The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

1. Main Title

2. The Taking

3. Dolowitz Takes a Look/Dolowitz Gets Killed

4. Blue and Green Talk

5. Money Montage

6. Fifty Seconds/The Money Express

7. Conductor Killed/The Money Bag

8. The Pelham's-Moving-Again Blues

9. I'm a Police Officer/Renewing Disguises/Goodbye Green, Hello Garber, Goodbye Hippie/Smoking More, Enjoying It Less

10. Mini-Manhunt

11. End Title

Editorial Reviews

About the Artist
David Shire is an Academy Award-winning film composer who has composed the scores to such memorable films as The Conversation, The Hindenburg, Farewell My Lovely, Norma Rae, 2010, Monkey Shines, and All the President's Men.

Product Description
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a superb urban thriller: four men, dressed alike in trenchcoats and calling each other Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, etc., take a subway car hostage and demand $1 million in ransom. Walter Matthau stars as the transit cop assigned to the case; Robert Shaw is the leader of the terrorists. It's a brilliant '70s hostage movie with biting New York humor. For the score, David Shire came up with a stroke of genius. He wanted to do some kind of funk/jazz/big band, but wanted a way of making it dissonant and powerful -- not too light, but not too random. So for his melodic materials he utilized the 12-tone method of composition, a technique devised by Arnold Schoenberg in the early 20th century in which you make a theme by using all 12 pitches in a specific order, and then create other themes by playing that "row" backwards, upside-down, backwards and upside-down, or transposed. Shire ended up with a monster two-note bass line with these 12-tone themes running on top. For our CD, the first-ever release of this music, we have utilized the complete score, including around 15 minutes of music not included in the film. The 12-page booklet includes movie stills, composer photos, and track-by-track notes by Doug Adams.

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,Taking of Pelham One Two Three,Soundtrack

Average customer rating:

Random spider brass funk
Reviving A Great Thriller Film Score From 1974
A living, breathing character....
Kickin!

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
David Shire , and Original Soundtrack
Manufacturer: Film Score Monthly
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B00007FON1
Release Date: 2002-11-01

Tracks:

Main Title
The Taking
Dolowitz Takes a Look/Dolowitz Gets Killed
Blue and Green Talk
Money Montage
Fifty Seconds/The Money Express
Conductor Killed/The Money Bag
The Pelham's-Moving-Again Blues
I'm a Police Officer/Renewing Disguises/Goodbye Green, Hello Garber, Goodbye Hippie/Smoking More, Enjoying It Less
Mini-Manhunt
End Title

Album Description

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is a superb urban thriller: four men, dressed alike in trenchcoats and calling each other Mr. Blue, Mr. Green, etc., take a subway car hostage and demand $1 million in ransom. Walter Matthau stars as the transit cop assigned to the case; Robert Shaw is the leader of the terrorists. It's a brilliant '70s hostage movie with biting New York humor. For the score, David Shire came up with a stroke of genius. He wanted to do some kind of funk/jazz/big band, but wanted a way of making it dissonant and powerful -- not too light, but not too random. So for his melodic materials he utilized the 12-tone method of composition, a technique devised by Arnold Schoenberg in the early 20th century in which you make a theme by using all 12 pitches in a specific order, and then create other themes by playing that "row" backwards, upside-down, backwards and upside-down, or transposed. Shire ended up with a monster two-note bass line with these 12-tone themes running on top. For our CD, the first-ever release of this music, we have utilized the complete score, including around 15 minutes of music not included in the film. The 12-page booklet includes movie stills, composer photos, and track-by-track notes by Doug Adams.

Customer Reviews:

Random spider brass funk.......2006-04-09

This is great fun. It's also very odd, and not quite the kind of 1970s police film soundtrack you might be expecting; although a couple of tracks sound like Dirty Harry ("Blue and Green Talk", for example), it's mostly a weird but funky musical experiment. It's best listened to as one long single song, in which case it becomes a bit like Kraftwerk's "Autobahn", in that it's a series of variations on a single theme.

