MOVIE MUSIC UK

Original Review by Jonathan Broxton

There’s a concept in film music, which doesn’t have a name, in which a film’s score is so much better and more technically accomplished than the film it accompanies, that you wonder how the two things go together at all. It has happened so many times over the years; some composers spend essentially their entire careers stuck in this world, writing astonishingly brilliant music for a series of less-than-stellar films, such that the composer in question never receives the accolades or acknowledgement that their musical talent actually merits. The Piper, by Christopher Young, is one of these. The film is a somewhat gruesome horror film loosely based on the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which was subsequently turned into a folklore story by the Brothers Grimm. This film is directed by Icelandic filmmaker Erlingur Óttar Thoroddsen and stars Charlotte Hope, Oliver Savell, and the late Julian Sands in what would turn out to be his last film prior to his tragic death on Mount Baldy in California a year ago. The plot on IMDB reads: ‘when a composer is tasked with finishing her late mentor’s concerto, she soon discovers that playing the music summons deadly consequences, leading her to uncover the disturbing origins of the melody and an evil that has awakened.’

The film was released in cinemas in Spain and other parts of Europe in November 2023, but will not be released in most English-speaking territories until later in 2024. While it has been praised by some horror aficionados for its stylish visuals and opulent atmosphere, mainstream critics were not kind to it, and it seems likely to be dropped into the bottomless pit of streaming services and videos-on-demand. But the music… the music is something else entirely.

Christopher Young has spent the last 40 years or more writing outstanding music for a wide array of different films in different genres, but whether he likes it or not he will likely always be associated most with horror. From his very first gig, The Dorm That Dripped Blood in 1981, through such masterpieces as Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, The Fly II, Species, Urban Legend, Bless the Child, Drag Me to Hell, Priest, and more, time and again Young has shown that his mastery of this genre is unparalleled. He writes music that is dense and complicated and sometimes viciously aggressive, but he tempers that with music of astonishing creativity and beauty, allowing the emotional depth of these sometimes grisly films to shine through. His music makes these films better in the moment, and then when you listen to them separately you can hear so much content, so much compositional excellence, so many interesting ideas and textures, that you wonder how the film in question could have inspired him to write music this good. The Piper is a score like that.

The score was recorded in Sofia with the Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra, and includes not only the full orchestra but also a large adult choir and a children’s choir, as well as some sound design elements by Daniel Wehr. The most interesting thing about all this is that, essentially, Young scored it twice. Firstly, before shooting even began, Young wrote a 30-minute three-movement Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, to represent the piece of ‘cursed’ classical music that appears in the film, and which summons the ‘piper’ demon when the young composer Mel performs it. Then, during the actual scoring process, Young took elements from the concerto and used them as the basis of the score itself. The resulting score is just brilliant, approaching masterpiece levels of excellence.

To address the Concerto first; the lead instrument is the flute because, as we know, the pied piper in the classic fairy tales uses pipes, or flutes, to bewitch and enchant children into following him. However, while the flute is obviously the focus, Young consistently brings in the entire orchestra and the various choirs, giving it a real sense of scale. The first movement introduces the score’s main theme, a sing-songy, dance-like, folk tune melody that comes across as a lullaby or some sort of children’s nursery rhyme, and which is intended to represent the nature of the piper demon and the way he uses music to ensnare the unwary. It starts off being carried by a light flute underpinned with ominous brass chords, but before long the music starts to take on a creepier dimension through the use of skittery whispers, choral vocalizations, and twisty orchestral textures that rise through dark crescendos. There are echoes of lots of previous Young horror classics here – Hellraiser, Priest, Drag Me to Hell – and it’s all deliciously chilling.

Several times during the first movement Young takes the flute in fascinating directions. As well as being light and enticing, he also has the performers blow with a low, breathy, airy timbre which gives the music a different tonal quality that is at times almost jazzy. Elsewhere, the flute performances are jittery and nervous, trilling with a spiky intensity. And then there are the moments of out-and-out horror where the orchestra collapses into musical chaos, angry dissonance that feels like an aural assault.

The second movement begins with a wonderfully rich, brooding tonal sequence of Gothic orchestral romance backed by an angelic children’s choir, which then segues into a fascinating flute sequence featuring a series of extended performance techniques, including moments where the performer appears to be spitting, humming, and buzzing into their mouthpiece. The recurring main Piper theme comes and goes throughout the movement, and it often rises to superb, tragic crescendos full of gorgeous, if clearly ominous, tonal beauty. From the 5:00 mark onward the score switches focus and becomes a strident action piece full of menacing forward motion, huge brass clusters and swirling string figures backed by more of the choral lullaby. It ends with a massive surge of orchestral power that is just superb.

The third movement opens with a cacophony of colliding musical styles, with an aggressively dissonant orchestra featuring shrieking strings and resounding horns, pounding high piano notes, a chanting choir, and a flute going bonkers through another set of fascinating extended techniques. The brass-heavy action that emerges from this initial onslaught is terrific, satisfyingly strident, and then the middle section of the movement embraces extensive dissonance verging on musique concrète, with special focus on whispered voices in conjunction with the flutes. As the movement progresses the melodic core of the piece shifts constantly, pitting vastly different rhythmic ideas against each other, until just after the 7:00 mark it all comes together with a massive statement of the main Piper theme for the full orchestra and choir.

