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The Passion of the Christ
was composed by John Debney. A life-long
Catholic, Debney has composed the
soundtrack for such films as My
Favorite Martian, Lost & Found,
Princess Diaries as well as Snow
Dogs, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius,
and the first two Spy Kids movies.
It took four months for
Debney to complete the soundtrack for Mel
Gibson’s historic movie. Debney tells
Ign.com that the project kind of “fell
into his lap.”
“I hadn't worked with Mel
before. It was a complete fluke. In
October [2003] I received a phone call
from a friend of mine—a lifelong friend of
mine, a guy I grew up on the same street
with. He was a producer of the film, Steve
McEveety, and he was sort of fishing
around a little bit. I hadn't talked to
him in a few years and was delighted to
hear from him, but my first thought was
'My gosh, I hope his family's okay.' And
he said 'No, no, the family's fine and
great.' And then we started to talk and he
was saying to me, sort of cryptically,
'We're working on this movie and Mel's
involved and we're not really sure of the
direction of the music and what to do.'
Steve then confided in me that it was
The Passion of the Christ and I fell
off my chair and I said 'You're kidding!'
'cause I'm a lifelong Catholic as Steve
is. And I said 'Well tell me about it.' So
he did. And I said ' Can I see the film?'
He sent the film over that same day. I
watched it with my wife and we were
incredibly touched by it and I offered to
watch some music on spec for Steve with
the thought that if Mel was kind enough,
would he want to listen to any of it. So
Steve said 'that would be great if you
would want to do that. We're not asking
you to, but if you want to, that would be
incredible.' So I did that over a weekend
and then Mel came over on a Monday, I
believe, heard some things I had done,
liked the direction of some of the stuff,
and a few hours later I got a phone call
and he hired me to do it.”
The soundtrack has a very
Middle Eastern flavor to it, says Debney,
but from the beginning his intention was
to compose a World Music score, with
“instruments from all parts of the world
and all time periods and just, you know,
have some fun with it. And that's sort of
what we did. And we experimented a lot
with different instruments...Then on the
other hand, you do have some traditional
moments where it's more about orchestra
and choir.”
Debney studied the music of
the period, which he discovered was very
simple, using flutes, a few crude stringed
instruments, percussion and vocals.
Some of the instruments
used on the soundtrack were quite
obscure. “There were the given
instruments like deduk and bamboo flutes
and things like that which are usually
utilized in this type of score, you know
the sort of ancient instruments. But there
were a lot of other interesting
instruments, like the erhu, which is an
ancient Chinese, single-string instrument
played with a bow, which I utilized for
Satan. It sort of became Satan's motif, as
it were. This instrument is very seductive
and beautiful and yet it's kind of
otherworldly sounding.”
Debney explains that the
score is sort of divided into three parts.
“First of all the very first reel in the
garden is completely a different
world than the rest of the film. Therefore
the music is different. Then once we get
into the bulk of the movie and we get out
of the garden there at night, it has
another feeling musically. Then from that
crucial moment where Mary has the
flashback to the end, is literally the
third act of the score, as it were. That
part of the score—and I think that this is
correct and again, this is from Mel—if we
had gone emotionally where we star with
Mary, if we had done that earlier in the
film, Mel's feeling was that it would
almost cheapen the fact. He said to me
many times, 'John, I don't want any God or
reverential music in this thing.' He said,
'We're gonna have it, but we need to wait
and we need to make sure that we earned
that, so that later in the movie when the
score can get bigger and it can get more
traditional, it can get more traditionally
emotional, I want to make sure that we
earned it.' You know, at the time when I
was writing the music we would have
discussion about it. And I sort of came to
the realization that he was right about
that. So in a traditional sense, this is a
different type of film score, certainly
for me. And I think, in general, that it's
a different type of score for a lot of
movies. It doesn't follow a traditional
arc. It's sort of in three acts, as it
were."
Debney says it is rare that
a director becomes so involved in the
composing of a soundtrack. “In Mel's
case, the first few go-arounds with him,
we sort of came to the realization that
the best process with him would be to
invite him to be a big part of the
creative process. As we would bring
different musicians in, I would invite Mel
over and we would work with these
musicians together. In that way, I was
really able to give Mel his vision. And in
many cases he would give out an idea and
we would try it and he'd realize 'No, I
guess I'm wrong. Let's try it your way
John' or 'Let's go back [and try this]’.”
“Mel has an incredible
musical ear, which I discovered,” he
adds. “He's also a pretty decent singer,
so he's sort of naturally a pretty musical
guy. I even invited him to come in and do
some vocalizations and chants with us.
Which he did…That's sort of the way we
worked on a lot of the score, is with this
family atmosphere with everybody sort of
trying things.”
“I wouldn't probably be on
a list of 20 or 30 composers that one
would normally think of for something like
this. So literally, in my opinion, 'cause
I'm a lifelong Catholic, I guess you could
call it a miracle, call it a fluke, call
it an accident, but it fell in my lap,”
says Debney. “Every day the thing that
got me through was my faith prayer which
was, ‘Lord, if you want me to make it to
the finish line, then help me make it to
the finish line’.”
Reviewed
by Jeff Burson and Doug Archer for
Catholic Music Network.
 The
Soundtrack is available from:
www.catholicmusicnetwork.com
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