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Notes on the Program
By Genevieve Lang
Babe
Nigel Westlake
n 1994 the Kennedy Miller post-production
studio in Sydney, Australia was bursting at
the seams with sound editors, visual effect
artists, CGI programmers, film editors, animatronic operators, and the then 30-something composer Nigel Westlake, who has
Technicolor memories of that time:
west of Sydney. Engaging him to write the film
score was a leap of faith — he’d only scored
two other feature-length films. “I set up a
room at the studio, and virtually didn’t go
home for several months,” he says. Director
Chris Noonan and producer George Miller
would visit up to three times a day:
We were all part of the Babe family, and all
of us were trying to weave a tale that was
underpinned by this simple philosophy —
the idea that the purity of an unprejudiced
spirit can be a real and tangible force for
positive change in the world.
Every morning Chris would hand me notes
for that day’s work. It was so clear how he
wanted the music to function in the film. It
was a godsend to have someone so proscriptive. Chris wasn’t telling me what to do
musically, but telling me what he wanted
the music to achieve dramatically. It was
really exciting to have such a focus, and for
it not to be a hit-and-miss process.
I
Westlake was then living with his young
family in St. Albans, about two hours north-
Farmer Hoggett and Babe
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The main theme — the Babe theme — is
lifted directly from the famous Maestoso
passage in the third movement of SaintSaëns’s Symphony No. 3 (1886), known as
his Organ Symphony. In the context of the
film score, the organ is never heard, as
Westlake explains:
It was too heavy, too gothic, for the tone
of the movie, but the theme is optimistic
and wholesome, and very versatile. It
can be subtle and sweet, or heraldic and
jubilant, depending on the demands of
the scene.
In fact, the Organ Symphony wasn’t the direct inspiration for Babe’s theme. In the
1970s pop singers Scott Fitzgerald and
Yvonne Keeley had a Top of the Pops hit in
Britain and Australia with “If I Had Words,”
which took the same Maestoso melody from
Saint-Saëns and added a reggae beat. It was
this song, with lyrics by Jonathan Hodge,
that Noonan and Miller had already settled
on before Westlake joined the team:
If I had words, to make a day for you
I’d give you a morning, golden and true.
I would make this day last for all time.
Then fill the night deep in moonshine.
The song is heard in full twice in the film —
sung by Farmer Hoggett at the film’s emotional highpoint, when Babe’s survival is in
question, and again as the end credits roll: all’s
well that ends well, and the trio of mice who
appear at each of the scene changes serenades
the audience out of the theater with a more
comic touch. Their performance is a sped-up
version of the tune.
In total, the 92-minute film contains a 78minute score, of which 10 minutes comes
from the Saint-Saëns symphony, 62 minutes
are original music by Westlake, and the remainder comprises music by Delibes (Pizzicato Polka, from the ballet Sylvia) and Grieg
(Spring Dance, a Norwegian leaping dance
from his Lyric Pieces, Op. 47, for piano). Westlake’s original music introduces two other leitmotifs — themes that accompany a character
or idea in the story. Farmer Hoggett, as the
The sheep share their password
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Babe’s Backstory
Chris Noonan’s and George Miller’s screenplay for Babe was based on the 1983 children’s
novel The Sheep-Pig, by Dick King-Smith, who
had spent 20 years working as a farmer in rural
England. In a nod to the story’s provenance, the
sheepdog championship takes place at “Kingsmith Fairground” and toward the beginning of
the film, Esme Hoggett polishes a trophy for the
“Kingsmith Dick Show”
Babe was filmed in Robertson, a village with
a population of less than 2,000 in the Southern
Highlands of the state of New South Wales,
along Australia’s southeastern coast.
other central character, earned one of his very
own. The composer says:
He’s a hard-working, productive man.
Somewhat eccentric, but completely honest. James Cromwell, who plays Hoggett, is
tall and slim. The bassoon was the logical
choice for him. In the right context, it can
The first meeting
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lend itself to slightly comical situations, but
is capable of communicating poise and integrity at the same time.
(Incidentally, it’s rumored that Cromwell
nearly turned down the role on the basis that
the script had only about 16 lines of dialogue.
The film garnered him an Oscar nomination
for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.)
Westlake’s other original theme, nicknamed The River of Sadness, underscored the
dark fate that awaited many of the farmyard
friends. For instance, the moment when the
pigs are being herded into the meat truck to
be transported to “the other world of endless
pleasures,” Miller asked for poignant, heartrending music. Westlake says, “I wanted to
imbue it with immense tragedy. It’s some of
the saddest music I’d written up to that point
in my life.”
For Westlake, a film score’s purpose is “to
lead the audience’s nose to the source of the
dramatic subtext and emotional content.
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The composer adds:
There’s a fine line between manipulating
your audience through music to force the
drama down their throats and allowing
them to discover it for themselves.”
Westlake revisited the score in 2014, setting
aside a number of months to prepare it for live
performance by the Melbourne Symphony
Orchestra, which presented the World Premiere of the score performed live to the complete film in 2015. He says:
You can do things in a recording studio that
just aren’t possible in a concert hall. When
it’s live, it’s all happening in the moment, so
there’s not the same chance to move a microphone closer for greater warmth. Using
the original as bare bones, I’ve enriched it
by consolidating textures and colors.
There’s different harmonic distribution of
the notes, different voicings. The melodic
ideas have been reinforced and given more
coloration within the orchestration. Music
can serve a different function for every film.
The score for Babe is very proactive. It’s enmeshed in the onscreen action, almost like
another character.
Westlake says the score is very much in the
style of a traditional storybook. “The idea was
that the score would sound like some kind of
classical symphony. Back in 1994, the last
thing I wrote was the first thing you hear.” The
“Overture” plays underneath the opening
scene. He adds that just as the camera reveals
all the characters, the music, too,
reveals all the musical elements before you
actually see them, functioning in the same
way as a classical form overture. I look back
now and see the use of classical elements as
very clever. At the time, I had trouble accepting George and Chris’s instructions to
use the Saint-Saëns, Grieg, and Delibes, but
Barnyard friends
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now I recognize it as something of a stroke
of genius that has helped to make the
film timeless.
— Genevieve Lang © 2016
Instrumentation: two flutes (one doubling
piccolo, and one doubling alto flute and tin
whistle), two oboes (one doubling English
horn), two clarinets (one doubling bass clarinet), two bassoons (one doubling contrabassoon), four horns, three trumpets, three
trombones, tuba, timpani, orchestra bells,
cymbals, waterphone, marimba, tom-toms,
suspended cymbal, frame drums, crotales,
mark tree, snare drum, xylophone, sleigh
bells, small jingle bells, wind gong, marimba,
sizzle cymbal, tambourine, ratchet, bass
drum, triangle, castanets, suspended crash
cymbal, tam-tam, splash cymbal, harp, celeste, piano, and strings.
This program note was commssioned for the
Sydney Symphony Orchestra by Symphony
Services International. Reprinted with
permission.
Tiny troubadors
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Welcome to the farm