Raise the Titanic Soundtrack

Instrumental Score

Primary Composer(s): John Barry

Raise the Titanic featured the following pieces of instrumental music:

Click/tap highlighted track names for full Soundtrack release info.
Composers are linked if they worked on other featured movies.

Opinion

The score itself is the best music ever written for a film involving the Titanic (including Horner's most recent entry). Without the score, the film might have wilted away and lost the epic perspective necessary for a tale of espionage and massive scientific accomplishments. Many people forget that Raise the Titanic is, first and foremost, a spy film. The only reason they're raising the ship is to find the key element to a nation-wide missile defense system (which, naturally, the Russians wanted at the height of the Cold War as well...)

So balancing the epic, sweeping string themes are numerous sub themes involving militaristic percussion and brass. The "Dog Attack" sequence in the third track has some overlapping brass a la The Lion in Winter. "To Cornwall" includes a very brief (but also sought after) secondary theme as well. The dramatic music doesn't really kick in until the seventh track, when the very slow and melodramatic search theme occupies sole possession of the score; the falling strings offer a great "sinking feeling" while the mini-submersibles are crawling along the depths of the ocean.

The main Titanic theme is the one that most tickles the fancy, though. A glorious performance of the theme opens the film as we see pictures of the ship as it first prepares to sail. Then , appropriately, we don't hear the theme again until the Titanic is discovered at the bottom of the sea (and even then, it's a muddled, stifled performance). But in the last 20 minutes of the film (or the last 4 tracks on the album), the title theme is magnificent. Bursting onto the screen with barely any sound effects and no dialogue, the Titanic theme is simply incredible in the actual "Raise the Titanic" scene.

The theme re-surfaces as the ship heroically sails into New York Harbor; in the film, the sounds of all the ships' horns blowing perfectly harmonize with Barry's music, making it the highlight of the entire score, if not (arguably) the single highlight of Barry's entire career. Sans the horns, the cue will still send shivers up your spine. The end credits provide one last performance of this theme. Mixed in between these final title tracks is the "Memories of the Titanic" track, which features some great sax performances as the film shifts to the solitary and melancholy setting of the ship's main ballroom (which is, naturally, a spooky place to be). Considered in whole, the film contains a wealth of great thematic material.Update Us

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