An Odyssey in Music

Earlier this summer, Carl Sagan's classic mini-series Cosmos was updated for a new generation. Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson, took many of the same broad concepts, updated the facts, added some neat stories of unsung scientific heroes, and injected a healthy dose of stern rebuttal to science deniers. The result was both entertaining and insightful.

Overlooked by most viewers was the background music that accompanied almost every minute of every episode. That music was written by Alan Silvestri, a composer with three decades of film experience, and who (as far as I know) hasn't worked in television since the very beginning of that long career. The reputation of Cosmos may well have enticed him to take the job. Or maybe it was some persuasion from executive producer Seth McFarlane, whose love of music has kept his animated series among the mere handful of television series in this day and age to still use a live orchestra for the score. In any case, the results are a joy to listen to. Music from all 13 episodes have been gathered in a four-volume soundtrack available for digital download. I've only picked up the first volume so far, but I've liked it enough to grab the rest in the near future.

I'm a long time fan of Alan Silvestri -- particularly his earlier work on the Back to the Future films, Predator, and The Abyss. His work on Cosmos is a bit of a departure for him in a number of ways. Where his past scores have almost exclusively used a conventional orchestra, his sound palette for Cosmos is much more of a fusion of orchestra and synthesizer. Some tracks on Volume 1, such as "Virgo Supercluster" and "Chance Nature of Existence," use extensive synth percussion and bass, with atmospheric musical phrases weaving in and out of the live string and brass sections. Other tracks use sounds that can't easily be placed as real or synthesized, such as the odd "spoons on water glasses" sounds in the track "Multiverse."

Cosmos is a far less melody driven score than most of Silvestri's work (and certainly less so than the music Vangelis created for the original Cosmos series). While percussion often serves to keep the music active and engaging, much of it feels more like a shaping of tone than a statement of theme. The main title track itself is a major example of this. It foregoes any one melodic throughline, in favor of a series of emotional presentations, each only a few seconds long -- soulful, vast, contemplative in turn.

But Silvestri doesn't completely abandon his traditional approach either. Tracks like "The Cosmos Is Yours" and "The Staggering Immensity of Time" unfold majestic orchestral passages. Some of his music evokes his own score for the movie Contact. One track ("Revelation of Immensity") even feels vaguely like John Williams' work for E.T. But both this classic approach and the new experimental one get ample time on the album.

We'll see how I feel about the whole if I really do pick up the other three volumes, but right now I would rate the first installment a B+. It's inspiring music for an inspiring program.