From the “better late than never” file, Christophe Beck’s “Buffy” score is finally available on CD. It actually came out in 2008, and I just stumbled across it the other day in Best Buy. But 2008 was still five years after the series ended and seven years after Beck left the show. (He now primarily does film compositions.)
The very fact that the TV score was noticed by the fans — who had been demanding this release for years — shows how good it was. Renowned TV composers comprise a short list: Certainly, Mark Snow’s “X-Files” work comes to mind. And among current shows, I think “24” composer Sean Callery does a good job (although like everything on that show, the music is starting to repeat itself).
The movie “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” zinged the business of TV scoring nicely in the scene where Jason Segel’s character is completely phoning it in as he plays clichéd crime music for a “CSI”-style show. When he’s having a bad day, he plays “Seinfeld”-style music over the top of the crime scenes. TV scores tend to be so predictable that you can be a fan of a series without even realizing the show has a score.
But “Buffy” fans couldn’t help but notice Beck’s contribution to Seasons 2-5 (which — no coincidence — were the series’ peak years). The CD includes a lot of his classics, including a great stretch of Season 3 music: the haunting “Slayer’s Elegy,” from when an alternate-universe Buffy stakes the entire cast in “The Wish”; the bittersweet “Magic Snow Music,” from when the Powers That Be thwart Angel’s suicide attempt in “Amends,” and the aggressively horn-driven “Faith’s End” from the Buffy-Faith fight in “Graduation Day Part 1.” It’s almost impossible to imagine these scenes without Beck’s music.
Season 4’s “Hush” and “Restless” were heavily music-driven — give “Buffy” creator Joss Whedon credit for tapping into a major strength on his team — and this CD includes seven cuts from those two episodes. Season 5 finale “The Gift” also gets four tracks.
The classic Buffy-Angel love theme (“Close Your Eyes”) isn’t included, presumably because it was released as part of the “Buffy” soundtrack way back in 1999. With 29 tracks, you’ll get your money’s worth from this CD, although there are enough omissions to make up a decent second volume (the Buffy-Angel ice skating music from “What’s My Line Part 1” comes to mind).
Whedon owes Beck almost as much as George Lucas owes John Williams. It’s nice to see he’s finally been acknowledged in CD form.