Music by John Scott

Overview by Michael Ware

The eminent composer John Scott is a four-decade veteran of incisive, powerfully articulated film music. From his earliest works in the 1960s for A STUDY IN TERROR and THE LONG DUEL (when credited as Patrick John Scott), through a sharply idiosyncratic period in the 1970s distinguished by his masterwork ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, blooming into the full-force bravura works for the 1980s and beyond, Scott has been an essential voice in international scoring that thoroughly belies his sometimes overlooked stature in the midst of brand name composers (Goldsmith/Williams/Elfman) and more blatant commercial acts (fill in the blanks). Whatever your personal tastes, the sheer visceral persuasion of Scott's personal idiom of classical mastery of form, style, and penetrating dramatic conviction, can be argued at the least to be one of contemporary film scoring's vital resources.

Scott is roughly a contemporary of John Barry and Jerry Goldsmith. His methodology as composer (stylistically consistent and with a range of influences) struck quickly at the beginning of his career and is immediately recognizable for its straightforward dramatic punch, gleaning out the emotional specifics of his characters and elevating their needs to an often Homeric level of insight and empathetic response to the demands of being alive. Like David Shire, he is incapable of letting an assignment fly without investing it with redemptive compassion and dignity. Scott's sound can be placed in the contemporary classical/romantic genre, perhaps: "lush" orchestrations with a warmth in the strings offset with a tonal complexity geared for any dramatic contingency-- also a penchant for bold melodic lines and a modern structural design for a powerhouse exposition of his dramatic content, always directly impactful of the moment at hand.

Scott is one of the few composers still willing to assert his personal point of view. Though his style allows for insinuating intimacy that can be piercingly lovely or actually heartbreaking, his sensibility seems unabashedly epic. His innate romanticism has a realist's discretion; when Scott assigns the need for the soaring climactic uplift it is earned in the judicious, life-affirming way of Miklos Rozsa-- nearly a credible comparison, and an inspiring, blazing gift.

Here are a few John Scott CDs, hopefully available from the usual mail order outlets where in print:

JOHN SCOTT CONDUCTS HIS OWN FAVOURITE FILM SCORES (JOS Records)-- A pristine collection of cuttings from the better known works THE FINAL COUNTDOWN and ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (also available in a full rerecording of this searing and gorgeous score, Scott's most passionate, on JOS), and forgotten pics like ENGLAND MADE ME, and Scott's tenderly empathetic treatment of macho NFL players on the brink of destruction in the '70s jazz-fusion of NORTH DALLAS FORTY. This disc has the only legit CD rendition of Scott's great 1984 achievement GREYSTOKE THE LEGEND OF TARZAN LORD OF THE APES.

THE SCARLET TUNIC (JOS)-- A fine score most never heard in 1997, for a period film based on Hardy's THE MELANCHOLY HUSSAR. Scott takes to the period flavor and instrumentation for this story of a doomed love with a shimmery tension, restraining the large emotions to a muted desperation. The sense of urgency is more potent for the elegance of form that lends the score a timeless quality culminating in a finishing theme that is the kind of heartbreaking tone poem that would have given TITANIC actual taste and literacy.

KING KONG LIVES (Japanese Victor-- out of print)-- One of Scott's most popular works that vaults well past Barry's succinctly simple romance of the 76 film, and Steiner's classic original, with the hugely romantic, near apocalyptic vision Scott put to this otherwise ridiculous film. It is insanely opulent and jammed to the brink with the splendiferous writing Scott excelled at in his Cousteau docu scores, overflowing with inside jokes and references to both previous Kongs, Michel Legrand, Andre Previn and Rozsa's EL CID, for a worthy doctoral thesis in sheer sonority of orchestral color. Scott's rhapsodic thematic material binding his protagonists (two large gorillas) to a new mythic stature is conveyed with melodic lines that are blood red and strong, radiating the intrinsic nobility of great apes.

WINTER PEOPLE/PRAYER FOR THE DYING (JOS)-- WINTER PEOPLE is Scott's take on the Missouri Breaks/Conrack genre, more accurately his deeply compassioned response to a story of cross-cultural conflict involving a reasonable modern sensibility (repped by the character played by Kurt Russell) against backwoods clannish bigotry. The score is a fusion of symphonic contemporary music with southern hillbilly textures attending the conflicts with a resonance befitting classical tragedy, granting full voice to all sides without slighting, or softening any of them. Scott's approach is always one of empathy, and the central character of an unwed mother (Kelly McGillis) is given one of the great impassioned playouts in a spectacular moment ("The Sacrifice"). The disc is paired with Scott's rejected PRAYER FOR THE DYING. Scored for rock ensemble featuring solo guitar augmented with Irish harp, keyboard, cello, this is an intricate suspense score from the inside out. Makes you glad you never joined the IRA. Brooding violence is filled out with softer melancholia that is a couple of steps better than gorgeous. Scott is a nonsense-free composer, and his sentiment is earned. Maybe one reason he is less popular than someone like Barry is that his style is imposing, the violence hurts, the uplift is exhilarating and reminds you that you are glad to be alive; Scott makes you a part of it, a member of the family with obligations to become a better human being.

LIONHEART (Intrada out of print)-- A spectacular Kung Fu score. Scott ignored the Van Damme surface value of this and crafted a fully shaped and epic work that of course touches on the usual contemporary funk and rock elements of Kung Fu scores, and complements them with a startlingly visceral exposition of a man struggling to achieve mastery of his soul. The immediacy of big-city violence is offset with a gradually formulating noble "victory" theme that only reaches fruition at the climactic fight when the protagonist achieves inner strength rather than outer with a compassionate choice of action. Scott plays to the full value of a central tenet of the Martial Arts, reconciling aggression with reflective discipline for a balanced life in the midst of chaos. The finale is another of Scott's habitual statements of exhilaration and power, and a shattering burst of triumph.

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com