Gabriel Yared - Troy (Rejected Score)

[Passmore610]

Has anyone heard Gabriel Yared's score for Troy? He spent over a year working on it and evidently put his heart and soul into it. I much prefer it to Horner's version (granted he wrote it in a fortnight, which is amazing, but it is mostly Prokofiev, Britten, this Yared score, and former Horner scores mashed up).

Apparently the test audiences didn't like it and it was canned at the last minute, which is a real shame, as I think this is a really original score and an amazing effort for someone clearly not so well-known for this kind of stuff. Particularly good and easy first listening is the Approach of the Greeks. Could have really enhanced a pretty mediocre film. Here's the full playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmp93BlXPOQ&list=PL22ED34F65EBC1B33&index=1

[Cathbad]

Has anyone heard Gabriel Yared's score for Troy? He spent over a year working on it and evidently put his heart and soul into it. I much prefer it to Horner's version (granted he wrote it in a fortnight, which is amazing, but it is mostly Prokofiev, Britten, this Yared score, and former Horner scores mashed up).

Apparently the test audiences didn't like it and it was canned at the last minute, which is a real shame, as I think this is a really original score and an amazing effort for someone clearly not so well-known for this kind of stuff. Particularly good and easy first listening is the Approach of the Greeks. Could have really enhanced a pretty mediocre film. Here's the full playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmp93Bl ... 33&index=1

Good stuff. Hard to judge without it having the pictures alongside, but I prefer the music alone to Horner's. Those semitone grupetti grow increasingly tiresome, and the Achilles motif is quite close to a direct lift from a Shostakovich symphony, but hey he only had 4 weeks.

Gabriel Yared's music has some obvious lineage with other scores to films set in the classical world. Some of the biblical epic scores from Rosza and Newman, or Hermann's music to Jason & the Argonauts, through Lawrence Rosenthal's score for Clash of the Titans. I also heard hints of Gurrelieder and Taras Bulba. Apparently the Yared score was rejected for being too old-fashioned. I can understand it being described as old-fashioned, but that doesn't seem an adequate reason to reject it.

[Passmore610]

, and the Achilles motif is quite close to a direct lift from a Shostakovich symphony,

Forgot about that one!

[FriFlo]

I think the Yared score is great! Sad to read, how quickly a composer can get replaced without even being given any chance to work on it ... it just shows how much the film business is run by idiots (that rarely get replaced)! This interview shows very well that it was never Yared's fault! You cannot applaud a collaborators work for almost a year and then in the finally weeks before releasing the picture tell him he sucked! What a foul move from Peterson and/or the producers! Read it here ... also not very nice how Horner (RIP) commented in the interview!

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php? ... iel-yared/

If there is anything I can imagine problems with the audience, it is these vocals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFiGgcDVmuA&list=PL22ED34F65EBC1B33&index=9

Don't get me wrong! I think, this is musically very interesting and it might even be more historically correct than any soundtrack for a sword and sandal movie I ever came across!! But it is somewhat distracting - for a western audience especially - because the singing is so far away from anything you are used to hearing. That is usually no problem with soundscapes and instruments, but with the human voice, it so much grabs your attention! That might be unwanted. It could give a mournful moment some unwanted comical effect to many in the audience.

[Passmore610]

... also not very nice how Horner (RIP) commented in the interview!

https://www.jwfan.com/forums/index.php? ... iel-yared/

"...And, you know, his previous, The English Patient, was really very much based on Bach's music. I mean, if you listen to Bach's preludes and fugues and those things you'll hear Gabriel's score. And I suppose I could say you would have to be a trained musician or a musician with some sort of education to know that, but when you hear the two things you think: "That's Bach."".

Well that's a bit rich from Sergei Horner isn't it? Incredibly childish & unprofessional comments later on in the interview as well.

Having said that, he also said this in an interview (I've missed out the compliments in between) -

"I'm good friends with Hans [Zimmer] but Hans' music is... ...all based on a chaconne or a passacaglia, he has maybe six chords or four chords or five chords and they're repeated... ...they're spectacular against the visuals, but they don't have for me an emotional depth."

I wonder if he would have been banned from VI Control for saying that

[FriFlo]

I wonder if he would have been banned from VI Control for saying that

Banning a VIP composer visiting the forum for insulting another VIP composer also visiting the forum? Yikes!!! You are putting Mike Greedo in a terribly difficult situation! There must be a way to weasel out of this!?

[Headshot]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmp93BlXPOQ&list=PL22ED34F65EBC1B33&index=1

I love this (Horner version is quite boring).

"I'm good friends with Hans [Zimmer] but Hans' music is... ...all based on a chaconne or a passacaglia, he has maybe six chords or four chords or five chords and they're repeated... ...they're spectacular against the visuals, but they don't have for me an emotional depth."

https://jameshorner-filmmusic.com/conve ... es-horner/

I wonder if he would have been banned from VI Control for saying that

You don't risk being banned for saying you don't like Hans' music. Depending on the tone, the retarded mob may be triggered and you may be called a nazi but that's it.

You will be banned if you say that Hans owes a lot to his army of orchestrators/arrangers/additional composers.