Saint Sinner
Clive Barker presents Saint Sinner

What invariably surprises me about lesser known composers, is how many awards, how many films and television shows they've scored and yet still seem to have fallen well below the radar of even the most keen film music enthusiast. On many occasions, while reading gushing commentaries regarding certain less famous composers, at the same time as listening to their latus opus, I've had to wonder exactly what the writer of these comments was listening to or how they could have won modestly prestigious awards. However, in the case of Christopher Lennertz, a great deal more talent than the average rising film music star is evident in his music. His previous scoring credits are hardly that inspiring, although the list of those he's worked with, ranging from Elmer Bernstein to Michael Kamen to - and perhaps most importantly in the case of Saint Sinner - Christopher Young, is impressive enough.

I seem to decry horror scoring almost every time a new one is released, my complaints usually stemming from an inherent lack of musical acumen in the writing and a disappointment that it isn't even in the same ballpark as Goldsmith's The Omen or Poltergeist or Young's Hellraiser scores. Ok, they are classics, but even though he's written quite a number of horror scores, Young's music is rarely less than listenable and engaging. Fortunately, Lennertz has actually managed to write a horror score to, well, write home about. The approach seems to actually turn the film into drama rather than just hitting every scare with a stinger, the bane of horror music everywhere. The opening track, Benedictus and Main Titles, is a great start, introducing the main theme and justifying the additional expensive of using a choir for the occasion. This isn't an aggressive Goldsmithian choir, but a more creepy yet liturgical one, with not a small hint of plain song and Gregorian Chant, underpinned with a modern orchestral setting.

The use of the Requiem Mass is a recurring motif, although whether the words actually have some deeper meaning when combined with the film, I couldn't say, but they are words that have inspired composers throughout the history of music and seem a good choice whether the meaning is important or not. After the high quality opening gambit, Lennertz doesn't quite always keep the momentum going and there are a couple of suspended high string passages that aren't all that interesting. These are punctuated by quite a bit of good material, particularly Evil Unleashed, which has some effectively thunderous moments, even if it doesn't have quite the cataclysmic dread that the title suggests. The more traditional choral sections are perhaps the most listenable parts, the very liturgical Oratorio of Doom being a fine stand alone piece.

Probably as fine a horror score as you're likely to come across these days and while that perhaps isn't saying much, Saint Sinner has much to recommend it, although in retrospect, it is the less horrific elements that are most memorable. The mixture of the consciously liturgical and modern orchestral horror writing is occasionally uneasy. There isn't really any natural progression from one to the other, so the change can be a little jarring, the result being that the score isn't really more than the sum of its parts. However, with some better assignments, Lennertz will hopefully turn into a composer to watch out for, just as long as he doesn't get stuck in the rut of scoring endless B list horror films. My fingers are crossed.