A friend of mine recently posted a moving tribute to the late composer, Basil Poledouris, whose work and music I've admired and collected for years. He called him: "a quintessential artist of cinema, a filmmaker's composer." And that he was. Like the great John Barry and others, Poledouris not only composed and orchestrated wonderful music he also had a magnificent talent for scoring film, absorbing the visual and breathing it back in layers of sound and subtle underpinning--a costuming of music, if you will. It was a gift of the gods that cannot be trained.
One of my favorite films, and one of the best Westerns ever made (John Ford notwithstanding) is "Quigley Down Under" which features and is elevated by a Poledouris score. The depth and dimensions of the music is stunning; the main theme (and its modulations) unforgettable. Immediately evoking a lineage with Jerry Goldsmith's classic theme from "The Magnificent Seven", Poledouris' "Quigley" is equally beautiful and far more complex and enveloping. Beyond Goldsmith, there is, in this score, a transient and embracing influence of the surprise and mystery of Kurt Weil, who also had the gift, though sadly unfulfilled.
I never met Basil Poledouris. I wish I had. But I do know him, a friendship built through his music. That is how he lives on, through his music, and, no doubt, through the artistry of his daughters.
