Music
Bear McCreary is the primary composer for the television series, having assisted Richard Gibbs on the 3-hour miniseries. When the show was picked up, Gibbs opted not to devote full-time to the regular series' production and McCreary became the composer. He scored over 70 episodes. Six Battlestar Galactica soundtrack albums have been released to great critical acclaim - one for the miniseries, one for each of the four seasons, and one combining music from the inter-season Razor and post-finale prequel The Plan. The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan hailed the music as "sensational" and "innovative", Joanna Weiss of The Boston Globe praised McCreary as a "visionary composer" who did much to create "the rich atmosphere of Battlestar", Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger described McCreary's work on the show as "transcendent" and Variety said "Galactica offers some of the most innovative music on TV today."
The music of Battlestar Galactica displays a wide variety of ethnic influences and intentionally tries to avoid the "usual" style of a science fiction score. For some of the series' more important episodes, McCreary was granted a full orchestra. Character themes and leitmotifs gradually took on importance, despite being avoided earlier. A variety of ethnic instruments have been used. One season 4 episode employed: Chinese membrane flute, Indian bansuri flute, duduk (Armenian woodwind), erhu (Chinese violin), yialli tanbur (a Turkish lute), dumbek (Middle Eastern drum), Japanese taiko drums and four brass players, 30 string players and a 12-voice choir.
There have been several live concerts featuring the music of Battlestar Galactica. In April 2008, more than 1,000 fans attended two sold-out shows at L.A.'s Roxy on Sunset Boulevard, with some fans flying in from as far as England and Australia. A ballet based on McCreary's scores for Galactica premiered on March 7, 2009 for a 13 week run. Entitled "Prelude to War", it was performed by the dancers of the Theaterhagen in Hagen, Germany with choreography by Ricardo Fernando, and the Hagen Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bernhard Steiner.
Read more about this topic: Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV Series)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“The manner in which Americans “consume” music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie—it’s consumed that way without any regard for how and why it’s made.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1994)
“Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
Yet slower yet, oh faintly gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
“Woe weeps out her division when she sings.”
Droop herbs and flowers;
Fall grief in showers;
“Our beauties are not ours”:
Oh, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is, now, a withered daffodil.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)