The instrumentation of Family Plot is really where Williams' style for the picture distinguishes the score. The general sound is definitely representative of the maestro, but like Heartbeeps and a handful of others, the tone and solo emphases in Family Plot really make it memorable. A large string section offsets a truncated brass section, but the orchestra is almost always employed in a secondary role to solo performances on woodwinds, harpsichord, harp, or synthesizer. The many flute and other woodwind passages bring what little convincing warmth to be gleaned from the story, while the harpsichord is a decent extension of the wealth and privilege suggested by the story. The harp provides the ambience of mystery in several cues while the ARP synthesizer both carries the motifs of the villains and maintains ominously harsh tones as a stinger device. Timpani accents denote obvious gravity. The angelic women's choir has a parody element to it here, though Williams collectors may find its application to a couple of cues a foreshadowing of tones heard with more sincerity in Hook and A.I. Artificial Intelligence. While the composer utilized the harpsichord many times at the height of his career, including The Missouri Breaks and Monsignor in that era, its dominance of the humorous character of this score will draw the most comparisons to The Witches of Eastwick. The rhythmic flow of Family Plot is split between the upbeat harpsichord-led theme for the psychic and the base-region rambling for the villains, the latter most resembling the propulsive sense in Black Sunday that would also foreshadow elements in the future for Williams. Like the themes for Family Plot, the instrumental applications are proven malleable enough by Williams to mingle significantly with disparate ideas to mirror the complex relationships in the story. The themes themselves are also presented often as counterpoint to each other or with fragments melded in unexpected ways. You will rarely encounter a moment in Family Plot during which Williams isn't expressing at least one of his four main themes for the film, and most cues muddy their development or tease the audiences with merged meanings to suggest forthcoming plot revelations. Unfortunately, none of the themes for this film is particularly appreciable outside of context, Williams' obligatory adaptation of the seance theme into a 70's light rock song an interesting piece of testimony to the versatility of his ideas but necessarily something you'd want to hear often for standalone enjoyment. Like the cast on screen, the themes are truly an ensemble effort with no clear highlight.

The first theme heard in Family Plot is the one for the psychic's seances, an identity better remembered for its use of ethereal women's voices than the melody itself. Outside of the two tracks indicating that application, it also bookends the "End Cast" cue as necessary to suggest both a trance and the ultimate humor behind it. As mentioned before, the "Family Plot Theme" pop adaptation is so different in its treatment of the idea that they will seem unrelated to casual listeners. The second theme, and more appropriately the main idea for Family Plot, is the one for the psychic's true, mischievous personality. Represented by the harpsichord in "Blanche's Challenge" and beyond, this theme on the surface may resemble The Witches of Eastwick in its most buoyant performances but actually, when boiled down to solo piano or woodwind, carries some of the creepiness of A.I. Artificial Intelligence as well, especially as the idea morphs into a love theme in "Blanche and George." While this theme is usually characterized by easy harmony and may represent the antics of the protagonists well enough, it's often a bit obnoxious in its awkward movements ("Kitchen Pranks" may be too much parody to handle). Far more intriguing are the themes associated with the villains. The Shoebridge theme (representing the family involving the heir) is a convoluted, slowed, and mangled distortion of the Blanche theme in some ways, but its distinctively warped progressions are quite adept at making subtle connections between the villains and the family of the old woman seeking to find her heir. The highlight of the score is ironically the outward expression of criminal intent espoused by the Adamson theme for the kidnapping ring. This rambling minor third rhythm is heard first in "The Mystery Woman" and grows more intense as the plot progresses toward the determination that the protagonists must be killed. The ARP synthesizer conveys this theme most convincingly, with a raw sense of malice not heard often in scores thirty years later. In terms of its progression, the Adamson theme will be associated by younger listeners with the suspense motif in Jurassic Park, a musical association also made in Black Sunday (thus the prior mention of rhythmic connections) and other subsequent scores. The idea is often used as the rhythmic backdrop for the Shoebridge theme, the two of them usually flowing in and out of each other (and may actually be confused as one overarching villains' idea). While "The Mystery Woman," complete with driving snare, is the longest full expression of these ideas together, their urgently forceful resolve in "Nothing Held Back" is a brief but superior highlight.

As the score for Family Plot reaches its most suspenseful scenes of confrontation involving the four remaining characters, Williams shifts between the two villains' ideas and Blanche's theme in very subtle environments. Rumbling piano comes to define these slightly stated, overlapping themes for portions in "Blanche's Arrival/Blanche's Note" and "Breaking Into the House" that aren't particularly memorable. The final moment of decisive action in "The Secret Door" loses the tension built in the rest of the score and resolves rather tepidly, too. As such, the score doesn't really feature any kind of satisfying resolution outside of the rotation between ideas (and the translation of the Shoebridge theme into the major key) in "End Cast." Overall, you can clearly understand and agree with the choices Williams' made about treating Family Plot with a lighter sound. The thematic development is also precisely exercised and mingled with skill. It's hard to argue with the instrumental choices, too. But this score has always lacked the kind of impressive narrative flow that many of Williams' other scores exhibit, absent the feeling of the inevitable in Black Sunday. Additionally, Blanche's harpsichord theme may simply be too cute in its most extroverted form for some listeners. For perhaps these reasons, Family Plot has long remained John Williams' most long-standing unreleased score, despite the pop arrangement of the seance theme made specifically for the purposes of an album. Bootlegs of the score have always featured incredibly poor sound and the excerpts contained on compilations have never featured enough of Williams' material for the story to give a well rounded impression of its complicated thematic interactions. Finally, the Varèse Sarabande label made Family Plot the centerpiece of its late 2010 offerings in its CD Club, a product limited to a generous 5,000 copies. The assembly of the score is the best possible, with the long source cue "The Stonecutter," upwards of seven minutes featuring the absolute worst of Williams' late-70's pop sensibilities, placed at the conclusion of the album. Unfortunately, a superior source for the original recording has never been located, and even despite the best efforts of the label to engineer a dynamic soundscape from the three-track masters for Family Plot, there is still an archival ambience to the entirety of the score. Given the robust nature of especially the villains' themes, this rather flat sound is a tragedy; the inherently dull tone of the synthesizer doesn't help, either. Adding this note to all of the aforementioned potential concerns for listeners, Family Plot isn't an automatic recommendation, a score aimed at collectors with an intellectual appreciation of Williams' 1970's works. For causal listening purposes, Black Sunday would be a related and better place to start an exploration of this sound.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download