Tuesday, April 18, 2017

Tone Poem Tuesday

Some years ago I wrote about the Oliver Stone movie Nixon, which is a sort of companion piece to his JFK. As in the earlier film, John Williams provided the score, and it's an underrated standout in his long parade of amazing works. The opening track on the CD is, in my mind, a brilliant film music tone poem, called "The 1960s: The Turbulent Years". There are brief moments of lyrical optimism, but they are shot through with moments of militaristic menace.


Williams's score for the film highlights Stone's mood of inward-looking paranoia that dominates the film, and it accentuates the central tragedy that Nixon might well be the quintessential political figure for America in the last half of the 20th century. It's a brilliant score, and this track shows why.

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