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Soundtrack (Season 4)

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Soundtrack (Season 4)
"Soundtrack (Season 4)"
An album of the Re-imagined series
Album No. 4
Composer(s) Bear McCreary
Artist(s) {{{artist}}}
Producer(s) {{{producer}}}
Label La-La Land Records
Tracks {{{tracks}}}
Running Time {{{runtime}}}
Discs 2
Released {{{released}}}
Chronology
Previous Next
Soundtrack (Season 3) Soundtrack (Season 4) Soundtrack (The Plan/Razor)
CD Version
Available at Amazon – Purchase
Download Version
Available at iTunes – Purchase


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For other Battlestar Galactica soundtracks, click here.
For a general article on the music in Battlestar Galactica, see Music of Battlestar Galactica (RDM).
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The Battlestar Galactica Season 4 Soundtrack was a critical and commercial success upon its release. [1] The album achieved remarkable sales performance, reaching the top 10 in overall music sales on Amazon and becoming both the #1 selling TV soundtrack and #1 selling movie soundtrack.[1] La La Land Records was forced to print additional copies after their initial run sold out in pre-orders alone.[1]

Production Background

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Composer Bear McCreary began work on the Season 4 score almost exactly two years before the soundtrack's release.[1] McCreary described the emotional intensity of creating music for the series finale, stating that pieces like "Diaspora Oratorio" and "So Much Life" were among the most difficult and emotional experiences he had ever endured as a composer, causing him to break down while working on them.[1]

The soundtrack album represents a comprehensive collection of McCreary's work on the final season, with many tracks edited, re-mixed, and even re-arranged specifically for the album release.[1] McCreary ordered the tracks to provide "a rewarding artistic experience simply as music, separate from the show."[1]

Track Listing

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Disc 1

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  1. Gaeta's Lament
  2. The Signal
  3. Resurrection Hub
  4. The Cult of Baltar
  5. Farewell Apollo
  6. Roslin Escapes
  7. Among the Ruins
  8. Laura Runs
  9. Cally Descends
  10. Funeral Pyre
  11. Roslin and Adama Reunited
  12. Gaeta's Lament (Instrumental)
  13. Elegy
  14. The Alliance
  15. Blood on the Scales
  16. Grand Old Lady
  17. Kara Remembers
  18. Boomer Takes Hera
  19. Dreilide Thrace Sonata No. 1
  20. Diaspora Oratorio

Disc 2: "Daybreak"

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  1. Caprica City, Before the Fall
  2. Laura's Baptism
  3. Adama in the Memorial Hallway
  4. The Line
  5. Assault on the Colony
  6. Baltar's Sermon
  7. Kara's Coordinates
  8. Earth
  9. Goodbye Sam
  10. The Heart of the Sun
  11. Starbuck Disappears
  12. So Much Life
  13. An Easterly View
  14. The Passage of Time

Behind the Scenes

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Cast Collaborations

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The soundtrack features notable collaborations with cast members. Gaeta's Lament showcases Alessandro Juliani's exceptional vocal abilities, which McCreary discovered when they exchanged demos between Los Angeles and Vancouver.[1] McCreary was "absolutely stunned by the quality of his singing" and described Juliani as "a dream collaborator" and "a musical professional."[1] The final recording session took place on McCreary's 30th birthday, making "Gaeta's Lament" both the last piece of music he wrote for the series and the last thing he composed in his twenties.[1]

Funeral Pyre features Kandyse McClure providing her own haunting vocals as her character's ghostly voice during Adama's mourning scene.[1]

Technical Achievements

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Several tracks represent significant technical and artistic achievements. The Signal was described by McCreary as "one of the most technically challenging compositions I've ever done," featuring a Samoan war chant in 7/8 time while percussion "aggressively swings the 16ths."[1]

Assault on the Colony is a massive 15+ minute action cue that McCreary considers "my greatest action cue in the series, easily ranking up there with 'Battle on the Asteroid,' 'Prelude to War' and 'Storming New Caprica.'"[1]

Kara's Coordinates represents what may be "the largest cue ever produced for the series. And possibly ever in the history of recorded music," featuring over 80 tracks of percussion, full orchestra, ethnic woodwinds, and every single musician who had ever played on Galactica.[1]

Musical Innovations

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McCreary experimented with various musical approaches throughout the season. Roslin Escapes was "an interesting experiment" using only authentic Japanese instruments, stripped of the usual bagpipes, synths, and Middle Eastern percussion that typically appeared in action cues.[1]

Among the Ruins features a unique stereo effect where violins are seated far left and far right instead of together, creating dissonant, antiphonal lines that produce an acoustic "delay" effect.[1] The orchestration deliberately leaves the mid-range empty, with violas, celli and basses holding clusters in their bottom registers while violins play at the top of theirs.[1]

