Out of Africa

Remembering Out of Africa as one beautiful orchestral theme can obscure the album’s changes of scale. John Barry places brief pieces around broader statements, while Karen’s theme returns at several points. Those different dimensions make a sequence, rather than an uninterrupted stretch of scenic accompaniment.

The focus is the twelve-track soundtrack album issued with the 1985 film, supplied here by Geffen. At roughly thirty-three minutes, it is not the complete score arranged in scene order. Mozart and the existing song Let the Rest of the World Go By also appear, so the programme is not entirely new Barry composition. It is distinct from Joel McNeely’s separate 1997 recording and the full programme of the 2024 expanded release.

Large statements need smaller neighbours

The opening theme lasts about three minutes twelve seconds. I’m Better at Hello and Have You Got a Story for Me? then occupy little more than a minute each. Hear that change of proportion rather than treating the shorter pieces as interruptions before another famous melody. How long a musical idea remains present affects the space available to what follows. Not every track needs to build toward an equally large climax.

Music from elsewhere enters the sequence

Track four presents approximately two minutes fifty seconds from Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, not the whole concerto or complete slow movement. Jack Brymer, Neville Marriner and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields supply that performance. Karen’s Journey also incorporates the traditional Siyawe. Distinguishing these sources prevents the film’s geographical title from becoming an inaccurate description of every musical tradition on the album.

A flight is part of a larger return

Flying Over Africa offers an expansive melodic centre, but it is not the whole record. Karen’s theme subsequently returns in differently placed pieces before You Are Karen closes the sequence. A recurring theme need not simply repeat its original emotional position: the intervening music changes the listener’s point of reference. Compare the opening, the flight piece and the finale without relying on remembered images to supply all their connections.