Music
The film score, composed by James Horner and performed by The London Symphony Orchestra and the Ambrosian Singers, has received a cult following on itself, being featured on CD in several releases by different labels through the years. It has been commended as part of the composer's best early efforts before his more famous post-1990 era works.
The score features traditional swashbuckling fanfares, an overtly rapturous love theme and other musical elements that were characteristic of fantasy/adventure films of the 80's, along with incorporating avant-garde techniques with string instruments to represent some of the monstrous creatures in the story. Additionally, to accompany the main antagonists, the Beast and its army of Slayers, Horner utilized Holst-like rhythms and groaning and moaning vocals from the choir. Also of note is a recurring "siren call" performed by female voices that starts and bookends the score, and appears numerous times in the story to represent the legacy of the ancient world of Krull.
Horner's score is reminiscent of earlier works, particularly Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Some pieces of the music were reused for the area atmosphere nearby: Space Mountain: From the Earth to the Moon (1995–2005) — now Space Mountain: Mission 2 — at Disneyland Paris.
The score has been released numerous times on album. The first was a 45 minute condensed edition released by Southern Cross records in 1987, featuring most of the major action cues, three renditions of the love theme and the music from the End Credits, however, omitting music from the Main Title sequence. The same label later released a Special Edition in 1992 and 1994 (the latter a Gold disc) with a running time of over 78 minutes, expanding on all of the previously released tracks, featuring the Main Title music and other action cues.
In 1998, SuperTracks released the complete recorded score in a 2CD set with extensive liner notes by David Hirsch in a notoriously designed booklet, however, this release, along with the '92 and '94 ones, have become rare and very expensive collectible items. In 2010, La-La Land Records re-issued the SuperTracks album, with two bonus cues and new liner notes by Jeff Bond in a limited edition of 3,000 copies, which sold out within less than a year.
Read more about this topic: Krull (film)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“If this be love, to clothe me with dark thoughts,
Haunting untrodden paths to wail apart;
My pleasures horror, music tragic notes,
Tears in mine eyes and sorrow at my heart.
If this be love, to live a living death,
Then do I love and draw this weary breath.”
—Samuel Daniel (1562–1619)
“I fear I agree with your friend in not liking all sermons. Some of them, one has to confess, are rubbish: but then I release my attention from the preacher, and go ahead in any line of thought he may have started: and his after-eloquence acts as a kind of accompaniment—like music while one is reading poetry, which often, to me, adds to the effect.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“In benevolent natures the impulse to pity is so sudden, that like instruments of music which obey the touch ... you would think the will was scarce concerned, and that the mind was altogether passive in the sympathy which her own goodness has excited. The truth is,—the soul is [so] ... wholly engrossed by the object of pity, that she does not ... take leisure to examine the principles upon which she acts.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)