The Patriot: Original Motion Picture Score (2000 Film)

Wow! After getting started into soundtracks by liking John Williams' works, I've really grown fond of James Horner's scores, and have scads of those. I still have liked Williams, but have not payed as much much attention to his scores of late. Angela's Ashes, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List; all nice, pleasant (if not sad) scores, but not the kind that really grabbed me (Star Wars, Jurassic Park Main Themes).

But now along comes The Patriot, and all I have to say is THAT Williams is back here! I was looking forward to the movie, and was quite glad when I found Williams was going to do the soundtrack. I knew it would be something good, but I guess I like it even more than I thought I would. It's very powerful, moving, and patriotic, and takes the listener on quite a ride.

The music is not done with a lot of drums and fife, as one might expect for a movie about early Americana, but instead paints a very grandoise, and majestic picture of the time period, and...Read more

John Willaims has written so many film scores that it is hard to keep up with his output, but he almost never fails to produce good to great scores for the films. He scores big with his film score for "The Patriot," a giant, sprawling epic that also has a lighter touch of a family caught up in the Revolutionary War in 1776. Willaims manages to avoid most cliched songs of the period, with just a few strains of "Yankee Doodle" and some drum and fife music but this is rare in a score of great emotional feeling, for the families that had to go to war and how war takes its toll on them. Ironically, Williams performs the miraculous by composing music that raises the spirit but shows little bombast, when it would be easy to go for giant effects. Here, on this CD, he writes beautiful music for pastoral South Carolina, the main setting of the film, and then the war themes come marching in, but always he returns to the human story, the emotional rise and fall...Read more

John Williams has fashioned an evocative and monumental score for director Roland Emmerich's epic on the American Revolution . It should come as no surprise, bearing in mind how Williams truly shines when he writes in his coplandesque, noble americana style (Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Born on the Fourth of July and JFK). The Patriot soundtrack opens with a splendid, soothing melody for fiddle and woodwinds. This is the family theme: hope, sadness and longing for the wilderness all rolled into a single melody. Its rich, folklike intervals are a treat. The melody quickly swells, taken by the whole orchestra. Epic stuff. Rich, soothing writing for strings. Just what you would expect from the maestro. It then leads to a secondary theme ("The Colonial Cause"): a propulsive grand anthem for the American revolution. Brass, a catchy dance for fifes and drums included within the orchestra. Shades of Saving Private Ryan's "Hymn for the Fallen". But although the...Read more