YOUR ALL TIME FAVOURITE FILM SCORE ALBUMS!!!

Just to make your post a bit clearer Tom.

The Big THREE-OH.

One of my favorite Jerry Goldsmith scores (PSYCHO II) was in the queue for the 30th position.
However, I disqualified it since all I have is the MCA LP (which contains only 8 selections - one of which is Bernard Herrmann's 'shower murder' motif) and this short album program does not satisfy enough.
Besides, I prefer to make room for other lesser-known gems and refuse to have a Top X list containing only a handful of A-listers with large fanbases.

I have not yet purchased Intrada's expansion of PSYCHO II (it's still on my wish list, though), so my #30 is granted upon something rather unique ...

... #30: BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW (1970) by Marc Wilkinson, on Trunk CD (2007).

Within the audio commentary of Anchor Bay's Region 2 DVD of BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW (released in 2004), one guys asks if there's a soundtrack for this flick.
At that time, there was none. Indeed, the film itself was not easy to catch. Out of distribution for a long while since its premiere in 1971, BLOOD ON SATAN's CLAW was issued onto DVD at first only in the U.K.

It also took years for the tapes from the recording sessions to finally surface onto digital media, which it did via the Trunk label in late '07.

I have always suspected that recordings in London for British productions are not all lost (as we've been lead to believe), and here's proof that Marc Wilkinson's soundtrack for this Tigon flick is not lost but had a long route to traverse before arriving legit on CD.

I think the 'cult' status of BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW greatly helped its music to get issued. Consumer interest needs to be detected before the complex untangling of rights ownerships and/or estates are satisfied.

BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW is 2nd only to WITCHFINDER GENERAL as a well-regarded horror opus from Tony Tenser's Tigon production company (a competitor to Britain's Hammer Films, as was Amicus).

This would be enough to make this soundtrack unique. Yet, Wilkinson's music is absolutely striking in its melodic contours and its instrumentation.

This score features 2 idiosyncratic instruments as its chief aural identity: the cimbalom and the Ondes Martenot. The main meldoy sounds as if it is a genuine English folk-tune, but it's an entirely original composition by Marc Wilkinson, who was also a director of music for Theatre.
[as a side note, the Ondes Martenot models made between 1953 and 1971 used valves and could sound rather different than the transistor-based models utilized in more familiar soundtracks from the 1980s by Bernstein or Jarre].

Prior to this disc, the only other soundtrack by Wilkinson that I'm aware of was the TER LP of ENIGMA ('83).
[Another reason for uniqueness because Wilkinson is so under-represented on disc]

Lots of stand-out tracks in this album, not least of which is Wilkinson's underscoring of Linda Hayden's full-frontal disrobing in front of a vicar portrayed by Anthony Ainley (who went on to play "The Master" in DOCTOR WHO serials during the 1980s).

I'm sure I saw the film also many years ago. I'll give a listen to some of it on Spotify.
Tom

....and done with only twenty minutes of Monday left

The Living Daylights is my favourite bond score!

No. 31:
The Miss Marple Films by Ron Goodwin

Murder She Said, Murder at the Gallop, Murder Must Foul and Murder Ahoy!
These films enjoy cult status in Germany. The blessed Margaret Rutherford defined the character of Miss Jane Marple for all those people who never actually read a novel by Agatha Christie. Margaret Rutherford's image is so strongly connected to the character that people are actually disappointed when they discover that the films are in many ways different from the novels. I have heard that this is the main reason why these films, dircted by George Pollock, are not nearly as popular in England as they are in Germany.
Famend British composer Ron Goodwin scored the four films. The main musical identity he created, a jolly and catchy melody, is among those few film tunes that nearly every German will recoginze.
To my knowledge there has never been a proper release of the actual film scores. I also don't know about the status of the original source material. What I do know is, that no proper sheet music survives. The suite on the above named album was reconstructed by the composer from the films themselves. Ron Goodwin conducts the Odense Symphony Orchestra. The Miss-Marple-Suite is accompanied by suites from Lancelot and Guinevere and Force 10 From Navarone. In total the album is a splendid listening experience.

Volker

One that I wouldn't have chosen Volker but remember my head is back into the 30's and 40's.
Tom

Walhalla! Walhalla!

Actually no! Just looked through my written list, no more John Barry until the 40's.

That's Valhalla, single V!

My pick:

31. CRIMSON TIDE (Hans Zimmer)

God, how I love Zimmer in his 90s power anthem mode. THE ROCK is far higher on the list, but this one surfs on its wonderful 'delicious darkness'. So massive and foreboding, yet melodic and actionpumping at the same time. Love the 'muffled' version of the psalm "Eternal Father, Strong to Save". And "Roll Tide" is one of the best film music cues of all time, regardless of genre.

While THE ROCK truly popularized the style, this one was the first that truly felt like the 'finished', developped version of the sound that started with BLACK RAIN. As such, it must be included on the list.

I've had the album for ages.

That's a little surprising - no more John Barry titles from Timmer until the autumn of 2014.

Still, I think Timmer has altogether more than 5 Barry soundtracks within his Top 50 ...

French director Francois Truffaut died about 30 years ago. Truffaut continues to be regarded as one of the leading lights of the Nouvelle Vague. Also iconic is Truffaut's collaborative relationship with composer Georges Delerue.
My favorite scores for Truffaut films are not written by Delerue, though. Nor were they done by Bernard Herrmann.
For me, Antoine Duhamel has provided most satisfying music and my favorite soundtrack by him is:

#31: LA SIRENE DU MISSISSIPI (1968) [aka THE MISSISSIPPI MERMAID] by Antoine Duhamel, on Milan CD (1991).

I've never owned (or even come across) the 1969 LP soundtrack on this French rarity ...

http://www.italiansoundtracks.com/image … sirene.gif

... and supposedly this United Artists / Pathe Marconi disc runs only 25 minutes in duration.
The Milan CD more than doubles this runtime.

Interestingly, the spelling of Mississippi in the French title contains only a single letter "P".

Truffaut's film, though, is not set in the American state of Mississippi; nor does it have any mermaids.

The title refers to the sailing ship by which Catherine Deneuve arrives on a tropical island to marry factory owner Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Duhamel's multi-themed score does not contain easy-to-remember melodies.
Indeed, when I purchased this CD in the early 2000s, I did not fall in love with its music initially and it took years to escalate into my favorites.

Duhamel's motifs are placed into so many variations that all of them are not detectable at first (or even second) listening.

Then, one day, this soundtrack album integrated together in my mind and afterwards I was hooked.
Now ... when I play this disc, I typically don't play it once ... I listen to it several times in a row before being satiated.

Duhamel writes his music with polyphonic density. A Duhamel rhythm or ostinato can surface later on in the score as part of the melodic line (and vice versa).

Much of the time, A.D.'s compositions sound more classical than lyrical. His themes, like with this score, can possess a Bach-like character and the musical counterpoint can be very neo-classical not unlike Stravinsky.

Antoine Duhamel rarely figures onto the favorites lists of soundtrack collectors - but I think he should.
His music is of a fine quality. While film music fans will usually mention Delerue and Jarre and Legrand on the topic of French composers, my trinity of favorite French composers are, rather, Jean Prodromides and Pierre Jansen and Antoine Duhamel.

O, this:

http://image5.spreadshirt.net/image-ser … lhalla.jpg

Volker

Indeed it is. It can seem baffling when you love a piece so much to the point "you" ( we ) don't get it when someone has the opposite opinion.