Intrada Soundtrack Forum

Okay. The last one. The ending. The final piece of music in a movie. And... the last one of these "top five" picks that I'll throw at you folks for the time being. I'm hoping you people will at least endure one more go around before getting totally bored with these exercizes.

Ending a score. Once it was as customary as ending a book. There was a final sentence, a final statement, a period, a coda. Call it whatever you'd like. Composers finished there scores. In the pre-end credit days, it was almost always in some fortissimo manner, usually with major chords. But even after the end credit-era was underway, some composers still created masterful sequences, medleys and whatnot. Once the abundant use of songs and vocals from other media took over as end credit music, good composers ended their scores with the last cue in the film proper usually being their final say.

Anyway, all of this has become all but a lost art today with most composers willing to let mixers and editors cut and paste something together, or literally just "walking off" the podium without even writing an ending to their scores at all. (James Horner and John Williams are excepted.) I don't subscribe to the theory that it's the fault of the movies or their respective directors and producers and whatever. I really think it's a lack of genuine musical talent in the industry now. But that's my two cents on a subject that I get passionate about.

So. The ending exercise. The top five score endings of all-time, in my opinion:

RANSOM (James Horner) - The trumpet raises higher and higher, repeats until you think it's at a climax... then ups it one more step; the entire orchestra crashes in with resounding major chords, percussion and chimes ring, French horns cut through with their own major chords and finally everyone cadences into one massive crescendoing major chord, reaching a genuine triple forte finish. Wow! it doesn't get any better.

SPARTACUS (Alex North) - The love theme plays through, then as Varinia exits, the slave rebellion theme grows in basses, builds and climaxes with those ferociously complex (but still hinting at major) five massive chords in the orchestra bringing everything to a powerful finish.

JAWS 2 (John Williams) - After a rousing reprise of his outdoor sailing music, Williams wraps the end credits with a cool fanfare figure in the upper brass, then climaxes not once but twice (!) with his orchestra, finally wrapping in a crescendoing unison for everyone.

GLORY (James Horner) - When all is said and done with Horner's end credits, the orchestra drops out. Solo boys choir takes over with the main theme, this time without any harmony or accompaniment save percussion. Then even those few singing voices wind down, come to an end and leave distant snares alone to continue the cadence. Soon they too dwindle. They fade further... and finally... there's nothing... just the distant memory of a long ago battle.

PAPILLON (Jerry Goldsmith) - The picture is over, the camera goes to shots of a deserted penal installation. Goldsmith fades out his main theme as the end credits roll and instead goes to a tiny motif he used only once (!!!) earlier in the entire score, a seemingly inocuous hospital recovery scene where Papillon looks out a window. Who could've then known where Goldsmith was headed?? But Goldsmith knew. He now works the tiny idea quite simply in his basses, repeating them quietly while adding percussion, increasingly dissonant trumpet and string figures, building everything in complexity - increasing the density, adding layers --- all the while keeping the simple motif underneath it all --- until the very end, when he crashes on an intense chord, then suddenly decays the intensity and resolves with a single, gentle major chord. A brilliant piece of music!

My five also-rans: IN HARM'S WAY (Goldsmith), COOL HAND LUKE (Lalo Schifrin), CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (Williams), TOMBSTONE (Bruce Broughton) and BENEATH THE 12-MILE REEF (Bernard Herrmann).

Your choices?
--Doug

Tough one for me to answer but I like what you're saying about Papillon.

I'm thinking the ending of Once Upon A Time In The West when Claudia Cardinale brings water to the railroad workers. Far be it from me to point out the complexities of Ennio Morricone's music but that scene brings emotions out of me like nothing else.

Psycho, when the car is pulled up from the swamp and the film closes with Bernard Herrmann during one of his finest moments. I don't know how and why it works but it is definitely effective.

The other three I'll have to really think about.

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"I used to worry about losing my mind. Now that I've lost it I don't worry about it anymore." -Wavy Gravy

E.T., Forever Young, Son of Godzilla.

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"Express, Not Explain." - Akira Ifukube

The way Jerry begins the final cue (not counting the end credits on this or any other entry) in "Capricorn One" softly, then building up with triumph and some restraint, then releasing in heroic beauty and ending on a grand note, is nothing short of compositional MASTERY.