And what an odd theme it is. The main melody sounds completely random, and apparently it was created with some kind of mathematical process. Most tracks involve variations on a swinging brass beat in the background with this random-sounding melody over the top. It's a bit like Jerry Goldsmith's music for "Capricorn One" in its mixture of atonality and brute force.

Sometimes it slows down (the end of "Moving Again Blues"), sometimes it goes real quiet ("Dolowitz Gets Killed"), and sometimes it gets very loud (the beginning of "Money Montage"), but it's recognisably the same piece of music put through a blender. "Smoking More, Enjoying it Less" and the opening titles are the swinging-est, the end title is basically the opening title but not as good, and "Blue and Green Talk" is the most conventional-sounding 70s cop show track, with that wooden scraper thing that was all over the place at the time. "Dolowitz Takes a Look" is a bizarre mixture of aggressive brass funk and cocktail jazz music, and sounds like something from a weird spy thriller.

I can barely remember the film, which was a minor classic of its genre. It was a police procedural with a dash of caper film. All I know of David Shire is that he went on to do some of the music for "Saturday Night Fever". This soundtrack is nothing like that, and it's worth owning for the opening title alone, which swaggers like a magickist.

Reviving A Great Thriller Film Score From 1974.......2006-02-20

By any stretch of the imagination, the 1974 subway hijacking thriller THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE-TWO-THREE is an exciting and suspenseful ride, with plenty of fine performances, salty dialogue, and more than a little jet black humor. And a lot of the film's success with critics and audiences is owed to the propulsive score that David Shire composed for it.

With the film's setting being the urban jungle of the Big Apple, it is only fitting that Shire should compose a score that is extremely urban and jazz-influenced, and, as a reviewer has said, fairly influenced by the twelve-tone methodology of Arnold Schoenberg, transposed into a Hollywood film score setting. Shire's writing for the brass sections in certain places is not only jazz-influenced, but also resembles in some small ways the iron-clad and lowering brass chorales of Bruckner, as well as the jazz-rock fusion that was so popular during the mid-1970s. The whole score in general serves the film extremely well, and is a high point in thriller music writing that one rarely hears anymore in ultra-high-budget Hollywood spectaculars anymore.

Although he did not achieve the huge superstardom accorded fellow film music composers John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith, Shire nevertheless carved out a niche in the ensuing years, with his scores for ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, portions of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, and 2010. The score he composed for PELHAM was what helped establish his reputation, and its arrival on CD is something that a lot of people have been waiting on for ages. One listen to it is enough to convince.

A living, breathing character...........2004-02-19

After the collected horror-film scores of Italian composers, Goblin, the best SINGLE film score of all time has got to be David Shire's "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three."

The urgency of the drums, scratchers and trumpets will make you sweat with nervousness (like the hostages on the subway train)!

If you like thumping 70's funk, acid jazz, or even classical twelve-tone composition (!) you will be in heaven listening to this soundtack, which is, unbelievably, an utterly unique amalgam of all three!

Shire's score is a living, breathing, menacing character in the film, and one that you will not soon forget. I first saw the film when I was 12 or 13 and have never been able to get the sinister melody-line out of my head. And now it's FINALLY available on CD!

Want the recipe for one awesome aural cocktail? Put "The Goblin Collection 1975-1989," "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" and the Beastie Boys' "Ill Communication" (for their bass-heavy, funk-jazz samples) into the CD player and press "shuffle" or "random"---then Lose Yourself!

Kickin!.......2002-11-23

If you're into funky, thumping, jazz oriented 70's stuff, then this is the CD you've been dreaming of. It's intense, chaotic, and yet suprisingly structured, too. Lots of brass, heavy bass, drums, and spacey marimba. I listen to it over and over and over - it's hypnotic and high energy. I wish it were longer - that's my only gripe. This goes great with the soundtrack to The Omega Man, if you can find it!