Where Eagles Dare (Theme) - Score Only by Ron Goodwin Full Orchestra - Digital Sheet Music

SKU: A0.1402356

While his scores for both 633 Squadron (1963) and Operation Crossbow (1965) had boasted patriotic, major-key themes celebrating the heroics of the protagonists, composer Ron Goodwin took a different approach for Where Eagles Dare, generating his main theme for the picture out of the initial notes of an ascending minor scale. Rather than celebrate the heroics of the screen characters, the title music embodies the single-minded ambition of the protagonists to infiltrate the mountain fortress of Schloss Adler and complete their mission, no matter what the costs. The composer recalled in a 1994 interview that some of this approach came from the film’s director, Brian Hutton. For instance, he wanted music at the beginning of the film but he also wanted to hear the airplane engines approaching from the distance, which is actually why he started off with just the side drums playing quietly and then building up and getting louder, so that you could actually hear the sound of the airplane before the orchestra comes in. After the snare drum and the “A” section of the main title comes a melodically related fugal section that, the composer told Randall D. Larson in 1984, was an idea that arose from the “concept of people following each other around and dodging away from each other...[which] gave me the idea of writing a sort of fugue-style theme...and then I used that in various ways for all the sort of creeping and following and chasing that was going on throughout the film.”

Created from the original manuscript, this release offers a rare opportunity to study film music in its authentic, original orchestration and arrangement. An opportunity not to be missed!