In the mid-eighties through the early nineties Goldenthal began to assemble what would become his current film scoring team. As Richard Martinez said:
“Back in the mid-eighties Elliot thought it would be really important to have a team to put things together with its effort. Electronics were a new world and computers were just shaping up, so Elliot was putting the team together in his mind.”
This team of talents all came together and found their direction with Goldenthal in the early nineties. They have all faithfully stood by Elliot throughout the years, almost all of them having a decade of experience with the maestro. Orchestrator Robert Elhai, electronic music producer Richard Martinez, conductors Steven Mercurio and Jonathan Sheffer, recording engineer Joel Iwataki, and producer Teese Gohl are all part of the Goldenthal scoring machine. All of them worked with Elliot on “Titus” and were right there in the heat of the moment. From finding those special sounds to orchestrating to bring “Titus” to life on the scoring stage to the final dub to the commercially-released CD, these are the people that help bring Elliot’s musical vision to light. These are the talents that I refer to as being Goldenthal’s ‘dream team’ and these are their views about working on “Titus”.
Electronic music producer Richard Martinez: “It’s an amazing score. He’s using a number of his previous scoring styles, interlaced or interlayered in it. This was a funny symbiosis. Julie and Elliot had never worked with film scoring together; they had always worked in the theater together. In this case Julie actually pulled out all of Elliot’s scores and spent a period of time going through all of it. This being her first film, it was more like she was trying to understand what the musical role would be. She would always quote this score or that and play us something, so it was a lovingly pull-and-push kind of relationship.
“In the beginning stages we saw a lot of Elliot’s earlier music put into scenes of the film. It was difficult to deal with because when you hear the music it triggers other pictures in your mind. You see the vampire, you see Batman and Robin, you might see any other film, but you can’t somehow see ‘Titus’. The challenge to Elliot was to transform the temp. It was a difficult challenge for him, but as Julie got more and more familiar with what it is she wanted, the music naturally transformed itself into something much more appropriate for the film and yet still contained the things that she liked about the other scores. This one was just a huge project.”
Producer Teese Gohl: “Elliot started on ‘Titus’ much earlier than any other film score. He effectively started a year ago for the pre-records and he spent a lot of time on the shoot. Then he spent about three months writing tons of music, some of which was in the film early on. A lot of it was rejected by Julie. He wrote a lot more music for this film than any other film. There were differences about what the music should be to this film between him and Julie. They were further enhanced by Julie’s new coming to feature film. She got very addicted to some of the temp pieces that were in early temps. This was all Elliot’s music, which made it difficult. In fact when you see it you’ll hear a few cues that will remind you of some of his other scores. A piece from ‘Drugstore Cowboy’ or something from ‘Demolition Man’. They’re not important or key scenes, but it was a lengthy process of finding the right voice for Elliot to establish himself and his score in ‘Titus’. Eventually he came to his own, but it took a lot of work.
“In the end, ‘Titus’ became a tribute to Elliot Goldenthal because it contains just about all the styles of music that I’ve seen him write, that I’ve heard of his. He goes for the full-blown orchestral choral oratorio-style opening all the way to the really nutty circus music that you don’t know unless you know his theater pieces. It has forties big band-style in it, it has the ‘Alien 3’ rave-style music, the hard driving punk stuff, it has new rap stuff, the orchestral textures, the electronic textures, and then there are some new things. We called it a timpani score because there were a few pieces that are like timpani concertos. ‘Titus’ has a percussive march at its very opening and then breaks open into this choral Latin text cue; a big giant orchestral piece. It’s a powerful oratorio, even more so on the CD because it starts with a strong a capella male choral texture, an opening statement, while the orchestra and the drums come later.
“This is possibly Elliot’s best score. He should not only be nominated for this score, but he should really win for this score, which be probably won’t because this film will be wrought in controversy.”
Conductor Steven Mercurio: “Everything was so important with ‘Titus’, this being Julie’s first feature film. It was their first chance for the two of them to work together on a film. Elliot obviously made his career and a lot of money in films and Julie did her thing from Broadway. It’s something they’ve dreamed of for a long time – the chance of their two careers converging this way. To be part of that and realizing what a touchy situation it was emotionally and personally, it was nice to be in the middle of that to hear Julie’s concerns and to hear Elliot’s desires.
“I think there was a personal breakthrough for Elliot in one cue in particular towards the end of the film. Originally he wrote an eight-minute cue [‘Adagio’] that I conducted in two different ways. I did one that was the tempo that they wanted for the film, and then one where Elliot said, ‘Forget the film; conduct the piece a la Bernstein or Van Karajan, really slow and dramatic. Go to town on it.’ It gave us all goose bumps; it was really beautiful. This version doesn’t quite fit the film, but he’d written a piece of music that was basically developmental, which is not the nature of film scoring. This was about sequencing a theme in a very Mahler-like way, where it wasn’t a question of repetition; it was a question of shifting keys, and it became more contrapuntal. There was quite a bit of counterpoint in it, sequencing, and dramatic layering, that I’ve never heard him really do. That was a nice step forward for him as a composer, a strong moment, and exciting in every way.”
Recording engineer Joel Iwataki: “‘Titus’ is absolutely incredible. It’s going to be a classic film that’s going to live on for years and years. As many times as I’ve seen it, I like it more each time I see it. You kind of psych yourself up for these films when you work on them; you want it to be good and you’re all involved in it. Many times you go back and see a screening or you go to a theater and see it and wonder what you were so excited about. But with this one, it’s just powerful; so incredible. The final cue 8M77 (‘Adagio’) in the film was an amazing piece. That was just one of those magical experiences when recording it. It was so powerful and at the end of it I looked at Teese – this has happened two or three times in our career with Elliot – we looked at each other and both had tears in our eyes from the sheer power if the music.
“Shakespeare was just an incredible poet and writer. People would go through these horrible travails, but then they would speak about it so eloquently. Also, Elliot and Julie have a long history of working together, and they both believe in each other so strongly. There were a number of conflicts, which was normal, but this was compounded by the fact that they have a personal relationship. This was further complicated by the fact that this was such a difficult task to write music for a film based on a Shakespearean play. Because of the personal relationship the conflicts manifest themselves differently than a normal composer/director relationship. I was amazed with them; as soon as it started to get personal they would realize where it was headed and they’d stop because they have such deep respect for each other’s artistry.”
Orchestrator Robert Elhai: “‘Titus’ was a challenge to orchestrate because of its huge amount of music. The bar count, the page count, the number of pages in the score was probably more than any other movie, except maybe ‘Batman Forever’. You have to remember that this is Shakespeare diffused through Julie, and it’s very difficult to discern between Julie’s vision and Elliot’s vision in this film because they both worked so closely together and their ideas are so intertwined with each other. For instance, the big band stuff – this is Elliot’s idea based on Julie’s vision, so it’s all intertwined. I don’t think ‘Titus’ jumps off the curb for Elliot’s imagination. In every single project he does he’s looking for ways to push the envelope to find a new way of doing something."
Conductor Jonathan Sheffer: “I feel Elliot’s at the top of his game. ‘Titus’ is a very varied score; everything from funk to the most extreme kinds of avant-garde orchestral music. The film is extraordinarily powerful, violent, and visual, while the music completely supports it. This is a partnership that’s at the peak of what they do. This is a score that contains all the elements of Elliot’s composing.”