Spartacus (1960): Alex North’s Original Soundtrack, in 22 Sections (Stereo)

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

This is in honor of Kirk Douglas, who died yesterday at the age of 103.

I bought this soundtrack during the early 1990s, but a Honduran “man with a van” whom I’d hired to move my household in 1994, stole all my music.

I recall from the booklet that came with the score that composer Alex North traveled to the Balkans, in order to purchase an ancient instrument for his orchestra.

I first saw this picture on The Early Show on New York TV (4:30 p.m. weekdays), over the course of two or three days.

The next time I saw it was in my West German university town, Tübingen, at the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut’s Originalfassung (original version) night, circa 1982. I know that I was whistling one of the themes as my West German girlfriend and I crossed the bridge over the Neckar River, because she remarked, “Anyone hearing you always knows what movie you’ve just seen.”

When I bought the score ten-odd years later, I listened to it over and over. Once I had it blasting, while I called a publishing house assistant to get a review copy of a book for my magazine. I told the baffled young woman, “It’s the sound of freedom!”

Alex North’s brilliant, ambitious score was nominated for the Oscar for Best Music, “Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture” but did not win, nor should it have. The best score of the year was Elmer Bernstein’s music to John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven, which was also nominated in vain. Instead, Ernest Gold won for his score to Otto Preminger’s epic about the founding of modern Israel, Exodus.

That was surely political, but countervailing politics were in play. To those who would scream, “the Jooos!,” I say, Elmer Bernstein, aka “Bernstein West,” was also a Jew, as was Kirk Douglas. Dimitri Tiomkin, who was nominated for The Alamo, was a Jew, as was Andre Previn, who was nominated for Elmer Gantry, and North. They were all Jews!

(Imagine that, a time when one masterpiece would go up against another. That both scores were composed by Jews must have been due to some ethnocentric conspiracy. Gentile genetic endowment out of one side of their mouths, Jewish ethnocentrism out of the other. By contrast, today we have the Oscar-winning movie theme song, “It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” from Hustle & Flow (2005), whose composing team was Jew-free.)


I thank The Barred Subject for posting all of these sections.

Download them, before the KK has them pulled!


Spartacus (1960) Original Soundtrack: 1 Overture


 

2 Main Theme



 

3 The Mines



 

4 Caravan



 

5 First Pair



 

6 Gladiators Fight to the Death



 

07 Brooding



 

8 On to Vesuvius



 

9 Oysters and Snails



 

10 Hopeful Preparations



 


11 Vesuvius Montage



 


12 Blue Shadows and Purple Hills



 

13 Headed for Freedom



 

14 Homeward Bound



 

15 Metapontum Triumph



 

16 Festival



 

17 Expectant Parents




 

18 Prelude to Battle



 

19 Formations



 

20 Goodbye, My Life, My Love



 



21 Love Theme

[N.S.: I have no idea why this theme pops up so late; it’s from much earlier in the picture. Perhaps it was added later by the original poster.]



 

22 Bonus Track: On to the Sea/Infant Burial