This was the score I swore blind I'd never buy. I would like to make a public apology to my friend Paul as it was to him I swore I would never get this score. In fact, my feelings were so strong that I really didn't like Horner much at all to begin with. Listening to this score, I do realise why I didn't like it in the first place. It is a often very downbeat and can become a little oppressive. However, that does not stop it being a superb score. The music is touching, subtle and perfectly compliments the film as well as doing very well on disc. I would admit to not really greatly liking the film, it just didn't stir my passion like it wanted to (although the Scottish nationalism is possibly why not). The attention to authentic instruments is rather odd as a matter of fact as despite this being a Scottish film, the pipes used are in fact Irish. This is apparently due to the greater range of the Irish pipes and to me that seems like a perfectly good reason really. The end titles were recorded with Scottish pipes on Hollywood '95 conducted by Joel McNeely, but the differences are fairly negligable.
There are many themes, although the most memorable and most famous does echo the slow central section of Holst's Jupiter movement from the Planets. There is also a doom laden, but touchingly delicate love theme, but my favourite is more of a heroic fanfare, given great prominence in the penultimate execution track, providing heroic counterpoint to the matyr status attained by William Wallace. It is one of those themes that will have you in tears of joy and sadness all at the same time, especially when coupled with the site of Mel Gibson being rather mercilessly killed off.
The massive battle scenes are accompanied by thunderous drum-laden efforts as in the Battle of Stirling and Falkirk and are exciting merely on visceral energy and barbarism. Not exactly written with great technicaly skill, but undeniably effective at conjuring up the dynamism of the sequence. Revenge is a suspese/action cue that wrings tension by building the orchestra with increasing fury, but finally resolving all the tension by the end of the cue. I've always felt that the LSO were slightly redundant in this score. Yes, their playing is first rate (as ever), but they have to compete with the ethnic instruments, but the somewhat distant mixing ensures that some of the immediacy of the music and performance is lost. However, a superlative Horner score that should probably have won a deserved Oscar as it lifted the drama of the film no end. Certainly a more worthy candidate than Titanic and a score that will likely endure in the memory a lot longer.
Rating ~ 
Total Time ~ 77:55