Wallace and Gromit

Stop-motion maven Nick Park touched a worldwide chord with his enormously successful shorts about a somewhat absent-minded amateur inventor and his intelligent (and very expressive) dog. Despite the quintessentially British nature of the characters, their setting, and their various exploits, they are popular with worldwide audiences. It was thus somewhat of a surprise that their feature (Wallace and Gromit and the Curse of the Were-Rabbit) did not do spectacularly well in the United States. In fact, with the exception of Chicken Run, the features of Aardman Animation have not lit the US box office on fire (other titles include Flushed Away, Arthur Christmas, and Pirates: Band of Misfits). At any rate, the intrepid duo has benefited from the expressive music of Julian Nott (although the feature, being a DreamWorks Animation release, had additional music by Zimmer acolytes Lorne Balfe, Jim Dooley, Alastair King, Rupert Gregson-Williams, and Halli Cauthery).

This will focus on the scores for the three shorts made before the feature: A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave. (Unfortunately, none of this music has been released on CD, although there is a rare promo.) Nott's bouncy main theme perfectly encapsulates the whimsy of the two characters, its opening three descending notes building a foundation for the rest of the tune, most often played by brass with full orchestra accompaniment. It plays at the closing titles of the shorts, and briefly at the openings for A Grand Day Out and The Wrong Trousers.

A Grand Day Out has the most sparse scoring. There is some low-key music as Wallace and Gromit explore the moon and snippets of the main theme as the Cooker (as the machine they encounter is known) imagines skiing on Earth. The two most prominent uses of music are during the rocket building montage and the scene where Wallace and Gromit are hurrying to leave the moon. The former sequence features a brass-led melody while the latter has a more dramatic bent, and wouldn't feel out of place in a serious adventure film.

The next two shorts would showcase more music of this ilk. The Wrong Trousers opens with the main theme segueing into an old-fashioned horror movie stinger as the shadow of the Techno-Trousers is revealed. The villainous Feathers McGraw plays source music on his radio, but there is one simple musical gesture that Nott makes regarding the character that I have found effective since I first saw this short as youngling: McGraw observes Gromit using the trousers to paint the ceiling, and there is an ominous timpani stroke as the camera zooms is on the penguin's expressionless, blinking visage. There is also music during the exhilarating model train chase that recalls the style of music used during A Grand Day Out's rocket building montage.

But it is in A Close Shave where Nott gets to write the most prominent music. A favorite sequence is a parody of Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds, where Wallace slides down chutes in preparation for his window-cleaning mission. (Gromit more practically decides just to use a door, and there is a nice, subtle bit of animation as he looks up prior to getting in the motorcycle's sidecar. Is he rolling his eyes? Looking to see that Wallace didn't mess anything up on his journey over?) Fittingly, Nott scores the scene with noble, militaristic brass theme that starts out with a nifty opening percussion cadence. A lighter theme on strings emerges as Gromit gets in, before the noble theme repeats again. Wallace's endearing encounters with Wendolene ("Wallace with a wig on," as Park explains) feature tender string scoring, and there is an especially poignant passage underscoring the scene where the two grasp each other's hands as a flock of sheep carries Wallace away.

When Shaun the sheep accidentally gets sucked into Wallace's Knit-O-Matic, Nott uses ominous music, with an especially dramatic passage for strings. The climax of the film has the most energetic music, starting with the truck/motorcycle/plane chase. This thrilling sequence is scored with an almost out-of-control dance-like theme, while Gromit's aerial exploits earn a separate, soaring theme. Heavier music plays as Preston the dog's true nature is revealed ("Mal-what?") and a final frenzy of music plays as our heroes run to avoid being turned into dog meat.

Wallace and Gromit's theme has deservedly earned classic status, but the rest of Nott's music is adventurous, fun, thrilling, and highly effective. Hopefully, some specialty label will release a compilation of at least some of this fine music (though rights issues might tangle things up). But for now, one has to watch the films in order to hear the music, and that's not too hard to ask. Is it?