Known best for his bombastic, thematically rich scores for The Lord of the Rings, Howard Shore has proven time and again that he is a monumentally versatile composer. From the tortured classicism of The Aviator to the Slavic despair of Eastern Promises, to the catchy tangos of The Departed, he has never left his fans in any doubt regarding his ability to adapt his musical artistry to any subject matter; and he proves it yet again with his new score to Doubt, a John Patrick Stanley film starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep.
The film is an intense character and dialog-driven story, and Shore's score addresses the intimate nature of the narrative with subtle mastery. The music churns with a lightly simmering urgency, but never at elevated volumes, and with little discernable thematic development. The score is instead restrained and subtle almost to a fault, and may easily bore those who are used to Shore’s flashier, more stylish and accessible scores.
Dramatically Subdued Soundtrack for Doubt
Indeed, the primary idea behind the score to Doubt is subdued, constrained tension: Shore masterfully conveys the idea of bottled-up suspicion and emotion in the walls of a devout Catholic school. This tension only occasionally becomes truly palpable, lurking for most of the album in the background of the largely ambient score.
Even in the score's most accessible moments (such as the light choral accents in “Daybreak” and “Sister James”), the low volume level and long-lined atmospheric chord progressions betray little outward complexity or engaging melodic ideas. The score’s primary thematic concept, heard best in "Daybreak," is a very short, descending melody which is highly reminiscent of Shore’s earlier score to The Last Mimzy in its bubbling, quietly percolating progressions.
Celtic Instrumentation, Rhythmic Focus in Shore’s Score
Shore’s choice of instrumentation for Doubt is an attractive combination of light Celtic instruments, including hammered dulcimer, Celtic harp, recorder, and mandolin, along with a small 17-piece chamber orchestra, further enhancing the extremely personal nature of the score while flavoring it with slightly exotic textures and flavored rhythms which are, in the end, the main point of interest.
Even the main theme, irritatingly underused and sparsely developed during the running time of the album, is mostly rhythmic in nature, and it is difficult to point to any one cue as being really melodically noteworthy, aside from the ultimate cue “Doubts,” which features a brief arrangement of a Christmas carol on pipe organ behind a bed of high strings as its closing statement. It is disappointing that this short cue, not even composed by Shore, ends up being the most memorable aspect of the entire album.
Conclusion
Shore’s stated intent with his score was to place the listener inside the cloistered life of the story, and to that end he undoubtedly succeeds. The intensely intimate nature of the score is both attractively conservative and frustratingly restrained. Added to this is the fact that the cues are rarely more than two minutes in length, resulting in a short album with few opportunities for the music to truly breathe.
Only rarely do the churning rhythms and elegant undulations of the score develop into any recognizable melody, and the result is that many listeners will find the score to be boring, irritating, or both. It is a score that requires a familiarity and appreciation of its cinematic context to fully appreciate, and those enamored with Shore’s more accessible and bombastic attempts will be much better served elsewhere.
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