Salon | Sharps and Flats: Music from the Motion Picture Titanic

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MUSIC FROM THE MOTION PICTURE "TITANIC"
COMPOSED AND CONDUCTED BY JAMES HORNER_|_SONY CLASSICAL

AND THE BAND PLAYED ON
MUSIC PLAYED ON THE TITANIC_|_I SALONISTI_|_LONDON RECORDS

BY PAUL FESTA | I was deeply moved by James Cameron's "Titanic." In addition to the pathos evoked by the sight of all those passengers dying like plankton and by the sadder spectacle of Leonardo DiCaprio making love to someone who was not me, I was reminded of an adventure-turned-tragedy I suffered in my youth. One summer many years ago, as a violin student in New York, I was contracted to play string quartets on the QE2, which, famously, ran aground. That was the adventure. The tragedy was that I was not yet on the boat.

So I missed out both on getting shipwrecked and on a week of playing lite classics for seasick diners. Life goes on. But now I find myself able to relive that maritime disaster with the aid of two compact discs. The first, from London, is a charming compilation of dinner music entitled "And the Band Played On: Music Performed on the Titanic." The second, from Sony Classical, features the abysmal music that accompanies Cameron's film.

Worse things first. The greatest virtue of this Oscar-nominated morass of synthesizers and sentimentality is the relative restraint with which it was applied in the movie. After recent soundtrack catastrophes like the accompaniment to Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet" (during which musical sledgehammers fell as relentlessly as passengers from a capsizing cruise liner), it was a pleasant surprise not to be accosted at every turn by James Horner's "Titanic" score. In fact, I seldom objected to this soundtrack during the movie; there was usually enough eye-candy on the screen to distract me from what oozed from the speakers. Listening to this music outside of a movie theater, however, is not advised. One risks noticing that it is harmonically insipid, sadistically repetitive and hideously sentimental.

London's Titanic CD, on the other hand, is delightful. Included here are the greatest hits of music played unobtrusively at dinner: "Humoresque," "Wiener Blut," "None but the Lonely Heart" and the "Nearer my God to Thee" tune that kept those sinking players honorably absorbed in their work while everyone else was engaged in unseemly competition for too few lifeboats. The disc succeeds in capturing an age and an atmosphere. The quintet of piano and strings turns in appropriate performances: Competent but not virtuoso, they sound like gig musicians who have temporarily diverted the dining room's attention to themselves from the baked Alaska and are enjoying the moment tremendously. So winsome are both these tunes and these players that they could almost get your mind off Leonardo DiCaprio. Almost.
SALON | Feb. 19, 1998

Paul Festa is a regular contributor to Salon.