Film & Television, Bram Stoker's Dracula

Omni Music Publishing was launched in 2011 by veteran of the film music recording industry, Tim Rodier. Based out of Los Angeles, they are one of the few music publishing companies devoted to publishing full orchestral scores of modern film music. Providing an excellent opportunity to study some of the greatest film scores of all time, Wojciech Kilar's full score for the 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula is now available. Find out more below.

In 1992, Columbia Pictures released director Francis Ford Coppola's opulent vision of the Dracula myth, based on Bram Stoker's story. A massive success for the studio, the film earned five times its budget, and critics praised the its grand, gothic production design. Coppola wanted a composer with classical Eastern European sensitivies to write the score. After initially being rebuffed by Witold Lutosławski, Coppola tasked fellow Polish composer Wojciech Kilar to write the music. Kilar had composed classical works for stage and screen ever since completing his studies with Nadia Boulanger, and his affinity for traditional orchestration beautifully fits the world Coppola constructed. His score reflects both sides of Dracula: the menacing and the sensuous. All creative control was relinquished to Kilar, and the result was a masterfully crafted, emotionally moving score. Kilar chose to utilize traditional leitmotifs with four primary themes, each of which balance elements of horror, romance, vengeance, and redemption expertly. Dracula's music captures the character's tortured psyche; a forlorn soul tom between vengeance and unrequited love. The opening theme serves two functions: to underscore the intensity of Vlad, and to provide the audience with the exotic sounds of Romania. Nearly the entire score centers around the tonality of A minor. The final score was highly edited after the recording sessions, and therefore all the music in this edition is based on Kilar's unbridged creation, giving you a chance to appreciate what the composer initially intended in his score.