the Apollo 13 soundtrack since the summer of 1995. I enjoy listening to it every so often, although I would have preferred that the executive producers - Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Todd Halliwell, and Kathy Nelson had not become enamored of the gimmicky use of dialogue from the film. (If the album had been made in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, a time when videocassette recorders were toys for the rich and famous and not a staple electronic device in the average consumer's home, the album might have worked better as a "souvenir" for Apollo 13. However, movies were released on VHS roughly six to eight months after their theatrical run, and sometimes - as was the case with the wildly successful Tim Burton film Batman, while the movie was still in theaters!)
MCA had the option of releasing Horner's Soundtrack Assembly; it had already pressed a limited run that would be sent to AMPAS members for Oscar consideration, and Ron Howard even suggested releasing Horner's preferred edition as a separate album in tandem with the more mass audience-oriented "concept" version of Apollo 13: Music from the Motion Picture. For whatever reasons - artistic, financial, or randomness - MCA overruled both the composer and the film director and just released the more pop song heavy album.
"I wanted to write something that was not an action movie. And Ron completely agreed. It wasn't an action movie. It wasn't a distress movie. It was a story about absolutely brilliant professionalism and quiet nobility, and that's what he wanted from me. - James Horner, in an interview with BAFTA's Tommy Pearson, as quoted in the liner notes.
Intrada's expanded 2-CD album presents Horner's complete score in two different versions. The first, as noted earlier, is a 16-track collection of every orchestral cue (including the wordless vocal by Scottish singer Annie Lennox) used in the film, as well as nine brief tracks of electronic music. Per producer Mike Matessino:
CD 1 offers the music as heard in the film, with the main program consisting of all the orchestral cues, while the wholly electronic cues (most of which are short and atmospheric and were added later in the production) are grouped as a separate collection at the end of the CD. Listeners may, of course, create a playlist incorporating these cues in narrative sequence using the following track order: 1, 2, 17, 3, 4, 5, 6, 18, 7, 19, 8, 20, 21, 9, 22, 10, 11, 12, 13, 23, 14, 15, 16
The second disc in this new album, which was produced in 2018 but released earlier this month is the Composer's Soundtrack Assembly that Horner had presented as his preferred version of Apollo 13: Music from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to the producers. Recorded by Shawn Murphy and produced by the late composer, it presents three-fourths of the orchestral tracks Horner wrote and recorded with a studio orchestra, trumpet player, and Annie Lennox. The cue Master Alarm heard on CD 2 is different from the one Horner eventually used in the final film, and none of the electronic music is present in the 58:58 Soundtrack Assembly.
Stylistically, Horner's Apollo 13 score is (as I noted in my review of the 1995 album) somewhat similar to his "nautical" music for Star Trek II, Titanic, and especially Clear and Present Danger. Part of this, of course, is that all of these films have some connection - literal or metaphorical - to ships and navigation. The time factor in the composing stage of production also contributed to the "derivative" nature of Apollo 13's score; as noted above, Universal decided to move the movie's release date from its original mid-autumn to June of 1995. This meant that Horner only had 10 weeks to compose his score.
Mind you, Horner does not "steal" any of his cues from Clear and Present Danger, as the two films deal with two different genres. Phillip Noyce's 1994 movie is an action-heavy adaptation of Tom Clancy's fifth novel, while Ron Howard's Apollo 13 is a dramatization of NASA's near-disastrous lunar mission of April 1970. Nevertheless, the orchestrations of both scores are eerily similar, so much so that when Universal commissioned the promotional trailer during the pre-release period, it used music from Clear and Present Danger because Horner had not yet turned in his recorded Apollo 13 themes.
As both a fan of orchestral film music and someone whose childhood included the Apollo era of manned voyages from the Earth to the Moon, I recommend Intrada's expanded edition of Apollo 13: Original Music Soundtrack: Music Composed and Conducted by James Horner. It is a welcome - if somewhat long overdue - supplement to the 1995 "concept album" and makes the late Horner's vision for the album a reality.
Sources:
Intrada website, Apollo 13 product listing
Film Score Monthly, General Discussion Forum, Apollo 13/Intrada Thread 01/14/19
Intrada Special Collection Volume 425: Liner notes
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| © 1995, 2018 Uniiversal Pictures and Intrada Records |
My Take:
A martial snare drum breaks the silence. Deep below, a pedal tone makes its presence known. And then, the crystal clarity of a solitary trumpet pierces the ether; a rising-and-falling line, outlining the pitches of a major triad. (More specifically, a major triad in major inversion - a stirring echo of the familiar bugle call "Taps," also known as "Day Is Done." - Intrada producer and film score expert Mike Matessino
For over 40 years, I have been a film score buff; ever since I received the original 2-LP soundtrack album of music composed and conducted by John Williams from Star Wars for my 15th birthday, I have acquired many other recordings of music written for various movies and television shows.