Eat it, Zimmer.



"To Live Forever", the final cue from Dennis McCarthy's score to "Star Trek: Generations" encompasses everything great about his work. Beautiful and appropriate orchestration, excellent use of his TNG theme (heard throughout the series when he scored -- coming from the rejected credits theme he did for the series), weaving in Courage's fanfare in a wonderful way, and going from delicate somberness to grandure -- all in under three minutes. If you haven't heard it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7HIn6d9 ... 1&index=14



And, having seen "The Journey of Natty Gann" for the first time all the way through in probably ... well, since I frst saw it in theaters ... the other day (very good movie, by the way!), I have to say Horner's scoring for the touching reunion at the end is wonderful and spot on.
As a side note, as much as I love Bernstein's works, I just feel he didn't "get it" and that is was a RARE instance where replacing a score was the right call.


If this counts:
The final cue from the season five final of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (Christophe Beck), is simply a tear jerking thing of beauty. So sad and delicate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bP6KI24YWM

The final cue from the series finale of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (Robert Duncan) only makes me scartch my head and wonder why the composer doesn't get more work -- hopefully you'll agree after listining to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqiiP6NJkh4
(the commercial song CD butchered the cue and cut it in half)


I'll have to think some more.

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"Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself"
"Unlike me, many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment and will die here like rotten cabbages."
"Everyone votes for a dictator."
THE PRISONER

Some of the recent examples come to mind as well...




I, ROBOT comes to mind. Unfortunately somebody decide to make the final piece the 3rd cue on the album loosing all development of the theme throughout the whole score, which works so much better as chronological listen.

KNOWING - Roll Over Beethoven - there probably wasn't too many as impressive endings lately as this cue provided.

HELLBOY - I don't think that the Hellboy's secondary theme for the relationship between him and his father appears too often on the Varese album, but in the film it is one of the most common themes being only hinted in the beginning and receiving huge heroic treatment when HB fights some of the monsters in Russia and especially the finale of the End Credits - aka Hellboy Suite.

ID4 - what else to add? probably the only sad fact is that the film version of the End Credits remains unreleased.

THE OMEN 3 - FINAL CONFLICT - first half of the final choral piece is probably my favorite ending in the whole Goldsmith's career.

FANTASTIC FOUR: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER - the SS theme is mostly only hinted throughout the movie (with exception of its lame finale) but it's finally fully developed in the End Credits (again as track 1 on the CD - grrrrrrrrrrrrrh!)

VALKYRIE - They'll Remember You - one of the most beautiful pieces from last year from one of the most underrated movies of that year.




others: Blades of Glory, The Notebook, Apollo 13, Mao's last dancer, Astro Boy...

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The Magnificent Seven
The Swarm
Bite the Bullet
Cross of Iron
Twilight's Last Gleaming


Runners up: Brubaker, Flight of the Phoenix (66), Good Bad & Ugly, Professionals, Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

Danny Elfman's "Batman" and "Edward Scissorhands" were a couple that really stood out for me.

I vividly recall the last time that the music forced me to sit in my seat while the credits rolled.

It was at the end of WAR OF THE WORLDS. I absolutely had to stay for the credits, just to hear the music... which began with the terrifically fierce "Escape from the City". Then, the real magic started.

The "Epilogue" began just like the string elegies from THE FURY and DRACULA, memories of JFK, too. Then began those bleakly harmonized, paired trumpet voluntaries that carried throughout the piece. The theater had emptied; those two trumpets were John Williams talking directly to me, thanking me for staying and listening, and it seemed, for a lifetime of sitting in the theater as the credits rolled and listening to the artists's final word. For me, that elegy truly transformed what I had just watched. Now it seemed like the movie had happened to real people. And of course most importantly, all emotion aside, musically the piece was simply astounding.

Later I thought: We live in a special world, those of us who love the music of movies. We can take incredible pleasure in something as simple as two trumpets playing together at the end of a monster movie...

When I read Doug's post that started the thread, there was really only one piece of music that came to mind, and it's this one.

