SUBMITTED BY Stephanie

March 31, 2004 — Gabriel Yared was originally going to provide the score to the upcoming film, Troy, unfortunately after a test screening on March 10th, the feedback wasn't too positive, and Gabriel Yared's score was completely scrapped. Here is his statement concerning the issue:

For the many people who have contacted me through email and other means over the last two weeks, I would like to summarise and present the facts which lead up to the rejection of my score for the film "Troy", after nearly a year of great and very fruitful collaboration with the director Wolfgang Petersen.

I first met Wolfgang Petersen in March 2003 when he presented to me the idea of working on the score for "Troy". We got off to a great start and he explained that he'd come to me to bring a deeper level of emotion to his film, and that although he knew I wasn't well known for writing big epic scores he told me he was confident from the things he had heard from my previous work that I would be more than capable of delivering a great score that would have a great original flavour.

In April 2003 I began work on the source music which needed to be pre-recorded as it was featured in the film. This was a great challenge as it required the creation of a convincing and effective ancient sound. The scenes included dances, funerals and mourning women and even drinking songs. In order to recreate the wailing and crying of the mourning women I used a Bulgarian choir and some Eastern European soloists to make what turned out to be a great sound very evocative of the setting. These mourning women pieces also gave me some great ideas that I would later incorporate into the underscore and soundtrack as a whole. It was also at these sessions that I met a young Macedonian singer, Tanja Tzarovska, who later go on to feature in the score and the song.

My overall concept was to create a classic yet modern score, epic and yet subtle and emotional. Classic in it's elaborated harmonies, architecture and structure, harking back to classic forms (such as the fugue based on Priam's Trojan theme). Modern in the way it was shaped and moulded to the action, and also in the sound of the score. I decided to supplement the large orchestra with a 25 piece brass section to provide a different colour, and a large choir which was sometime triple-tracked to give support and drama in the large battle scenes, as well to provide colour and give an overall feeling similar to that of an epic Cantata. The choir would say meaningless, invented but sonorous words written to enhance colour and emotion, as the choir of an ancient Greek tragedy. I also had a group of six percussionist who would overdub many interesting ethnic and conventional sounds and rhythms to work with other sampled percussion created by my sound designer Nathaniel Mechaly. The other significant colour would be based on the Bulgarian and ethnic vocals inspired by the source music. I would use a phrase of the Bulgarian choir to act as a distant siren (as in the very opening of the film and the ending), and then at certain important moments of the film I would use Tanja's voice (sometimes accompanied only by percussion), like a "voice of destiny", (for instance in key moments like the fight between Hector and Achilles). So this was the vision and plan of the score that came through after many approaches and much help and support from my team.

14th February and the next stage was to join my friend and engineer Peter Cobbin at Abbey Road Studios for the recording of the score. The next three weeks of recording were very tough and tiring with very long days of intense work, recording a 100-piece orchestra for two sessions a day followed by evenings of overdub sessions. It was a wonderful time however of creation and realisation and much enthusiasm from Wolfgang and the producers and production team. Wolfgang was over the moon and could be heard in the corridors of Abbey Road Studios singing the main themes, he was enchanted with the music and began to wonder about the temp music he'd been using thus far for the test screenings. So it came that Wolfgang used all his charm to persuade me to allow him to use some of our unfinished monitor mixes to replace the temp music. Despite my misgivings he seemed so keen and proud of the music that I agreed providing he promised that it would be used just to help him for the previews and would not be judged at all since it was work in progress - completely unmixed and often without all of the final overdubs. So it fell to Allan Jenkins (music editor) to work tirelessly to conform all of these monitor mixes to the appropriate cut at very short notice whilst we all continued with the work of finishing recording the score. The monitor mixes however were very well received by all the sound department working at Shepperton Studios and Wolfgang was delighted with the way in which the music worked at the temp dub. Indeed after the run through in the theatre the evening before the preview Wolfgang called the team at Abbey Road from Sacramento to say how great the music sounded.

After the test screening on the 10th March though, everything had changed. The focus group at the preview decided my music was "overpowering and too big, old fashioned and dated the film". Thus in this 24 hour period my score was completely rejected by director and studio and a collaboration of one year came to an end, despite the fact that it was unfinished work and that the dub was temporary and although good not always perfect. What shocked me the most was that I wasn't given the chance to fix or change my score or even to answer to any of the questions or accusations being leveled at my work, despite the fact that I had sessions booked to redo some cues to the new picture and new versions of other cues. Indeed the decision to replace me had been taken and meetings with other composers had already taken place before I even spoke personally to Wolfgang. I was later informed that it was "...a problem with the writing" and that the score was beyond the hope of being fixed and they were happy to have a new composer write the whole score just a month and a half before the worldwide release on the 14th May.

To continue reading the statement, click on the link below.