Your favorite movie soundtracks from period dramas!

[BlueBowman]

A recent thread discussion got me thinking about my favorite movie soundtracks from period dramas...which made me realize that most of my favorites are from the 1990s.

The Braveheart soundtrack is gorgeous. I can hear that simple main melody and instantly be transported to the highlands of Scotland during the rebellion. (Historical accuracy does not count in this thread. Yes, I know the movie is abysmally inaccurate.)

The Last of the Mohicans. That violin...oh, that violin. Gets me every time I hear it. I love that entire soundtrack. That movie was shot in the Blueridge Mountains near where I live. I had a geography professor in college who was in the movie. He also served as consultant. Pretty cool hearing his insights. Double D Lewis is also in it. Enough said.

The Lord of the Rings is pretty great. There's a wonderful breakdown on YouTube of how they blended to story with the music seamlessly (I can't find it, or I would post a link for everyone). Gladiator is another really nice score.

The English Patient (1996) is one that always got me. When he walks out of the cave with her lifeless body. Just wonderful music.

Legends of the Fall. If you can make it through without dry eyes you have a stone heart!  ;)

I know I'm simply forgetting so many. Movies or TV, what are some of your favorite scores? I'd love to discover something new. Extra points for period dramas. I'm thinking of scores that really elevate the movie or show to another level.

[Silence Dogood]

I like all the ones you mentioned.  I'd really love to see that video on the LOTR music and how it all happened, if you can ever locate it.  It's probably somewhere in the extended DVD set collection I have anyway, but I've never managed to wade through all the hours of footage.  What I did see what pretty fascinating though. 

A few of my faves that I'll mention now (might add more later if the thread takes off):

Patrick Doyle's soundtrack to Sense and Sesibility from 1995.  Just brilliant!

Samuel Sim's soundtrack to Emma from 2009.  So good. 

The 2015 Disney Cinderalla soundtrack is wonderful as well. 

I routinely work with these albums playing. 

[BlueBowman]

Patrick Doyle's soundtrack to Sense and Sesibility from 1995.  Just brilliant!

Ah, that's a good one I had forgotten about! Nice pull. Patrick Doyle is a titan in composition.

I'll have to check out Emma and Cinderella.

Silence, I believe it was this video, but I'm not certain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLj6zkmwsYU

I don't have time to watch the entire thing at the moment, but what I remember is the music doesn't only build and build (as you would expect), but it is first a quiet and simple melody (a seed) in the beginning of the movie, while Frodo is still in the shire. That melody then takes root and changes/varies ultimately culminating when the fellowship is formed. And the pay off is even better because that earlier variation on the theme is still with us, I thought it was so cool the way the score was written. Written with real purpose. Not unusual from a great score composer, but interesting to see things broken down. Again, I hope that's the right video above.

[William2]

I love film score music. Many of the great 20th century serious composers wrote for film. And I have a list of favorite composers. A film addict, I'm particularly drawn to composers of the film classic era. And I also like more recent composers like John Barry. For guitarist wanting to look at some arrangements for guitar, I recommend a book by Laurindo Almeida called Contemporary Moods for Classical Guitar. Here is a score by Richard Addinsell called the Warsaw Concerto from a 1941 film called Dangerous Moonlight performed by my favorite pianist Valentina Lisitsa and the BBC orchestra live at the Proms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob_mJbKAfWA

[Silence Dogood]

And I also like more recent composers like John Barry.

Out of Africa's soundtrack is absolutely brilliant. 

[Silence Dogood]

A recent thread discussion got me thinking about my favorite movie soundtracks from period dramas...which made me realize that most of my favorites are from the 1990s.

The Braveheart soundtrack is gorgeous. I can hear that simple main melody and instantly be transported to the highlands of Scotland during the rebellion. (Historical accuracy does not count in this thread. Yes, I know the movie is abysmally inaccurate.)

The Last of the Mohicans. That violin...oh, that violin. Gets me every time I hear it. I love that entire soundtrack. That movie was shot in the Blueridge Mountains near where I live. I had a geography professor in college who was in the movie. He also served as consultant. Pretty cool hearing his insights. Double D Lewis is also in it. Enough said.

The Lord of the Rings is pretty great. There's a wonderful breakdown on YouTube of how they blended to story with the music seamlessly (I can't find it, or I would post a link for everyone). Gladiator is another really nice score.

The English Patient (1996) is one that always got me. When he walks out of the cave with her lifeless body. Just wonderful music.

Legends of the Fall. If you can make it through without dry eyes you have a stone heart!  ;)

I know I'm simply forgetting so many. Movies or TV, what are some of your favorite scores? I'd love to discover something new. Extra points for period dramas. I'm thinking of scores that really elevate the movie or show to another level.

Since the discussion of "castle music" seems to have spurred on the idea of this thread, here is something you might enjoy from CS Lewis's 1945 novel THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH.  I was thinking of this yesterday after pondering the thread.  Lewis shows himself to be a wordsmith of the first order here:

"And Dimble, who had been sitting with his face drawn, and rather white, between the white faces of the two women, and his eyes on the table, raised his head, and great syllables of words that sounded like castles came out of his mouth. Jane felt her heart leap and quiver at them. Everything else in the room seemed to have been intensely quiet; even the bird, and the bear, and the cat, were still, staring at the speaker. The voice did not sound like Dimble's own: it was as if the words spoke themselves through him from some strong place at a distance—or as if they were not words at all but present operations of God, the planets, and the Pendragon. For this was the language spoken before the Fall and beyond the Moon and the meanings were not given to the syllables by chance, or skill, or long tradition, but truly inherent in them as the shape of the great Sun is inherent in the little waterdrop. This was Language herself, as she first sprang at Maleldil's bidding out of the molten quicksilver of the first star called Mercury on Earth, but Viritrilbia in Deep Heaven."

[teh]

The soundtrack for "The Outlaw Josey Wales" written by Jerry Fielding was set following the Civil War and directed by and starring Clint Eastwood as well as John Vernon, Sam Bottoms, Chief Dan George and Bill McKinney is right up there. The music and the movie are both timeless.

While many are technically not period pieces, any soundtrack written by John Williams has to be included: Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler's List, Jurassic Park, Home Alone and ET to name just a few. Don't forget to include the soundtracks from To Kill a Mockingbird, The Natural, Forrest Gump, October Sky and music selected by John Hughes for his movies.

[B0WIE]

I'm not sure if Westerns are period dramas but Ennio Morricone is my favorite composer and it's not even close. Though he's most well known for the Clint Eastwood trilogy, I feel one of his best works is the Once Upon a Time in the West soundtrack. It manages to keep your interest throughout an incredibly long and slow moving film, never allowing the viewer to feel impatient. That whole film is a form of art that cannot be made anymore as studios just won't take the risk.