31 Days 31 Scores
October 17th
“God is not here today, priest!”
Welcome Back to “31 Days 31 Scores. Today I’m looking at the 2004 score to Exorcist: The Beginning by Trevor Rabin. The Exorcist has had a long history of interesting music with Tubular Bells from the first film to the Ennio Morricone score for “The Heretic”.
Rabin definitely takes a more traditional approach with his score. Low dissonant sounds take us in to the score with a slight hint of choir. A single female voice comes in with slight percussion and low brass. Echoing percussion comes in rounding out with a tribal like sound with a swelling choir. The score creates a creepy vibe and continues with dissonant flute and chant with strings and percussion. Ethnic chant dominates the second half of the cue “Travel To The Turkana Village”.
This ethnic/tribal sound weaves its way through the score along with low brass. It creates a great creepy mood. Rabin does craft a great vibe and while the score does drone a bit in places the atmosphere is broken by a subtle singing of a small girl in the cue “Upside down Cross – FB #2”. “Merrin Visits Bession” is an effective cue with great brass and strings it adds a weight to the score as if the world is at stake. “Child Birth” is an effective cue that runs the gamut from quiet piano to tribal chant to dissonant chant to low brass. Although the cue is quite long, at just over 9 minutes, it is quite effective. Rabin makes effective use of the African setting with tribal rhythms but also uses effective orchestration to aid that. The score is also peppered with strange whispering that really adds to the atmosphere. Rabin replaced Christopher Young’s score and he was probably not given a lot of time but the results are good considering. The score on the whole is quite dark and is what I would have expected from an Exorcist score. This score has never released been officially released which is a shame. It is definitely worth a listen.
I was fortunate to interview Trevor Rabin around the time this movie came out and was fortunate enough to obtain a score.
Join me tomorrow for more 31 Days 31 scores where “Evil Loves To Party.”