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Randy Wilson
Dallas, TX

It would be probably too easy to mention Finale/End Title pieces that cap off with a great blast/fanfare/timpani roll. There are many excellent examples. John Williams alone did literally dozens of those and I can't name a single favourite (probably E.T., if I'm forced to choose). Jerry Goldsmith also did many.

However, I'll try to make a different list of great ending pieces, not necessarily the absolute top, but five that stick out in my mind right now:

. 1941 (Williams) -- Just when the orchestra reaches the climax, Williams still has something left to say: snares continue to roll and then the march rhythm continues, but this time it's just two piccolos that take the final word. Absolutely love the final "boom-tzzz", a sort of wink-wink to the people who stayed until the last frame of end title roll

. THE BLUE MAX (Goldsmith) -- A dirge for the fallen hero, but Goldsmith doesn't forget to look again at the joy of flight. Absolutely fitting.

. VERTIGO (Herrmann) -- A classic. The whole 7-minute final sequence is a masterpiece, but I'll concentrate on the last couple of minutes: the Wagnerian love theme returns with empathy when these two characters seem to have found their happiness and Scottie is able to defeat his own deepest fear... but then an eerie electric organ chord underscores a nun coming out of the dark... Madeleine faces her own destiny and then Herrmann unleashes his entire orchestra to a true operatic finish to say: "This man is now completely lost". This is not "just" film music. This is a piece of art.

. THE MISSION (Morricone) -- A solo boy soprano intones a sad "Miserere" to comment on the whole tragedy. But pan pipes have a last, ominous say. Chilling.

. EMPIRE OF THE SUN (Williams) -- I always thought it would need a real gut to walk off such a powerful, intense story with a children chorus singing exsultate justi, hallelujah... but it's so perfect and fitting that none other piece of "dramatic" music would have had the same impact. Williams pulls out all his stops and delivers a joyous, exihilarating, complex choral piece that isn't like anyhting he's ever done before. This is the music I want played at my funeral

The very best End Title/End Credit music I`ve ever heard is/was John Scott`s End Credit music to Jean-Claude Van Damme`s Lionheart. In my opinion there are no way anyone can top that, not in my book. I can even go so far to say that it is the best track/cue I`ve ever heard (any category). I just love it.

Runner up choices are these ones (close but no cigar):
Joel Goldsmith`s Moon 44
Trevor Jones' Cliffhanger
Jerry Goldsmith`s Poltergeist
James Newton Howard`s Falling Down

Although it doesnt have much fanfare or grandness to it, the original Jaws is one of my favorite end credits. It's like a cool breeze of calm after the intense shark carnage. I find it nicely emphasizes the friendship between Brody and Hooper. It's just perfect.

Mission To Mars has a great finale. I don't think the film's ending is anywhere near as good as Morricone's music tries to make it. But that doesn't mean I can't appreciate the orchestral fireworks. Really uplifting stuff.

Horner seems to have the most consistently brilliant endings in my book. Lots of "motif bookends" that open and close the scores like in Krull, Battle Beyond The Stars, Apollo 13. I love The Pelican Brief too. Darby's theme is simply fantastic when encorperated into the end credits.

Herrmann's music as the rosebud sled burns at the end of Citizen Kane sure does take some beating, best heard on the RCA Classic Film Scores recording.

Okay,my #3 is the ending of The Hot Rock. After the heist proves successful, the jewel thieves are decked out with a very cool and happy Quincy Jones whisting/scat/dixieland theme that ends the film.

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"I used to worry about losing my mind. Now that I've lost it I don't worry about it anymore." -Wavy Gravy

Since I've never been able to get through the entire movie without puking( ), I'm not sure if it is actually the end title, but the Overture from Supergirl... those last seven notes... I start crying and giggling at the same time whenever I hear that ending! What thardavenport said...."compositional MASTERY!!"!
The ending of Herrmann's OBSESSION... pure genius! I'll listen to that last 20 seconds over and over, and NEVER tire of it!

WHERE IS A COMPLETE OBSESSION, btw? I hope we don't have to wait until NEXT year to get it!

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I-love-Goldsmith, yes-I-do...
I-love-Ber-nard-Herr-mann-too! EVERYBODY SING!!!