Track Listing

1. She Walks in Beauty - The Philharmonia Orchestra, Sissel
2. Exchange
3. Becky and Amelia Leave School
4. Great Adventurer - Custer LaRue, , The Philharmonia Orchestra
5. Becky Arrives at Queen's Crawley
6. Andante
7. No Lights After Eleven
8. Adagio
9. I've Made up My Mind
10. Ride to London
11. Becky and Rawdon Kiss
12. Sir Pitt's Marriage Proposal
13. I Owe You Nothing
14. Piano for Amelia/Announcement of Battle
15. Time to Quit Brussels
16. Waterloo Battlefield
17. Amelia Refuses Dobbin/The Move to Mayfair
18. Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
19. Steyne the Pasha
20. Salaam
21. Virtue Betrayed
22. Rawdon's End
23. Dobbin Leaves Amelia
24. Vanity's Conquerer
25. Gori Re

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62704 in Music
• Released on: 2004-08-31
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Soundtrack
• Original language: English, French, German

Amazon.com
William Makepeace Thackery's mid-19th-century meditation on the boundaries of class and gender gets a smartly sympathetic remake via Indian director Mira Nair and Reese Witherspoon, who imbues the story's social-climbing Becky Sharp with some of the same spunky spirit the actress brought to Legally Blonde's equally ambitious Elle. Composer Mychael Danna furthers that sense of era-bridging drama with an orchestral score that sets the story's time and place via effective pastiches of Schubert and Beethoven (that's Danna himself channeling a little Ludwig van on the evocative solo piano passages "Andante" and "Adagio"), yet often fuses them seamlessly with a modern sensibility that helps story's contemporary parallels resonate all the more. The soundtracks four songs revolve around poles of Romantic-era evocations (Danna's stately adaptations of Lord Byron's sonnet "She Walks in Beauty" and the standard "Great Adventurer") and the lively East Asian rhythms of Hakim's "El Salaam" and Mahadevan/Sharma's sprightly duet, "Gori Re." But Danna's masterful infusion of 19th century classical Romanticism with the dry, postmodern instincts of the 21st are the score's most compelling achievements, music that argues that while times and mores have changed, the human spirit remains as stubborn as ever. --Jerry McCulley

Customer Reviews

A Very Lush & Evocative Soundtrack
I just recently saw the film "Vanity Fair", and I was pleasantly surprised. The film was beautifully photographed, with great performances throughout, and one of the things that stood out the most was the soundtrack. Written by Mychael Danna (who previously worked with "Vanity Fair" director Mira Nair on the film "Monsoon Wedding"), the soundtrack contains both regal orchestral pieces that convey the grandeur of Regency England (pieces such as 'Ride to London'), as well as more 'ethnic' pieces (such as 'El Salaam' and 'Gori Re') that evoke the colourful and vibrant India of the film. However, the true highlight of the soundtrack was the song "She Walks In Beauty", performed by Norwegian soprano Sissel. This song, featured during the film's opening credits, is actually a Lord Byron poem set to music, and it is sparse and eerie, yet strangely beautiful and melancholic at the same time. This song alone is worth the price of the soundtrack. However, this soundtrack only receives only 4 stars because I found some of it quite repetitive. This is a common problem among movie soundtracks, and the soundtrack to "Vanity Fair" has a wonderful main theme that seems to be repeated often in slightly different forms. However, on the whole this soundtrack is a great effort from Mychael Danna, and I certainly recommend it.

Indeed -- Crimson Petal in -what- year?
I very much enjoyed the soundtrack (much, much more than the movie) for what it was -- some beautifully done music. I don't know enough about composition to relate different styles to different periods (my knowledge goes about as far as "dissonant=modern"), but I -do- know literature, and just want to note that "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal" is a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, published in 1847 -- which would be WELL after Becky Sharpe sung it in the movie, even with all the bizarre time-jumping going on in it. This in no way diminishes the song's beauty, and I love the poem for itself -- but just wanted to add a few grains of salt to the historical accuracy of the soundtrack, which remains, to my ear, quite beautiful.

A further quirk to me was the "Salaam" song, which is sung in Arabic. Still enjoyable (though it made NO SENSE in the movie), but I feel it's worth noting that it's not any dialect of Indian.

Crimson Petal - historical correctness
I did like this movie... but I'm not going to pretend that it stuck to the book or was even remotely historically correct. I loved the song "Now sleeps the crimson petal," but I did want to clear up some things about it. I've been looking for the sheet music and it doesn't appear to exist. There are about 7 people who have written songs based on Tennyson's poem, but this version was written by Mychael Danna, does not even closely resemble Roger Quilter or Robert Young. Mychael Danna did nearly the entire soundtrack and he is wonderful. I just wish i could find the sheet music.