Category: Cosmos

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2017 C Cosmos Music Reviews Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Volume 2 – music by Alan Silvestri

3 min read

Order this CDContinuing the four-volume set of music from the updated Cosmos series, Volume Two gives a very strong impression that all four volumes should be heard together. The main theme from Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey doesn’t appear on the second volume, which instead kicks things off with “S.O.T.I.”, the theme for the show’s Ship of the Imagination, which starts out playfully before embarking on a more adventurous theme. Some tracks, such as “Interspecies Partnership” and “Living In An Ice Age”, almost sound like horror film material, as the music continues to do some heavy lifting in conveying the drama behind what would otherwise be somewhat dry scientific descriptions. There are some lovely lyrical pieces as well, including “Natural Selection”, “Family Tree”, and “You And Me And Your Dog”.

There are hints of the show’s main theme in “Titan”, but the real heart of this second volume is a recurring, percolating theme first heard in “The Eye”. Though that piece eventually simmers down into something almost resembling Paddy Kingsland’s music from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, that rapid-fire theme reasserts itself forcefully in “Tardigrades” a few tracks later. It almost evokes clockwork with its precision – it’s kind of mesmerizing, and it’s really this volume’s “recurring theme”. Of the many themes that recur throughout the series’ music, this really emerges near the top for me.

There are three pieces presented on CD that weren’t included in the original digital release: “Interstellar Clouds”, another theme played out with clockwork precision and hints of the main theme from the series, the big-screen drama of “The Hardships Of Space”, and an alternate take on “S.O.T.I.” (with a slightly different middle section) to bring things full circle.

4 out of 4As much as one might expect the music for a science documentary to end up with well-intentioned synthesizer acrobatics (I still love you, Space Age), one of the best things about all of the music from Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is that… it simply wasn’t that. Especially with Seth MacFarlane and his love of real live music on board, the budget and the resources were allocated to getting a full orchestra to play this stuff on the epic scale warranted by, well, the story of all life everywhere. The resulting lush music – and, one hopes, an increase in scientific literacy – are the real lasting gifts of this series.

  1. S.O.T.I. (1:29)
  2. You And Me And Your Dog (2:27)
  3. Interspecies Partnership (2:23)
  4. Artificial Selection (3:09)
  5. Living In An Ice Age (1:08)
  6. Genetic Alphabet (2:41)
  7. Natural Selection (3:05)
  8. Family Tree (3:49)
  9. The Eye (3:55)
  10. Theory Of Evolution (2:52)
  11. The Permian Period (5:11)
  12. Tardigrades (1:53)
  13. Titan (2:57)
  14. The Story Of Life (3:08)
  15. 4 Billion Years Of Evolution (1:03)
  16. Interstellar Clouds (3:17)
  17. The Hardships Of Space (1:39)
  18. S.O.T.I. – Alternate (1:29)

Released by: Intrada
Release date: September 11, 2017
Total running time: 48:20

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Categories
2014 2017 C Cosmos Soundtracks Soundtracks by Title Television Year

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, Volume 1 – music by Alan Silvestri

3 min read

Order this CDWhen the original Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan, premiered in 1980 on PBS, it was tracked with a hand-picked combination drawing from the classical orchestral repertoire and the synth-heavy works of Vangelis. It defined the show beautifully. Doing something even remotely resembling Cosmos in the 21st century, however, has a whole different list of demands. Photorealistic CGI allows actual images from space to be incorporated into beautifully choreographed and detailed simulations of space. It’s movie quality. The music should probably step up and meet that definition of epic as well.

With that in mind, it was no surprise to see veteran Hollywood composer Alan Silvestri selected to bring the new Cosmos to musical life. Silvestri’s score for the film version of Sagan’s Contact was one of the highlights of that movie, and if you understand the musical vocabulary of awe and wonder that his music brought to Contact, you’ll dig this, for that’s the same sensibility he brings to the 2014 series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey. Four generous albums of music from the series have been available digitally for some time, but this is their first official CD release, and the discs bring previously unreleased material with them (the music from a sequence covering the planet Venus and an alternate version of the deceptively gentle main theme).

The 21st century Cosmos has a sense of awe and wonder worthy of the original, but its more filmic sensibilities get a wide-screen musical treatment that would do any sci-fi movie proud. It’s unapologetically bold and adventurous, and very much the real thing – a real orchestra and choir are embellished, but very seldom overtaken, by electronics. Each episode featured at least one lavishly animated tale of a pioneering scientific mind, and Silvestri deftly navigated the narrow strait between “music from the part of the world that person was from” and “ethnic musical stereotypes”, usually by erring primarily on the side of scoring it like straight-up live-action drama. This volume’s suite of music from the sequence depicting the life of Giordano Bruno is really its emotional center, an island of human drama in an album of what might otherwise be considered “space music”.

4 out of 4But there’s nothing bland here – every moment of music has mystery and drama propelling it, much of it originating from that first episode in which Neil deGrasse Tyson reminds us that we’re all starstuff. This soundtrack would be equally at home on the flight deck of Tyson’s “ship of the imagination”, or on the bridge of any movie or TV starship you care to name. Best of all, it accompanies a story much more grounded in reality. Just a beautiful listen, and if the existing downloads are any indication, the later volumes are even better.

  1. Cosmos Main Title (1:38)
  2. “Come With Me” (2:00)
  3. “The Cosmos Is Yours” (6:23)
  4. Virgo Supercluster (4:05)
  5. Multiverse (2:10)
  6. Giordano Bruno (2:39)
  7. Revelation of Immensity (3:57)
  8. The Inquisition (3:35)
  9. The Staggering Immensity of Time (2:11)
  10. Star Stuff (4:12)
  11. Chance Nature of Existence (3:27)
  12. New Years’ Eve (3:49)
  13. “Our Journey Is Just Beginning” (3:04)
  14. Venus (2:50)
  15. Cosmos Main Title – Alternate (1:54)

Released by: Intrada
Release date: June 13, 2017
Total running time: 48:31

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