June 18th, 2009 9:23 am
To start things off, if this score interests you and you haven’t already seen Bear’s blog entry detailing his themes and approaches, then you really should check out his blog ASAP. Here’s the link: The themes of Caprica by composer Bear McCreary.
I first became aware of this Bear McCreary creature after season 1 of Battlestar Galactica (BSG) aired. I hadn’t caught the show at that time, but kept coming across glowing reviews of Bear’s music. Learning that he was a protege of famed composer Elmer Bernstein sparked my interest further. I bought the soundtrack and it quickly became my favorite score and CD of the year. I became an instant fan and was hungry for more. More arrived a couple of days ago in the form of Bear’s new score to the BSG spin-off prequel pilot Caprica.
I’ll quote without permission a comment posted on the Film Score Monthly forums that to me hit the nail right on the head: “I felt like I was sitting in a beach house in winter looking out the window at the gray, misty sea with no one on the beach and contemplating life.” Haunting is another word that comes to mind. This is after all, not a happy tale.
The end is nigh, but this is a piece about present grief. A father mourns a daughter; a husband mourns a wife. It’s a story about their loss and how they cope with it. That’s what the music describes: loss and pain. Mixed in with the loss is a desperate hope that life can be returned. Frankenstein has a plan; a plan that will result in his planet getting nuked 58 years later. Good plan, muhaha! Pretty bad plan actually, the worst in fact, but this isn’t a doomsday score, its a very personal and intimate score exploring the themes of loss, denial, grief, and desperation.
Bear created two main themes for his score, a theme for the Graystone family – that name always reminds me of Tarzan – and a theme for the Tauron culture that the other main character, Admiral Adama’s father, belongs to. Bear was kind enough to post those melodies on his blog and I have sheepishly copied them here hoping I won’t get in toruble:
Those two main themes pop up in most tracks and have done nothing but grow on me more and more these past few days. If I didn’t know Bear was a young 30 years old, I would assume this was music written by a grey-haired maestro at the height of his powers with decades of experience. (For some reason I have trouble understanding the fact that young people can write music – yes I know Mozart died in his 30s.) I can’t do what they do, and that leads me to believe they are either very old and wizened ala Dumbledore and Gandalf, or aliens. In all seriousness, I do firmly believe that Bear’s writing exhibits a maturity and sophistication well beyond his years.
For fans of Bear’s BSG music this new and very different music does point forward to Caprica’s future survivors. The pounding percussion of BSG’s action scenes is present in the tracks “Terrorism on the Lev”, “Cybernetic Life-Form Node”, and “Zoe Awakens”. We are after all, witnessing the latest birth of a race of Cylons.
And one prominent BSG theme, the theme for the Adama family, does make a brief appearance receiving a lovely rendition on the strings. That’s one of my favorite themes from BSG and I hope its appearance means it’ll be used in the upcoming first season, also to be scored by Bear McCreary.
5 stars!
Bear giving a sneak peak of the Caprica (Graystone) Theme on piano prior to the DVD release: