Tom Scott's CONQUEST of the POTA has proven to be the gem of this Apes two-fer. I love the avant-garde approach that fits right in alongside the Goldsmith and Rosenman efforts. It's great how each composer adapted their individual style to the Goldsmith original. There's no doubt which movie series these scores come from. When I first got this CD eight years ago it was for the Rosenman theme for BATTLE that I loved, but it's the Scott work that I keep coming back to.
I'd even place it second after the Goldsmith, at least in terms of a stand-alone listen, since much of Scott's score was omitted from the film.
The strange thing is about CONQUEST is that I never knew it existed until the 1990s! I was only a year old in 1972, so I never saw this in a theater, and It never got aired on TV when I was a kid.
Tom Scott's CONQUEST of the POTA has proven to be the gem of this Apes two-fer. I love the avant-garde approach that fits right in alongside the Goldsmith and Rosenman efforts. It's great how each composer adapted their individual style to the Goldsmith original. There's no doubt which movie series these scores come from. When I first got this CD eight years ago it was for the Rosenman theme for BATTLE that I loved, but it's the Scott work that I keep coming back to.
I'd even place it second after the Goldsmith, at least in terms of a stand-alone listen, since much of Scott's score was omitted from the film.
The strange thing is about CONQUEST is that I never knew it existed until the 1990s! I was only a year old in 1972, so I never saw this in a theater, and It never got aired on TV when I was a kid.
I watched the 1974 Apes series in the mid-Seventies and in the late Seventies, the entire Apes film saga was broadcast on television. I watched them in black and white but the mood (part military, part avant garde, part ethnic: modernist totalitarian tribal soundscape) created by the music never left me.
I didn't know that there was a TV series until I realized those "new" movies that my local channel used to air in the early eighties were two episodes edited together as "movies": Farewell to the Planet of the Apes, etc. Yet CONQUEST was completely unknown to me. Maybe the dark tone and violence were too much a contrast with the rest of the series.
Anyway, Tom Scott's score is great stuff. And a score like his could've only happened in the late-60s/ early 70s time frame.
I love all the APES scores and will forever by glad that FSM got the Rosenman and Scott scores preserved on disc. I remember simply being ecstatic in '97 when Varese released the full score for the original plus that generous suite from ESCAPE. They have long been major favorites of mine. Just from viewing the rest of the films, I failed to fully appreciate the non-Jerry scores, but they are great in their own ways while still paying homage to the original score's instrumentation and style. Rosenman fits perfectly within the APES series, his daring & avant garde style fulfilling the same function as Goldsmith's but in a completely different manner. Scott's score has some fine elements for sure and while I do enjoy listening to it, I still rank it below the other four scores.
Now this is still ranked #5 out of five, so it's not too awful! I wouldn't expect many new composers to be able to compete with the pure awesomeness of POTA, ESCAPE and BENEATH...
I would totally agree with you Tom, I love these scores but would put Conquest 5th and I really enjoyed listening to them isolated on the blu rays. As for keeping in with the style set by Jerry, I was recently listening to intrada's cd of the TV series music and Lalo Schifrin also did a pretty good job of keeping the correct 'tone' in the music while keeping it in his own dramatic style. Well done to all the composers concerned.
FOOTNOTE: the last time I saw Jerry conduct was at the Albert Hall where he played his POTA suite. His introduction gave away (surprisingly) that he was more than a little pissed at not being asked to score the Tim Burton remake!
I love all the APES scores and will forever by glad that FSM got the Rosenman and Scott scores preserved on disc.
Agreed. The Apes scores were mostly a blind buy for me since I wasn't familiar with the sequel movies at the time (I've since bought the box set) and I *love* the music to these films!
Just got to watch the BluRay release of CONQUEST - for those interested, Scott's score is indeed intact. Goldsmith's cue is still used at the end of the picture, but what's surprising is that there was MORE that was used.
Recommend the picture, but I can see why they backed off - it could've caused riots on its own.
