Score Sample: The Beastmaster (1982)

Continuing to listen to a lot of fantasy film music from the 1980s as I work on my fantasy novel for National Novel Writing Month. So many good scores to pick from, it gets tough to settle on what to listen to for the evening. I picked up the score to The Beastmaster earlier this year, and I've had it on pretty regularly while working on the background and the novel itself.

The score to The Beastmaster was written by Lee Holdridge, a composer you don't hear too much about these days. He never became a huge name like Williams, Goldsmith or Horner, but worked steadily over years, eventually moving from films to television miniseries where he was nominated and won a number of Grammy awards in the 90s and 00s.

His score to The Beastmaster is similar if feel to Clash of the Titans, and features a great heroic theme as the main focal point. It is very memorable and certainly one of the top themes of the genre in this decade. Holdrige also created some unique themes for the playful ferrets that feature in the film, as well as romantic love theme. He has some robust action music as well. This is a great score to write to, and I'm very happy to have it my collection. The deluxe version contains the score as it appears in the film, as well as the unique tracks performed and edited for the original album release in the 80s. There is also an excellent suite designed and rerecorded by Charles Gerhardt on there. It's a great package for any fan of the score.

So here A New Kingdom from Lee Holdrige's impressive score to The Beastmaster!