As of today, (12/08/02) I have uploaded ALL of the mp3 files of the soundtrack. Scroll down to the tracklisting, right-click and click "Save Target As".
Shire: I was glad to have an opportunity to write an extensive, symphonic score for a major orchestra -- the London Symphony -- a score with a great number of themes. I've done a lot of films that didn't require a great deal of music -- I call them "brain surgery scores" -- where you have to walk on eggs and work hard to keep the music out of the way most of the time and work, for the most part, on a subliminal level. So, I was happy when OZ director Walter Murch said he wanted a lot of music.
There are nine major themes or thematic groups in RETURN TO OZ, and I tried to compose them so they would work as extended pieces of music in addition to their functioning as themes. I wanted the score to hold together like "Pictures at an Exhibition" or "Peter and the Wolf." I felt this would give the film a musical coherence and make for a soundtrack album that would really tell the story of the picture.
I started working while Walter was still shooting. However, only one theme -- the Gump's theme -- was written before I actually got to see the rough cut of the film. Well before the spotting, Walter and I decided on certain basic ideas for the score's tone and texture. We had some ideas based on music we liked -- for instance, Charles Ives, especially his work for smaller combinations that can be heard on a wonderful album called Deranged Songs for Theatre Orchestra, plus some Prokofiev and Bartok. We later joked how one cue I'd written was in the style of "Prokofiev-lves." I tried to find models for each theme from American music that the character of Dorothy could have heard, since the story is, in a sense, Dorothy's dream -- she's creating it. I wanted the score to have a truly American flavor and even though symphonic, to employ various interesting smaller combinations within that texture. I also wanted each of the "little" characters to have a characteristic small ensemble sound and put all of them against the larger symphonic forces that mostly represent the "large" forces of evil (the Nome king and Mombi) that they are up against.
There are three themes that relate directly to Dorothy. The first is the "Home Theme" which represents Dorothy's feelings about her Kansas home and Aunt Em. It's hymn-like -- much like something Dorothy would have heard at Sunday services. The other two are Dorothy's Main Theme and the theme for Ozma. Following a suggestion from Walter, the latter two were designed to work together in counterpoint at the end of the movie.
Ozma is really Dorothy's alter-ego -- she's the imaginative side of Dorothy that Dorothy is trying to make contact with. The subtext of the movie, according to Walter, is that Dorothy is going back to OZ to rescue and thus be able to reconcile herself with Ozma, and somehow find a way to be true to the world of her imagination while living in the real world. The themes play together for the first time as Ozma steps through the mirror and joins Dorothy in the big resolution scene in Oz. They do so again when Ozma appears in Dorothy's mirror at the very end of the film. Ozma disappears and Dorothy runs outside to play, and the two melodies then really sing together in symphonic counterpoint during the end titles.
I had the Ozma theme early on, and after Walter made his counterpoint suggestion, it took a very long time to get a Dorothy theme that would work with it yet have an equally strong and distinct character of its own. I also gave each of the themes its own instrumental character --solo violin for Dorothy, solo cello for Ozma. I must have written twenty or twenty-five different Dorothy themes until I came up with one I was really happy with! All the throwaways either didn't work well contrapuntally, or else sounded too much like counterpoints or obligates rather than distinctive melodies. I didn't want the climax to be telegraphed at all.
As for the other themes, the "Rag March," which is first heard when Dorothy lands in Oz, has an obvious reference to turn-of-the-Century American music.
Then there's "Tik Tok's Theme." It features a brass quintet which related to Tik Tok's metallic rotundity. Also, in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, there were several coronet players who were big musical stars and loved to play these wonderfully silly show-off cadenzas. Walter agreed with me that something like that would work very well for the end of the fight scene between Tik Tok and the evil Wheelers, Tik Tok's big triumph.
The "Jack Pumpkinhead Theme" is a turn-of-the-Century waltz, again something Dorothy might have heard. I originally wrote it to feature clarinet, but, Walter had me switch the melody to bass clarinet an octave lower because he thought the clarinet would be in the same audio range as Jack's voice and would conflict. Oddly enough, Walter thought of this when he noticed that the bass clarinet (he didn't know what it was) looked like the character of Jack Pumpkinhead! But he was right about the potential conflict and its solution.
Dorothy's chicken friend, Billina, has a motif for nervous high reeds and double reeds, moving quickly in major seconds.
As for the evil forces, Mombi's theme employs a mandolin, since she plays her own theme on one in the movie. I used a synthesizer for this to get a slightly unreal mandolin sound that I could better control.
The Gump has a clockwork-type Vamp, and,when he finally takes off, a big symphonic "movie-music" theme udth the four horns triumphantly singing away.
