Of more importance to the discussion about
Jade is
the balance between McKennitt's song and Horner's score, among other
items. Plenty of outside sources came into play in the film (as usual
for the director and his eclectic musical tastes), including Igor
Stravisnky's "Le Sacre du Printemps" ("Rite of Spring"), "Isn't It
Romantic" and "Where or When" by Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart, "Last to
Know" by Pat Metheny, and "Pau Rolou" by Egberto Gismonti. But it was
"The Mystic's Dream" that factored so heavily in the film, meandering in
and out of a hazy sound mix during several scenes and eventually
occupying the end credits in full. It's a beautiful song, and it's no
wonder that the majority of the population was confused into thinking
that Horner, who was partial to McKennitt's style anyway, was
responsible for that material. What her tone and instrumentation has to
do with a San Francisco cop thriller with African masks is another
issue... That's why filmmakers fail, no doubt. Friedkin is inclined to
connect it to the emotional side of the title character's eroticism,
though it's tough to match the coolly compelling lyricism of the song
with the film's lack of convincing depth. The tricky part in evaluating
Horner's score for
Jade is that it seems as though the song, or
portions of the song's mix, were arranged into the film before Horner's
involvement, forcing the composer to write bridge material extending and
complimenting sounds from the song into his own score. For instance, the
song contains a deep, two-note motif, rising from a note below key to a
resonating, harmonic key droning. Horner emulates this sound adequately
on his synthesizers. Other examples of this cloudy merging exist as
well; the McKennitt usage is so prevalent that either Horner was forced
to address the song in his original composition or a music editor had a
hell of a tough job for this production. Nothing that Horner produces
for
Jade is as lovely as the heart of "The Mystic's Dream,"
however, and fans of the song will be interested in the fact that the
various layers of the song, whether vocal or instrumental, are often
separated and conveyed in their solo potions (or layered
differently).
Stravisnky's "Rite of Spring" supplies the Chinese
angle to the soundtrack, starting as a morbid, primal march that bounces
on woodwinds in "Main Title" and "Looking for Answers" and eventually
culminates in a wildly exotic, dissonant, descending brass theme over
rowdy percussive pounding. The only notable usage of this Stravisnky
piece in the film comes as the fertility masks are seen on display in
the latter half of "Main Title," and given how strangely reminiscent of
Bernard Herrmann's most zany tendencies this obnoxious (and albeit
older) piece of music is, it's no wonder people in the audience were
vomiting in the aisles. These two cues, along with the first minute of
"Finale" (which once again reflects Herrmann mannerisms in its prickly
excitement), represent the only outwardly orchestral music tracked into
Jade. The dissonance that concludes the film in "Finale" is among
the generic muck to match Horner's lack of enthusiasm for the project.
And what of Horner's actual original material? It's an oddly incongruous
combination of
The Name of the Rose and
Jumanji. The
extremely heavy bass keyboarding and plucky string motif from the
earlier score are reprised here, as are the imitations of the male
choral part of McKennitt's song that are familiar to the previous Horner
score as well. The composer collected his usual group of associates on
specialty instruments and added a few specifically to handle the erhu
and other Chinese-related components. Deeply pounding piano and
percussion, joined by wailing sakauhachi flute, are similar in execution
to
Jumanji. Especially as the score progresses, Horner's
atmospherics are as bland a tone as
Unlawful Entry and the less
engaging parts of
The Name of the Rose. A slight, puffing
electronic choral effect (heard most extensively in
Titanic)
seems to be a tool to connect McKennitt's performances to the original
music. The pacing of the score is incredibly slow, with lengthy
sequences of basic keyboard droning or other inaudible activity. There
are recurring motifs at work here, though all of them relate to
flourishes of awkward instrumental performances rather than readily
identifiable melodic lines. When lines are explored tepidly, as in
"Drive to the Airport" in the original recording, they are too brief and
nebulous to remember.
Most of the basic motifs in Horner's music for
Jade can be heard established in the opening cue, though some of
this material was seemingly replaced by the Stravisnky and McKennitt
interludes. As such, the score was never worth the search for the short
bootlegs that long represented its only album presentation, even for
completists. Sound quality isn't terrible on the variants of the
33-minute bootlegs of (often padded by a five-minute suite at the end),
but it is very muffled. Anyone familiar with the film was better off
seeking "The Mystic's Dream" as the first track on McKennitt's popular
album, "The Mask and Mirror," or as the centerpiece of the album for the
2001 television production
The Mists of Avalon, where it fits
much more comfortably with Lee Holdridge's superior score. From a
production and editing standpoint, the film manipulations of this
soundtrack might be an interesting study for enthusiasts of both Horner
and McKennitt's music, but you won't find yourself revisiting it again
for enjoyment. Interestingly, when the time came for the score's
official debut on a licensed product from La-La Land Records in 2010,
the original recording by Horner was provided alone on the single CD.
While this 27 minutes is joined by a handful of source recordings and
the Stravisnky and McKennitt portions directly from their existing
albums, the product does not try to emulate the film edits of this
music. Granted, there is little sense at times to what Friedkin did with
all of this raw material, but while the original score and Stravisnky
piece don't benefit much from the film edit, the McKennitt music might.
Among the only highlights of the soundtrack are the varying mixes of
extracts from "The Mystic's Dream" featured in the film, and none of
these is included on the La-La Land product. As such, the only benefit
of that album is to hear Horner's score as originally written, and
that's no attraction at all despite crystal clear sound. It should be no
surprise that the album did not fly off the shelves, and the stock of
3,000 copies was reduced in price from $20 to $15 by the label after
only a few weeks of availability. On the other hand, a clear copy of
Stravisnky's mask motif could be an extremely effective tool with which
to suddenly scare the crap out of a sleeping roommate in the middle of
the night. Otherwise, don't lose your sleep (or your lunch) over it.
* @Amazon.com: CD or
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