The Nativity Story: Original Motion Picture Score

The Nativity Story: Original Motion Picture Score

The Nativity Story: Original Motion Picture Score
List Price: $15.98
Category: Music CD
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CD Details

Brand: Score
Composer: Mychael Danna
Edition: Music CD
Format: Soundtrack
CD Release Date: 2006-12-05
Music Label: New Line Records
Soundtracks:
  1. Veni, Veni Emanuel
  2. Words Of The Prophet
  3. Nazareth
  4. You Shall Be His Wife
  5. The Annunciation
  6. To Elizabeth
  7. The Magi
  8. Why Is It Me?
  9. Corde Natus Ex Parentis
  10. Return Of Mary
  11. I've Broken No Vow
  12. Census
  13. The Journey
  14. Give Me A Sign
  15. The Shepherd
  16. And Thou Bethlehem
  17. Is There A Place For Us?
  18. A Star Shall Come Forth
  19. I Bring You Good Tidings
  20. The Strength I Prayed For
  21. The Shepherd's Gift
  22. In Rosa Vernat Lilium
  23. Silens Nox
  24. Rosa Aeterna Floret

Music reviews of The Nativity Story: Original Motion Picture Score

Music Review: The Nativity Story soundtrack
Rating: 4 Stars

The soundtrack is absolutely beautiful. Mychael Danna wove old advent carols with music played on ancient instruments. The music portraying the ascent into Jerusalem is so moving. The movie is a must see next christmas season. The film takes the nativity story and brings it the human perspective that enhanced my spiritual experience.

Description of The Nativity Story: Original Motion Picture Score

This score follows not only Mary and Joseph's journey to Bethlehem, but the centuries of musical reverberations thereafter. It plants its humble seeds in the Middle East where the gentle tones of Persian and Turkish ney flutes articulate melodic figures, and strident Roman horns and drums bind Herod the Great's soldiers to the military terminology of the age. The score then blossoms from these seeds, extending its tendrils across centuries of European traditions. Pre-Baroque instruments such as viola da gamba, vielle, harp, and recorders guide the score westward with the elemental sounds of strings and winds. The second half of the soundtrack covers Mary's isolation and her relationship with Joseph by weaving throughout the choral writing and knitting the work together into a dramatic, reverent whole.
In the beginning, soundtracks to Biblical movies adhered to a Hollywood template with more fidelity than most people attend to the Ten Commandments. The first commandment of Biblical film scores was: "Thou shalt render orchestral grandeur unto the epic as did Elmer Bernstein on The Ten Commandments and Miklos Rozsa on Ben-Hur." Peter Gabriel's score to The Last Temptation of Christ, released as Passion, changed all that like the Second Coming. His mix of world-music elements, wailing singers, and otherworldly electronics prevailed, influencing countless film scores and emulated to almost plagiaristic perfection by John Debney's soundtrack for The Passion of the Christ. Mychael Danna departs from that path on The Nativity Story, the 2006 film interpretation of Mary's journey. His sound is more medieval and classical than Middle Eastern. Rather than blowing Turkish duduks ? la Gabriel and Debney, he uses recorders and wood flutes. He likes building from simple folk themes to extravagant expanses where a lone flute segues into a sweeping string arrangement that morphs into slowly cascading voices. He taps into Gregorian chant and plainsong, and even when he uses Persian vocalist Azam Ali (from Vas and Niyaz), he has her singing an Abbess Hildegard-style hymn called "Nazareth." But this is a Hollywood Biblical epic and Danna bends to another commandment of the genre: "Thou shalt wring tears and awe-inspired wonder." You don't need to see the film to know that the heavens must be opening--as they only do in Hollywood--on "And Thou Bethlehem." Danna's The Nativity Story isn't a sea change like Gabriel, but it is a new tributary. --John Diliberto

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