Emotional Impact

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McCreary described the emotional toll of composing certain pieces. Diaspora Oratorio was "one of the most difficult and emotional experiences I've ever endured" and he noted it would "probably be years before I can listen to this composition without breaking down."[1] He considers it "probably the strongest piece of music I've ever written, and I feel that it eclipses everything else on this album."[1]

Special Recordings

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Several tracks feature unique recording circumstances. Elegy was performed using samples McCreary made of the actual piano on the Galactica hangar deck set, so "when I sat there with the actors and played this song, this is what it sounded like."[1]

Dreilide Thrace Sonata No. 1 represents McCreary's completion of a composition that was developed throughout the episode "Someone to Watch Over Me," where he was literally writing sections the night before filming each piano scene.[1] For the album, he finished the complete sonata and recorded it on a concert grand at the Warner Bros. Scoring Stage.[1]

Press Release

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LA-LA LAND RECORDS TO RELEASE BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: SEASON 4 SOUNDTRACK – THEIR 100th RELEASE

Two-CD Set Is Top 10 Best Seller in Overall Music Sales at Amazon.com

Burbank, CA - June 30, 2009– La-La Land Records will release their 100th release as a label—the special 2-CD set, Battlestar Galactica: Season 4, on July 28, 2009. The soundtrack cracked the Top 10 at Amazon's Best Seller list for overall music sales, topping both the TV and Movie Soundtrack Charts. The soundtrack features music from Seasons 4 and 4.5 with one disc dedicated to the music from "Daybreak" the stunning series finale. La-La Land Records is releasing the Battlestar Galactica: Season 4 soundtrack through a license agreement with NBC Universal Television, DVD, Music and Consumer Products Group.

The music from Battlestar Galactica became an integral part of the series, interwoven into plotlines and even performed by cast members, like the track "Gaeta's Lament", sung by Alessandro Juliani (Felix Gaeta) or "Dreilide Thrace Sonata No. 1" which was a key plot point in the episode "Someone to Watch Over Me".

Battlestar Galactica: Season 4 will be available in stores nationwide and online on www.lalalandrecords.com, www.nbcuniversalstore.com, and www.amazon.com. The two-CD soundtrack will feature music from seasons 4.0 and 4.5 and the music from "Daybreak," the series finale. The CD booklet features 20 pages of pictures and extensive liner notes, including 8 pages of notes from the cast and crew talking about the music and composer Bear McCreary, who Jamie Bamber (Lee 'Apollo' Adama) calls 'the 13th Cylon" and Mary McDonnell (Laura Roslin) said "Bear understands character and plot and action as musical poetry and we were blessed to have him."

Season 4 composer McCreary was recently called one of the top 10 composers "that make space adventures epic" by www.io9.com. His work on the television series Battlestar Galactica has been described as offering "some of the most innovative music on TV today," by Variety, and his blog www.bearmccreary.com/blog, which features in-depth inside looks at the process of scoring Battlestar Galactica, was called "one of the best blogs in the business. It's a fascinating look at the process of making music for film and television and the care he takes with aligning the score with the twists and turns of each character's plot lines," by The Hollywood Reporter.

McCreary's feature film credits include Wrong Turn 2 and the Rest Stop films. He also scores the series Eureka, the upcoming SyFy series, and Battlestar Galactica prequel, Caprica, the Capcom video game Dark Void, the upcoming series Human Target and Trauma and Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. McCreary was among a handful of select protégés of late film music legend Elmer Bernstein and is a classically trained composer with degrees in Composition and Recording Arts from the prestigious USC Thornton School of Music.

Also available from La-La Land Records are McCreary's soundtracks for Battlestar Galactica Seasons 1, 2, and 3, Caprica, Eureka, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Wrong Turn 2 and the Rest Stop films.

About Universal Cable Productions:

Universal Cable Productions was established to create a sustainable pipeline of quality content and derive the greatest value from it across multiple platforms. The studio will be an industry leader in unique and innovative programming for USA and Syfy, and all cable networks.

About NBC Universal Television DVD, Music, and Consumer Products Group:

NBC Universal is a leader in providing entertainment programming to the domestic and international marketplaces. NBC Universal Television DVD, Music, and Consumer Products Group manages all global ancillary television business endeavors for the NBC Universal Television Group, including third-party home entertainment distribution, consumer products, musical soundtracks, special markets projects and the NBC Universal Online Store.

References

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  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 Bear McCreary (2009). Battlestar Galactica: Season 4 Soundtrack Is Out! (backup available on Archive.org) (in English).
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