Search - Howard Shore :: Looking For Richard (1996 Film)

The music for a docudrama about actors portraying Richard III could be slavishly historical or irreverently high-camp. Here, Howard Shore joins the London Philharmonic Orchestra in taking the former route. There is a mixture of authentic Elizabethan strains with a general angst-ridden mood to capture the tension involved in Shakespeare's tragedy about the struggle for power and the death of a tyrant. Among the noteworthy features: The London Voices supplying a mixed chorus with phrases translated from the play and the film into Latin. There is also a cathedral organ recorded under the high vaulted ceilings of England's All Saints Church. This "medieval sound," while not action-specific, depends too much on the movie's visual reinforcement to be anything other than academic mush for initiated musicologists. --Joseph Lanza