Most of these albums, I admit, feature the work of the Dean of Film Composers. Maestro Williams, including his eight (soon to be nine) scores for the Star Wars saga. But I also have albums of movie music composed by the late James Horner for four films: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Clear and Present Danger, Apollo 13, and Titanic.
I've owned the "concept album" version of the Apollo 13 soundtrack since the summer of 1995. I enjoy listening to it every so often, although I would have preferred that the executive producers - Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Todd Halliwell, and Kathy Nelson had not become enamored of the gimmicky use of dialogue from the film. (If the album had been made in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, a time when videocassette recorders were toys for the rich and famous and not a staple electronic device in the average consumer's home, the album might have worked better as a "souvenir" for Apollo 13. However, movies were released on VHS roughly six to eight months after their theatrical run, and sometimes - as was the case with the wildly successful Tim Burton film Batman, while the movie was still in theaters!)
MCA had the option of releasing Horner's Soundtrack Assembly; it had already pressed a limited run that would be sent to AMPAS members for Oscar consideration, and Ron Howard even suggested releasing Horner's preferred edition as a separate album in tandem with the more mass audience-oriented "concept" version of Apollo 13: Music from the Motion Picture. For whatever reasons - artistic, financial, or randomness - MCA overruled both the composer and the film director and just released the more pop song heavy album.
"I wanted to write something that was not an action movie. And Ron completely agreed. It wasn't an action movie. It wasn't a distress movie. It was a story about absolutely brilliant professionalism and quiet nobility, and that's what he wanted from me. - James Horner, in an interview with BAFTA's Tommy Pearson, as quoted in the liner notes.
Intrada's expanded 2-CD album presents Horner's complete score in two different versions. The first, as noted earlier, is a 16-track collection of every orchestral cue (including the wordless vocal by Scottish singer Annie Lennox) used in the film, as well as nine brief tracks of electronic music. Per producer Mike Matessino:
CD 1 offers the music as heard in the film, with the main program consisting of all the orchestral cues, while the wholly electronic cues (most of which are short and atmospheric and were added later in the production) are grouped as a separate collection at the end of the CD. Listeners may, of course, create a playlist incorporating these cues in narrative sequence using the following track order: 1, 2, 17, 3, 4, 5, 6, 18, 7, 19, 8, 20, 21, 9, 22, 10, 11, 12, 13, 23, 14, 15, 16
The second disc in this new album, which was produced in 2018 but released earlier this month is the Composer's Soundtrack Assembly that Horner had presented as his preferred version of Apollo 13: Music from the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to the producers. Recorded by Shawn Murphy and produced by the late composer, it presents three-fourths of the orchestral tracks Horner wrote and recorded with a studio orchestra, trumpet player, and Annie Lennox. The cue Master Alarm heard on CD 2 is different from the one Horner eventually used in the final film, and none of the electronic music is present in the 58:58 Soundtrack Assembly.
Stylistically, Horner's Apollo 13 score is (as I noted in my review of the 1995 album) somewhat similar to his "nautical" music for Star Trek II, Titanic, and especially Clear and Present Danger. Part of this, of course, is that all of these films have some connection - literal or metaphorical - to ships and navigation. The time factor in the composing stage of production also contributed to the "derivative" nature of Apollo 13's score; as noted above, Universal decided to move the movie's release date from its original mid-autumn to June of 1995. This meant that Horner only had 10 weeks to compose his score.
Mind you, Horner does not "steal" any of his cues from Clear and Present Danger, as the two films deal with two different genres. Phillip Noyce's 1994 movie is an action-heavy adaptation of Tom Clancy's fifth novel, while Ron Howard's Apollo 13 is a dramatization of NASA's near-disastrous lunar mission of April 1970. Nevertheless, the orchestrations of both scores are eerily similar, so much so that when Universal commissioned the promotional trailer during the pre-release period, it used music from Clear and Present Danger because Horner had not yet turned in his recorded Apollo 13 themes.
As both a fan of orchestral film music and someone whose childhood included the Apollo era of manned voyages from the Earth to the Moon, I recommend Intrada's expanded edition of Apollo 13: Original Music Soundtrack: Music Composed and Conducted by James Horner. It is a welcome - if somewhat long overdue - supplement to the 1995 "concept album" and makes the late Horner's vision for the album a reality.
Sources:
Intrada website, Apollo 13 product listing
Film Score Monthly, General Discussion Forum, Apollo 13/Intrada Thread 01/14/19
Intrada Special Collection Volume 425: Liner notes
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