The final three minutes of the third movement build up a tremendous head of steam, with the children’s choir singing over an increasingly vivid set of rhythmic ideas that move from piano to strings to flutes, increasing in speed and intensity, and which sometimes have a circus/calliope-like feel that adds to the twisted nature of it all. The piece’s final seconds collapse into musical madness and chaos, and end with the children all shrieking in terror, while the Piper himself appears to audibly vomit all over them.

One thing I wanted to mention is how the chorus is really interesting, because it actually sings in English as opposed to Latin, as one might usually expect in a score like this. The lyrics are by the Oscar-nominated veteran songwriter Dennis Spiegel, and they take the form of a sort of enticing lullaby. Often the lyrics are unintelligible, but sometimes they are clearly audible in fragments, and it becomes apparent that the lullaby is being sung from the point of view of a group of abducted children, who are singing about the exciting adventure they are going on with the Piper, but are actually unknowingly marching together to their doom. Trust the piper, follow the piper, hail the piper, follow his lead.

The 20-minute score suite is the music as heard in film context, and it is essentially made up of all the elements heard in the concerto, re-arranged and reorganized to fit the specifics of each scene. A lot of it is, as one would expect, a little more subdued, and often engages in more familiar horror tropes with low-key drones, brooding textures, and shrill dissonances, punctuated less frequently by the thematic content, but with some more electronic sound design ideas that sometimes sound like water droplets, but also sometimes sound like someone choking on something wet and solid. The suite still impresses, though; within the first few moments the main Piper theme emerges, performed on slow breathy flutes, backed by creepy children’s choirs either singing the countermelody, vocalizing single notes, or whispering in your ears. A bold, dramatic action sequence for heavy brass and slashing strings emerges around the 7:00 mark, and then around the 10:00 mark Young layers dreamy versions of his main theme against an increasingly disturbing series of electronic and vocal effects that are thoroughly chilling.

The final sequence of the score begins with a hilariously macabre chanted vocal – “empty vessels, useless puppets, meeting their own doom… empty vessels, mindless corpses, sleep to their own doom… ” – before re-introducing the main Piper melody for the score’s unexpectedly pretty conclusion which features the solo flute backed by warmly inviting orchestral textures and soaring choral vocals, all building up to a satisfyingly tonal finale.

The Piper is a tremendous score. It is steeped in all the things that have ever made Christopher Young’s music great; aficionados of his work will recognize dozens of the little touches, certain chord progressions, and specific instrumental combinations, that have typified his work for decades, and which as such make the score pleasingly familiar. But what makes The Piper so satisfying for me personally is its endless creativity. The things that Young does with his flutes are fascinating, and the way that he deconstructs and then re-establishes the main Piper melody over and over again in so many different ways is brilliant. The chanted children’s vocals, with Spiegel’s lyrics, speak directly to the beckoning, enticing nature of the classic Pied Piper of Hamelin trope from literature, leading unwary children to their horrible fate. And then in terms of the enormous array of different orchestral textures, how much mileage Young gets from his ensemble, it’s seriously impressive.

It’s also another reminder of how, over the past decade or so, Christopher Young has been seriously under-valued and under-used by the Hollywood film music world. The last film of his to enjoy any kind of significant box office attention was the remake of Pet Sematary in 2019, and before that you have look back to 2011 and 2012 with scores like Sinister and Priest. Some of the scores he has written during that intervening period are outstanding – I’m looking at you, Monkey King – but the fact that he isn’t continually being hired to score mainstream American studio tentpoles, irrespective of genre, makes no sense to me. He’s only 65, still in his prime for a film composer, and the music he is writing shows clearly that he is at the top of his game.

At the time of writing the score for The Piper has not been released commercially; this is a promo that Young and his team put together for awards consideration purposes. However, sources tell me that one of the specialty soundtrack labels, most likely Intrada, intends to release a proper album of the score to coincide with the film’s American release later in 2024. If and when it does come out, anyone who has ever appreciated Christopher Young’s prime horror scores should pick it up immediately. I cannot stress enough how great this score is; while nothing will ever top Hellraiser II, it still joins the list of the greatest horror works of his entire career, and it’s easily one of the best scores of 2023.

Track Listing:

• Suite from The Piper (21:02)
• The Piper – Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Movement 1 (11:16)
• The Piper – Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Movement 2 (7:35)
• The Piper – Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Movement 3 (11:22)

Running Time: 51 minutes 16 seconds

Promo (2023)

Music composed by Christopher Young. Conducted by Deyan Pavlov. Performed by The Bulgarian Symphony Orchestra. Orchestrations by Kostas Christides, Michael Eastwood, Dimitris Maranakis and Bernhard Eder. Additional music and sound design by Daniel Wehr. Recorded and mixed by Vladislav Boyadjiev and Maxime Lefevre. Edited by XXXX. Album produced by Christopher Young.

Thanks to Joel A. Griswell of https://www.thesoundtrackgallery.com for the superb cover art design.