Although I have seen perhaps a thousand films over the years I have
rarely collected recordings of film scores and, in fact, with some notable
exceptions, I have only intermittently been aware of music in the course of
watching a film.  Most film soundtracks these days, judging by the credits
which I obsessively watch to the end, tend to be a pastiche of songs.
Recently, though, most of the way through A Beautiful Mind, at a point when
there was no dialogue or other sound, I was suddenly struck by the quality
of the score, which was definitely a considerable cut above what I usually
hear at the movies, and retroactively aware that what I had been hearing
was both very much of a piece and extremely suited to the action of the
film.  So I went home and ordered the soundtrack from Amazon.com.

After several hearings of this score by itself I am still quite taken by
it.  A minimum of thematic material is sufficiently varied and developed
as to be almost symphonic.  It is predominantly slow, legato, weighted
toward the bass, minor key, and obsessive--which couldn't be more
appropriate for the theme of the film.  Strings and woodwinds predominate.
There is some--mostly wordless--singing by a soprano I would prefer not to
identify.  When I asked a friend what he though of this score he said it
was too much like Philip Glass for his taste, but I have certainly never
noticed Glass going in for such long melodies.  I was piqued enough to dig
out several Glass recordings and I still don't agree, except that Itaipu,
which Robert Shaw recorded, and which I like, may have some common
elements.

Horner's score for Iris is slighter, I think.  Presumably he did this
more or less at the same time as A Beautiful Mind.  Horner also did the
score for Field of Dreams which I have neither seen nor heard; for Titanic,
which I saw but never noticed the music; and for Braveheart, which is quite
different from the others I have heard-- with a lot more dynamic and
rhythmic range--but clearly from the same pen.

Jim Tobin