Director Edward Zwick's 1989 tale of the first company of black soldiers in the Union Army during the Civil War captured America's abiding fascination with that great struggle. However, its most unsung player was composer James Horner, who created one of his most grand and memorable scores. So memorable, in fact, that some of its rich cures have been recycled by other filmmakers and Horner himself. More than any other single work, it's Glory that's responsible for Horner's remarkable rise to the top of his profession in the '90s. --Jerry McCulleyDirector Ed Zwick's stirring, tragic Civil War epic inspires a gorgeous, deeply moving score from James Horner, who mirrors the story's bitter ironies and ultimate outcome through a main theme and recurring motifs that emphasize the elegiac over the conventionally heroic. While martial drums inevitably rustle beneath Horner's autumnal charts, the somber main theme, when stated by the Harlem Boys Choir, is at once beautiful and heartbreaking, telegraphing the fate of the story's regiment of African-American volunteers in the Union Army. The climactic battle scene, itself a marvel of cinematic impressionism, elicits a more urgent, insistent Latin theme reminiscent of Carl Orff, and just as dramatic. --Sam Sutherland
