Little Women - Motion Picture Score 320cbr (Big Papi) 1993 Soundtrack

Thomas Newman has written a number of film soundtracks, but none finer than his 1994 efforts for "Little Women." In the opening "Orchard House (Main Title)," he manages to accomplish an enormous amount in three minutes and twenty-nine seconds: sketching the warmth in the March household, the presence and importance of church in the social life of a New England village, the distant threat of drumbeats as Civil War soldiers do their duties on battlefields far from the March girls, and the whirl of seasonal tasks and social pleasantries.
Some of the songs are so short as to be almost trifling--many are quite a few bit shorter than a full minute. Yet all serve the larger picture of showing us the rush and throb of life in this town, in this family, and the relationships among these close sisters and the men they ultimately love. In "A Telegram," Newman makes the strings sound positively breathless with anticipation while the flute soars smoothly overhead.

Once Jo goes off to New York to make a name for herself as a writer, she is accompanied by Newman's brassier, more confident music, musically demonstrating the change from her more circumscribed life in New England. And for those who love movie trivia, what fun to be able to say you know on what album "Spiderman" star Kirsten Dunst actually sings--as she does here in "For The Beauty of the Earth," along with her co-stars Trini Alvarado and Claire Danes.