Composer: James Horner.

Personnel: Randy Kerber (keyboards).

Additional personnel: Josh Groban, Bulgarian Women's Choir (vocals).

Audio Mixers: Simon Rhodes; Humberto Gatica.

Recording information: Chartmaker Studios; Todd-AO Scoring Stage, Studio City, CA.

Editor: Simon Rhodes.

Arrangers: James Horner; Randy Kerber.

Throbbing drums, wailing chants, and ominous strings herald the onset of TROY, James Horner's sweepingly atmospheric score to Wolfgang Petersen's Homer-based epic. Horner excels at evoking celluloid in sound, be it folksy sentiments in the baseball fantasy FIELD OF DREAMS or all-consuming shipboard romance and tragedy in the period nautical-disaster movie TITANIC.

Here he skillfully sets the scene with the heraldic opening salvo of "3200 Years Ago," followed by the shining city splendor of "Troy." Horner is also a master of the tense musical preamble, as evidenced by the brooding arrangement of "The Night Before," which foreshadows tragedy in "The Greek Army and Its Defeat." There's some relief from the unremitting tension in the romantic "Briseis and Achilles," but since this is a Greek myth, the tale shifts the proceedings back to the battle for Troy, to the sound of much lamentation and full orchestral accompaniment.