EDIT: As Jason posted a screen shot of, Abel Korzeniowski is no longer on the series. I have amended the title to question marks where the composer's name should be until we find out who it is now.
I have seen some of the Halo films ( quite enjoyed Forward Unto Dawn). I recently picked up Shout Factory's Halo film collection which should hold me over until this series comes out.
While trying to look and see if I could find out who the replacement composer is, an article published a few days ago has the game compsoers suing Microsoft and trying to stop the airing of the series.
While trying to look and see if I could find out who the replacement composer is, an article published a few days ago has the game compsoers suing Microsoft and trying to stop the airing of the series.
I hope they succeed. Martin O'Donnell already successfully sued Bungie years ago for unpaid wages and I think his and Michael Salvatori's work have been very underrated.
The music has been very important to the series, especially its iconic main theme. It has a great blend of orchestral and electronic elements, and different percussion that predates all the "African Rundown" (CASINO ROYALE) and "Mobasa Chase" (INCEPTION) kind of stuff. At the time that Zimmer was doing a lot of electronic-action-adjacent music and other Hollywood scores were on techno-action overdrive, Halo presented a nice balance.
Interestingly too, the theme song has a very LORD OF THE RINGS vibe, just a couple years before FELLOWSHIP was released.
I'm all for these guys receiving the credit they deserve for the music.
Interestingly too, the theme song has a very LORD OF THE RINGS vibe, just a couple years before FELLOWSHIP was released.
No. Halo: Combat Evolved released on November 15 2001, a mere 25 days before Fellowship premiered on December 10th.
Jason, you're missing WHEN Halo's THEME SONG was made and first released, which was 1999, nearly 2 years BEFORE LOTR.
The trailer for the game was first introduced at MacWorld in 1999 and premiered the famous Gregorian chanting theme that become the main theme. Watch and listen for yourself:
This MacWorld is historical in that Halo was going to be available for both Windows and Mac but Microsoft maneuvered their way in to salvage their X-Box by making Halo an exclusive launch title.
I love the LORD OF THE RINGS music and I'm not suggesting HALO had ANY impact on Howard Shore whatsoever, I doubt he was even aware of it. But they both share stacked notes building the Dorian scale as heard in Shore's music for Moria and the "ethnic" voices and drums popular at the time.
Dorian mode strikes again, with another HALO connection in the movie TWISTER (1996). In this case both the HALO theme and this motif from TWISTER are in E Dorian:
Seems like the soundtrack might become available in a couple of months.
Paramount released the first episode fully on youtube:
The music is very Callery-esque, kind of nondescript TV music like 24 in my opinion. The "Halo Theme" is not particularly exciting and kind of truncated. But he does do kind of a good job and mimicking the sparseness of some of the original game series' compositions as well as its interesting chord progressions.
This never got a release - I wonder if there's a CD in the works?
There was supposed to be according to Callery but not sure what happened. Everything about this is silent. Maybe that guy Jason Leblanc knows, supposedly he knows all?
I do know they're filming a 2nd season and with the upcoming BluRay release of Season 1 maybe they'll release a soundtrack CD.
