Special Notes:

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With Creation, Christopher Young once again reasserts himself as the reigning king of melancholic music, but he also crafted one of his best works in years. His return to grisly horror in Drag Me to Hell was fun, but it’s been a while since he’s scored a small character piece where he invests a bit of classical chamber and his own contemporary sensibilities.

The primary melody governs a slow lament featuring solo clarinet (“Unity in Form”) and strings, and a there are two waltzes: a delicate version for piano and chamber strings (“The Ghost Pavane”), and a brief grand version in “Fuegian Children” before the cue flips to a rustic countryside jig with a lilting closing statement on fiddle. “Cunning Gunning” is carried by a fuller main title version with oboe and sax, and Young’s patented use of dispirited strings caught in a cyclical motif.

Creation also contains some lovely shifts in musical colours, such as the fine transitions where thematic material flows from woodwinds to strings, and is reiterated with heavy waves of resonating strings in “Pleasure Perfect.” A more chilling use of colour is “Partly Part,” where Young echoes a bit of Ennio Morricone’s penchant for waves of arching tones that repeat in and out of sync to create textures and dramatic intensity as the density of tones and sustained vibrato slowly build towards a climax.

Released by Lakeshore in the U.S. and Silva Screen in Britain, the album features some lengthy cues that ebb and flow, but never shock the listener with any heavy dissonance or sudden bursts into contemporary theme renditions. Young’s greatest gift is his knack for writing piercing, simple themes that capture the completeness of personal desolation, anguish, and inner struggle, and while his best thematic material is featured in works like Hider in the House (1989), Copycat (1995) and Jennifer 8 (1992), it’s rare when the mood of a film allows him to build a score within the limits of a melancholy theme, instead of a few theme statements within a broader action or suspense canvas.

© 2010 Mark R. Hasan