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Actually it is one of the few scores that can truly be said to be a Holy Grail! Or at least include one.
Hey! That was actually quite funny!
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Actually it is one of the few scores that can truly be said to be a Holy Grail! Or at least include one.
I think that at least as much of a long-sought "grail" would be Boorman's longer cut of the film, which included something like an hour of footage depicting the knights' quests for the grail. I wonder if a longer cut will ever be released on disc (I think it's only been seen on British television). If the film was released in longer form, would that serve as enough of an impetus for a sountrack label to revisit the score?
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@Sigerson:
This extended cut sounds very intriguing.
Do you have any additional information about it?
What is your source? Did you see it yourself?
I've never seen it and I can't find evidence anywhere online that anyone else has seen it. I thought there was an "alternate versions" page at IMDB years ago, where I got the meager information I posted (from memory) above, but I don't see that page at IMDB anymore. There is an argument in progress at IMDB's Excalibur (1981) message board as to the existence of an "extended cut." All seem to agree that Boorman's preferred version in the 2 hour 20 minute R-rated cut, to which he trimmed it himself. At Wikipedia, it still says:
"According to Boorman, the film was originally three hours long; among scenes that were deleted from the finished film but featured in one of the promotional trailers was a sequence where Lancelot rescued Guenevere from a forest bandit."
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I can understand Jones' reluctance.
The film is magic, and has the deepest expose of the mythic stuff yet done, and its significance (Boorman was one of them thar Jungian blokes, as is well known) for youth. The slightly tongue-in-cheek feel of parts of the film is deliberate too.
But the MUSIC relies very heavily on the Wagner and Orff, and that's what the great mass of buyers out there in the real world remember and would want to hear.
The Orff was 'relevant' in this film because it's not a straight 'representative/historical' film, but a stylised allegory for the young man, just as it was in the days of Malory. Orff's 'forbidden songs' relate to the deeper layers of Celtic and occult myth that Merlin and his crew adhere to, under the 'new' Christian veneer, and the Wagner is from a universal mythic European heroic idea of that era. This isn't temp-track leftovers.
Now people will remember THAT, not Jones' work, and I say that as one who thinks Jones a good composer.
But he can either release the whole score, with all the rights problems of the original performances, (new performances would be seen as cheating in this context), or none of it. You guys who collect film-scores would gladly have his music alone, but I can't see either him or the bulk of real people out there thinking 'Excalibur' could ever be seen as 'representative' without the classical pieces.
And he may have aesthetic reasons too. I mean, those Wagner and Orff pieces, fine as they are, sitting betwixt his own cues, is an odd juxtaposition when heard OUT OF CONTEXT. The best compromise would be to release the score with the classics first, and Jones' entire incidental score after it.
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I recall mainly a lot of Wagner and a bit of Orff -- incredibly annoying stuff, because each eruption took me out of the story and into the several (and quite different) musical and mythical worlds of Tristan and Parsifal and the Ring.
No, they take the music into the ONE universal mythical layer. That was his intent.
The only piece in the film I found grating was the strange performance at the Guinevere wedding ceremony, which was obviously trying to be a very 'dogged' and primitive attempt at liturgical music. The piece was authentic, the performance ... rrrgh.
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It's not "top drawer" Jones, but it has its moments. In fact I honestly think it is (overall) better-written than his Merlin score. His period source cues are very attractive (and to my ear better than Dark Crystal's "Pod Dance" -- which was probably mostly improvised by the players anyway). Excalibur's unused main and end titles are bold, heroic and certainly release-worthy, as is the beautiful choral cue for the wedding scene (which was butchered on the "unmentionable", having been ripped from the film itself).
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My wife and I even had a part of Trevor's original score played during our wedding party and what a great moment it was!
Hey! Androids are not suposed to get married!
It is FORBIDEN!!!
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Bishop takes YOR.
Check.
;-)
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It is just another case of a score that becomes a "holly grail" just because it was never released...
Actually it is one of the few scores that can truly be said to be a Holy Grail! Or at least include one.
LOL!
yeah, his score is not good and sounds 'cheap' during the synth passages.
I rewatched this recently and cringed a bit at the TRISTAN music and cringed ALOT at the "O Fortuna" (which has been done to death since the film cam out).
But, the SIEGRIED music really hits the spot.
A mixed musical bag to a superior film
brm
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Actually it is one of the few scores that can truly be said to be a Holy Grail! Or at least include one.
I think that at least as much of a long-sought "grail" would be Boorman's longer cut of the film, which included something like an hour of footage depicting the knights' quests for the grail. I wonder if a longer cut will ever be released on disc (I think it's only been seen on British television). If the film was released in longer form, would that serve as enough of an impetus for a sountrack label to revisit the score?
On his dvd commentary Boorman agrees the shorter version is far better!
The Grail bit was always the weakest part of the Arthur legend for me
bruce
ps the cut has aired on television???? never heard that
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) 