The Nome King's motif uses shifting whole tone harmonies in the lower end of the orchestra. As he gets meaner and meaner his essentially augmented triad harmonic character shifts to diminished seventh and Bartokian harmony. When he finally disintegrates, the three diminished chords are stacked horrifically a la the 12-tone "Wozzek Chord." I tried to mirror his gradual psychological disintegration with a gradual harmonic one.
I gave the Wheelers a distinctive sound by featuring metallic percussion.
I decided to use only string orchestra (with harp and percussion) for the first three reels before Dorothy gets to Oz, so that there would be a musical delineation between the real, somewhat dark world of Kansas and the bright and bizarre world of Oz. The woodwinds and brass are gradually introduced in the storm sequence as Dorothy is swept away to Oz.
I especially liked developing all the interrelationships between the themes, such as in the "Rag March," which has a few bars from each of the little characters' themes threaded through it.
RETURN TO OZ gave me the chance to write a multi-themed, large scale symphonic score, and one of my goals was to wind up with music that, away from the movie, would tell its story musically to as great an extent as possible. ("Peter and the Wolf'ond "Sheherazode" were my models.) Walter Murch, one of my favorite people and collaborators (and the brilliant editor and sound rnontogist for THE CONVERSATION) was the director, and over a period of several months I had a lot of fun writing, playing for him and perfecting the nine themes which are the nucleus of the score. We recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra, and one of my fondest memories - of many happy and exciting ones - is turning to give the climactic entrance cue to the six french homs and seeing my wife Didi sitting where a seventh horn would have been, smiling rapturously back at me.
DS: Absolutely. You know, when I was in my feature hay day it seemed if they could pinpoint me for any specialty it was doing pictures like ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THE CONVERSATION, which were relatively low key, subtle scores. And I always wanted to do the big, fat, multi-themed, big-orchestra scores-and OZ was the answer to my prayers. I could just let loose all of that stuff. I would certainly like to get pictures like that. They're a lot of fun to do, especially because I haven't done many of them. But I think I proved with OZ that I could do that. But I don't seem to be typecast in that role, and you know how composers are typecast in Hollywood-they hire you to repeat yourself. So I always hope that someone will listen to that promo album someday and say, "Wow! We didn't know he could do that!"
From an interview with Don Davis (head of what once was Bay Cities) conducted by Music From The Movies
Your first soundtrack CD was David Shire's RETURN TO OZ. How important was this premiere release for you, and why did you choose this score in particular?
- We were fortunate in that a score as highly regarded as RETURN TO OZ had never been released on CD. Because of the arrangements between Sonic Atmospheres and Disney on the vinyl album, the CD was not a sub-license but actually a joint release of Bay Cities and that label. Since Sonic Atmospheres was no longer actively producing, our offer was a welcome opportunity to generate some income from a library title. This also led to a contact with David Shire who contributed to Classical Hollywood II and ultimately produced a compilation album ("David Shire At the Movies") with us.
Which is the best Bay Cities soundtrack album ever released, in your opinion?
- Including CD reissues of vinyl I'd have to say the first is still the best: RETURN TO OZ.
The London Symphony Orchestra - Orchestra, Performer
Steve Smith - Liner Notes
Craig Huxley - Director, Creative Director
Douglas Cummings - Cello
Bernie Grundman - Mastering
Dan Hersch - Digital Remastering
Bruce Kimmel - Liner Notes, Executive Producer
Harry Rabinowitz - Conductor, Associate Conductor
Michael Rosen - Executive Producer
Alan Rouse - Assistant Engineer, Mixing Assistant
David Shire - Composer, Conductor, Producer
Alain Silver - Executive Producer
Hubert Spencer - Arranger, Orchestration
Eric Tomlinson - Engineer, Remixing
Karen Stone - Graphic Design, Art Direction
Michael Davis - Violin
Ernest Lockett - Music Preparation
Stan Witt - Music Editor
1. Dorothy Remembers (intro from movie, not score)/Home/The Ride to Dr. Worley's (clip)/MP3 (04:20)
2. Ozma/The Fight In The Storm (03:56)
3. Oz/The Ruined House (04:53)
4. The Deserted City/The Wheelers/ Tik Tok ( 04:55)
5. Mombi's Hall Of Heads (02:47)
6.Jack Pumpkinhead (02:48)
7.The Flight Of The Gump (03:58)
8. Dorothy And The Nome King/The Ornament Room (04:27)
9. The Defeat Of The King/ The Restoration (06:09)
11. Finale And End Credits (Theme From "Return To Oz")(4:26)
12.The "Return To Oz" Ragtime March (02:44)
GO HERE for the latest compatible multimedia player.
Sadly, the soundtrack has been out of print and hard to find since 1991. If you want advice on how to find it, by all means, E-mail me!
Sources:
A Conversation with David Shire (1/19/99)
David Shire Film MusicCopyright 1998, Gorfaine-Schwartz Agency
David Shire At the Movies, Copyright 1991, Bay Cities
Return to Oz Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Copyright 1985, Bay Cities.
