Tuesday Tones

I wrote yesterday about how we attended the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance to film of the score to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I noted how impressed I was with the orchestra’s technical precision during the action cues, particularly the Desert Chase sequence, which is an extremely complex and long cue. So I figured today, why not present the actual cue as originally recorded for the film by the London Symphony Orchestra in 1981?

I thought about giving a blow-by-blow accounting of what is happening throughout this entire sequence with the timings, but I decided not to. Instead, note the structure of the cue itself: it starts with the establishing shots of the bad guys and their truck caravan heading out, and then we get some suspense music as Indy and friends watch all this and Indy hatches his plan. Then, it’s all action, all the way out. There’s a lot of back-and-forth action as Indy works to take control of the truck and dispose of the rest of the Nazis, but then there’s a long section of building tension as it looks as if Indy is really about to fail (and die in the process). It’s really an amazing cue from a compositional standpoint; Williams deploys his themes throughout in a way that really works. Too much action music in films is basically unmelodic rhythmic pounding. “The Desert Chase” is very much not that. Enjoy!

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