The Big Country

A great sound track

I watched this movie with my father when I was a little girl but remembered nothing of it. I bought both the sound track and movie for him for Christmas and watched the movie with him. It is truly a great. December 28, 2007

Great film score revisited

Jerome Moross'score for "The Big Country" is one of the great film scores ever written, hard to find, but not at Amazon.com! The Bremer performance rivals Moross' own performance of the score, and is in great sound!! Buy it!! May 13, 2007

Mixed emotions

The Big Country is one of the best western films ever made, and the score is so perfect you can almost feel the horse galloping under you. This CD includes music from the film that was not on the original LP, which was a great addition. Unfortunately, the conductor took some liberties with some of the arrangements, adding measures that are not in the film, especially with the conclusion. There is also a trumpeter in the opening piece that sticks out like a sore thumb. March 9, 2007

A model of the genre

This is music full of an epic inspiration, you will feel disoriented just listening to it ! Jerome Moross (1913-1983) transcribed simple themes of the traditional music from the South of the USA, just as Max Steiner had done before for the score for Gone with the wind. The orchestrations are absolutely outstanding and this is precisely the composer's main credit : having been able to adapt for the cinema the cultural patrimony of an area by valorising it through a rich and creative symphonic orchestration. To begin a piece with the violin semiquavers, what a brilliant idea ! Good arrangers have a perfect knowledge of the possibility each instrument has to offer and they know how to get the best out of them. Those violins with their rigorous and vigorous rhythmic announce the leitmotiv theme for the main actor of the film : the big country. As for the wind instruments, they have a lot to do to keep the tempo and prove themselves up to the enthusiastic strings, the accompaniment by the wind instruments sounds like an echo, demonstrating the very good grasp Jerome Moross has of the art : he created a powerful rhythm without using any percussion, except for the inevitable timpani.
Some people in the industry despise the work done by arrangers - provided they even acknowledge their existence, of course... Can you believe that ? Jerome Moross worked a lot for the film industry, not mostly as a melodist or a composer, but rather as an "obscure" arranger, working behind the scenes so to speak, which is much to his credit. His knowledge of American folk music, his passion for westerns, his collaborations with - just to name a few if you please - Aaron Copland, Georges Gershwin, Franz Waxman, David Raskin and his great friend Bernard Hermann (responsible for the scores of Hitchcock's films) put him in the top few musicians who brought a lot to the Majors, especially during the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1944, he composed a symphony for piano and strings. And this is a fact : the music he composed for The Big Country will remain a model of the genre. In fact, the film itself is a remarkable piece of work. The London Philharmonic Orchestra made new recordings of this music from original scores, conducted by Tony Bremner (thank you, you English gentlemen, for honouring so brilliantly film symphonic music !).
February 13, 2007

An Excellent Re-Recording

This CD is an affectionate re-recording of the score for The Big Country (released in 1958) by Jerome Moross. Mr. Moross was a classical composer who also composed film scores, and this score (Oscar nominated but lost to The Old Man and the Sea) is among the best written for any film. Along with the score to the Magnificent Seven, The Big Country has a Western quality to its music that is unmistakable.

The booklet describes in detail each track and where it fits into the film and what action is taking place; it also provides an excellent discussion of the music completed with examples and is illustrated with stills from the film and cast photographs. The extensive notes on the music are welcome as Mr. Moross made use of several motifs (and extensive changes that included the removal of a wordless chorus singing over the main titles) in the score and which are identified by their character or action they describe. While it is probably better to listen to the music after viewing the film the detail descriptions of the action in the booklet will give a good idea to the listener of what the music is describing.

Having just seen the film again and listened to this CD I can say that it remarkably captures the feeling of the original recording of the music. At 166 minutes, The Big Country was considered to be too long but I would be hard pressed to find a scene that was not vital to the telling of the story of the Terrill's and Hannassey's, and Jim McKay - the stranger who changes all of their lives. I first heard the music for The Big Country in a short excerpt from the score. With the CD we have the opportunity to hear all of the music in all of its glory.
February 7, 2007

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