The Fountain: Music from the Motion Picture | ||||
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Soundtrack album by | ||||
Released | November 27, 2006 | |||
Recorded |
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Genre | Contemporary classical, Instrumental rock | |||
Length | 46:21 | |||
Language | Instrumental | |||
Label | Nonesuch | |||
Producer | Tony Doogan, Geoff Foster, and Scott Fraser | |||
Clint Mansell chronology | ||||
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Kronos Quartet chronology | ||||
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Mogwai chronology | ||||
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The Fountain:Music from the Motion Picture is the soundtrack album to the 2006 film The Fountain directed by Darren Aronofsky. Released on November 27,2006,through Nonesuch Records,the album is a collaboration between contemporary classical composer and frequent Aronofsky collaborator Clint Mansell,classical string quartet the Kronos Quartet,and post-rock band Mogwai. The score received mixed reviews from critics and was nominated for several awards.
Clint Mansell—the composer for Aronofsky's previous films Pi and Requiem for a Dream —reprised his role for The Fountain. The San Francisco-based string quartet Kronos Quartet—who previously performed for the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack—and Scottish post-rock band Mogwai also contributed to the film score. [1] Darren Aronofsky hoped that David Bowie—whose song "Space Oddity" helped influence the film's space traveler storyline—would record a song when the musical artist worked briefly with composer Clint Mansell during production. [2] Aronofsky planned for Bowie to rework pieces of the score and to vocalize them,but the plan was unsuccessful. [3] After the score was completed,Nonesuch Records,the home of The Fountain musical contributor Kronos Quartet,released the soundtrack on November 21,2006. [4]
Mansell researched possible scores to compose one tying together the three storylines. He sought to have an organic feeling to the score and explored implementing orchestral and electronic elements that would have "a real human element to them that breathes". [5] Contrary to most films' scores composed in post-production,Mansell's score was composed concurrently with the film's production;he created a mood that flourished as the film progressed. The composer described the parallel process,"It's instinct and listening to what the film is telling you it needs". [6]
Mansell drew from five to six years of writing material for The Fountain. The composer planned for the score to be pure percussion when the film was first meant to be epic in scale. Mansell,lacking classical training,collaborated with arranger Justin Skomarovsky in creating the score. They deconstructed the composer's initial pieces for The Fountain and re-played them in a key so the lead melodies could harmonically play with every progression. The song "Together We Will Live Forever" was an electronic piece designed by Mansell to be the protagonist's memory theme. Antony Hegarty,lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons,was commissioned to create a vocal piece over Skomarovsky's piano arrangement of "Together We Will Live Forever" for the end credits,but the director decided that the vocals would not be appropriate to end the film. The song was ultimately performed by pianist Randy Kerber. [3]
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
The Guardian | Mixed [7] |
Pitchfork Media | 5.9/10 [8] |
Sputnik Music | 4.5/5 [9] |
The content and research agency Ramp Industry launched The Fountain Remixed,an official website driven by user-generated content. Users could download freely provided audio parts from The Fountain's film score,remix the music,and upload the work onto the website to be evaluated by other users. [10]
Mansell won the Chicago Film Critics Association's 2006 award for Best Original Score, [11] and he also won the World Soundtrack Award for Best Original Soundtrack of the Year and Public Choice Award. He was also nominated for the 2006 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for The Fountain,but lost to Alexandre Desplat for The Painted Veil . [12] Mansell also lost a nomination for the 2006 BFCA Critics' Choice Award for Best Composer to Philip Glass for The Illusionist . [13]
All music composed by Clint Mansell.
Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer who is known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures,slow harmonic rhythm,and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay,"Music as a Gradual Process",by stating,"I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." For example,his early works experiment with phase shifting,in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others,causing it to go "out of phase." This creates new musical patterns in a perceptible flow.
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Clinton Darryl Mansell is an English musician,singer,and composer. He served as the lead vocalist of alt-rock band Pop Will Eat Itself. After the band's dissolution,Mansell moved to the United States and embarked on a career as a film score composer.
The Kronos Quartet is an American string quartet based in San Francisco. It has been in existence with a rotating membership of musicians for 50 years. The quartet covers a very broad range of musical genres,including contemporary classical music. More than 1,000 works have been written for it.
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The Fountain is a 2006 American epic romantic drama film written and directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. Blending elements of fantasy,history,spirituality and science fiction,the film consists of three storylines involving immortality and the resulting loves lost,and one man's pursuit of avoiding this fate in this life or beyond it. Jackman and Weisz play sets of characters bonded by love across time and space:a conquistador and his ill-fated queen,a modern-day scientist and his cancer-stricken wife,and a traveler immersed in a universal journey alongside aspects of his lost love. The storylines—interwoven with use of match cuts and recurring visual motifs—reflect the themes and interplay of love and mortality.
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Dracula is a soundtrack performed by the Kronos Quartet,with music composed by Philip Glass,for the 1931 film Dracula.
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