Ancient Marvels: Cities of the Underworld
What a cool name and a great concept! I, for one loved the history and story telling aspects of this production. However, as a professional composer, the music struck me immediately as being low quality and confused.
A little further investigation reveals that there wasn't anyone credited for the music of this production. Naturally, I would assume that the show was powered by library music. If that was indeed the case, then I wonder why better quality library music wasn't selected?
The dungeons and underworld are supposed to be creepy and atmospheric. Instead, we were served up an anachronistic smattering of plasticized late 90's flavors of drum and bass peppered with synthetic orchestral gladiator tracks. Stylistically, none of this music was appropriate and it certainly won't age any better for future airings of this program.
There were cultural musical missteps as well. For instance, a scene from Vlad's the Impaler's episode featured a Chinese temple flute tune cued just outside of his castle. Were we supposed to accept this music as being Romanian? Even if someone doesn't understand the subtle differences between Romania and China, the tune did absolutely nothing to push the scene forward.
Bottom line; this was an international and heavily promoted broadcast that should have afforded better production value in music. This is especially the case as the exotic environments that this production featured would have been far better placed into an emotional context through music. Somehow, drum and bass just didn't match up well with "The Empire of the Dead" and six million skeletons. History Channel, I plead with you to get a better grip on the quality of your music. As music is a literal language, your ratings will improve with better musical communications to your audience. Or to put it simply, your shows will become more effective.
-Jeremy Soule Composer 2003 BAFTA winner
What a cool name and a great concept! I, for one loved the history and story telling aspects of this production. However, as a professional composer, the music struck me immediately as being low quality and confused.
A little further investigation reveals that there wasn't anyone credited for the music of this production. Naturally, I would assume that the show was powered by library music. If that was indeed the case, then I wonder why better quality library music wasn't selected?
The dungeons and underworld are supposed to be creepy and atmospheric. Instead, we were served up an anachronistic smattering of plasticized late 90's flavors of drum and bass peppered with synthetic orchestral gladiator tracks. Stylistically, none of this music was appropriate and it certainly won't age any better for future airings of this program.
There were cultural musical missteps as well. For instance, a scene from Vlad's the Impaler's episode featured a Chinese temple flute tune cued just outside of his castle. Were we supposed to accept this music as being Romanian? Even if someone doesn't understand the subtle differences between Romania and China, the tune did absolutely nothing to push the scene forward.
Bottom line; this was an international and heavily promoted broadcast that should have afforded better production value in music. This is especially the case as the exotic environments that this production featured would have been far better placed into an emotional context through music. Somehow, drum and bass just didn't match up well with "The Empire of the Dead" and six million skeletons. History Channel, I plead with you to get a better grip on the quality of your music. As music is a literal language, your ratings will improve with better musical communications to your audience. Or to put it simply, your shows will become more effective.
-Jeremy Soule Composer 2003 BAFTA winner