It's been a very long time since I really enjoyed a score this much. James Newton Howard's music for Walt Disney's computer animated film Dinosaur is easily one of the composers very best efforts. And for once Walt Disney Records got it right, as well. The soundtrack album is entirely devoted to Howard's score, meaning that we don't have to deal with commercial sounding pop songs. In fact, there are no songs in this film, whatsoever. Which is something I welcome, since I don't understand why singing is necessary whenever the people at Disney make animated films.
When I heard James Newton Howard's music in the trailer for Dinosaur I knew we were in for a treat. Luckily the wonderful trailer music made its way onto the soundtrack album. This is great, of course, but even greater is the fact that the music is just as good througout the entire CD - the trailer music was no exception. I rarely enjoy every single minute of music on a CD, but Dinosaur really is stunning from start to finish.
The CD opens with soft flutes, strings and synths in "Inner Sanctum/The Nesting Grounds". It is all very tender and sweet, but the idyll is soon interrupted by more energetic music, as exotic drums and rythms enter the stage, followed by chanting voices and a glorious statement of the grand main theme in "The Egg Travels". It is not hard to imagine this music being used in dozens of trailers in the future, because the beauty of the theme, coupled with the wonderful orchestrations, make this one of the finest cues on the album and one of the very best film music pieces of 2000.
The musical styles in the score range from upbeat, problem free, life-is-good music, such as "The Courtship", to grand adventurous music ("Across the Desert"), to dissonant and dark action music, most notably in "Raptors/Stand Together", which is one of the scores' big dramatic pieces, including some really exciting action parts performed by the quite large orchestra. And apart from the symphony orchestra, Howard adds exotic percussion and choir to the musical palette in some cues as well. While the percussive instruments play typical (or maybe stereo typical?) African rythms througout the score, the choir is used in different ways. At times it is placed in the background, with only supportive and harmonic duties - working as a traditional film music choir, one could say - while it at other times is given a more prominent part in the foreground, where it is employed in a more chanting way - African choir music is the first thing that comes to mind, and sure, the name Lebo M can be found in the liner notes. One can argue wether African vocals should be used in a film about dinosaurs. I think they should, as they evoke a very exotic, djungle sound. It gives the music a very primitive, wild and ancient sound, which I think is perfect. As is the way the composer mixes this style with the sound of the traditional Western orchestra.
The scores' only really negative quality is the fact that Howard is a little sparse when it comes to using the various themes he establishes in the first part of the score. It's not really a drawback, per se, but it certainly would have been nice with some more renditions of the main theme - which quickly has become one of my favorite movie themes. I simply cannot stop humming it.