Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Soundtrack, Jeremy Soule, 2002
The Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets soundtrack is easily the best of Jeremy Soule’s five scores for the franchise. It also benefits from a stronger album presentation than his other Harry Potter soundtracks. Only around eight minutes of notable material are missing from the release, which thankfully trims away a good deal of ruminative underscore. In fact, Chamber of Secrets may well be Soule’s most satisfying fantasy soundtrack. That is a large claim, given his work on franchises such as The Elder Scrolls and Guild Wars. Yet Chamber of Secrets achieves a consistency of quality that Soule’s more bloated scores often lack. He unquestionably deserved his 2004 BAFTA Games Award for Best Original Music for Chamber of Secrets.
Soule’s designation as “the John Williams of game music” has always owed more to hyperbole and facile comparison than to any close musical parallel. Soule, for instance, seems almost entirely uninterested in the elaborate thematic structures that shape so much of Williams’ work. Even so, there is no denying that, at his best, he can create a lavish orchestral sound broadly reminiscent of Williams’ fantasy and science-fiction scores.
It was precisely that similarity of sound that landed Soule the first five Harry Potter games. On the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets soundtrack, he shows exactly why he was the right composer for the job. Soule gets the necessary balance of adventure, menace, and childlike wonder exactly right. He crafts the ideal musical counterpart for a quest that is light-hearted without ever being danger-free, set in a world that is at once homely, colourful, and immense in scale.
All these qualities come together in the album’s opening track, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Title Theme”. The cue successfully evokes the requisite sense of magic and majestic breadth essential to a Harry Potter score. A substantial choral component lends the music unexpected weight and scale before the orchestration retreats to solo piano alone. With impressive ease, Soule demonstrates how deftly he can handle swift, fluid changes of mood and instrumental texture. At the same time, it is obvious that he has found his own musical entry point into the world of Harry Potter, never merely sounding like a Williams imitator.
What is most refreshing about the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets soundtrack is its light touch, and the thoroughly winning sense of affability and charm that comes with it. Just as importantly, the variety displayed in the “Title Theme” carries across the whole score. The expected comic material, for instance, appears in “Washing”, which bounces along merrily without ever turning cloying or childish. In a similar vein, “House Point Theme” has great fun contrasting regal fanfares with tuba-driven, oompah-style humour. In the soundtrack’s liner notes, Chamber of Secrets audio manager Nick Lavier claims that Soule “doesn’t seem to be able to […] very easily […] write light, playful music.” On the evidence presented here, however, it is clearly an issue Soule had learned to overcome.
At the other end of the spectrum lie the soundtrack’s action cues. Despite the odd less-than-spectacular piece, they still outgun the battle music on almost all of Soule’s other fantasy scores. A comparison with his work for the same year’s The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is especially revealing. By contrast, Chamber of Secrets’ action writing is far more attractive, leaving no room for stale ostinato-driven staccato figures. It also has a genuine sense of rhythmic elasticity, never content to remain in one place for long as the entire orchestra contributes to these nimble, light-footed constructions.
Most importantly, there is a real sense of urgency and verve here that turns even brief tracks like “Draco” into energising interludes. It is difficult to overstate how much the vivid sound of a live orchestra contributes to these compositions. The full-throated, rasping brass writing in “Draco”, for example, is immensely satisfying.
Many other cues contribute to the range of textures and moods that make the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets soundtrack such a winning work. Take “Flying”, which captures Soule at his most spirited and effervescent. Here the music truly cuts loose, unable to contain its excitement at the open skies ahead. Then there is “Willow Level 3”, a beautifully contoured string adagio with Wagnerian overtones that shows Soule’s classical bent. “Spell Atmos”, with its calm solemnity and mystical gestures, feels almost like a trial run for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. That cue’s feeling of otherworldly wonder and gazing finds its charmingly modest counterpoint in the gorgeously meandering “Day”. Its hazy sustained woodwind chords, set against piano and celesta, are something to savour. It is a rare moment of absent-minded daydreaming, the sort of thing later Harry Potter scores, with their higher dramatic stakes, no longer really permit.
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