Bronislaw Kaper
's music for
The Way West
(1967) was just about the last classic Western movie score ever written that was done in a broad, epic style without any sense of irony until
John Barry
Dances with Wolves
appeared two decades later. But
Kaper
's music comes from an even older tradition, dating to
Dimitri Tiomkin
's score for
Red River
(1948) and, in its use of choral music and folk melodies, to a theatrical tradition decades older than that, and the influence of such figures as
Aaron Copland
and
Roy Harris
. The Polish-born
had scored a handful of Westerns in the previous decade and, perhaps recognizing the nature of time, mortality, and public taste, understood that
might well be his last chance to deal with the American West in musical terms. The film was also, at least in its conception, one of the larger cinematic canvases of its kind that anyone was ever likely to see again. As it turned out, the screenplay, co-authored by former blacklistee
Ben Maddow
, left so many loose ends that one had the feeling that
United Artists
had sharply reduced the budget during production, so that what was seen on the screen was really three (or more) hours of plot jammed into a two-hour finished film.
lived up to his expectations, however -- if his action themes didn't have the growl or drive of
Tiomkin
's music in similar circumstances, he made up for it with his expansive main title theme, which works equally well as an instrumental drenched in sonorous strings or as a choral piece (sung by the
Serendipity Singers
). Tracks such as
"We're Crossing First,"
underscoring a fight to ford a river ahead of what appears to be another wagon train, follow in the same
Copland
-esque tradition as the title tune, and none of what's here is very distant from that composer's
"Billy the Kid"
or
"Rodeo,"
or even his score for
The Red Pony
.
"Flowers for Mr. Mack"
is a more lyrical realization of the same tradition, and
pretty much stays in that mode throughout
"Water and Billy's Death,"
"Lige Celebrates,"
and the tragic
"On to Crystal City."
Other tracks, such as
"Buffalos and Indians,"
are more densely textured and closer to European concert music. As the composer had no training at the podium, the score is conducted by
Andre Previn
, in one of his very last appearances as a Hollywood conductor before he moved permanently into the concert hall. The Serendipity Singers' other contribution,
"Mercy McBee,"
is more in the tradition of their standard folk-pop sound, without the sheer power of the title track but with an engaging lyricism and delicacy (in the movie the song comes out appropriately rougher).
Given the obvious attention paid to the music, one of the ironies about
as an album is that it had a major flaw in its original issue on
United Artists Records
. The track
"I Killed Him (Execution)"
always had a flaw which resulted in a shifting dropout between the two stereo channels, a defect that was repeated in the LP reissue from
MCA
-- and which was edited out, creating an artificial pause, in the
EMI
reissue; the latter CD also removed one other track entirely. Finally, in 2009, 42 years after the soundtrack's original release, producer
Douglass Fake
Intrada Records
re-released
as a limited-edition CD, with that dropout repaired and all of the tracks restored. ~ Bruce Eder