The Balto Film Score

The animated film output by Steven Spielberg is largely known for his work with the DreamWorks company that was founded with David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. However, few people realize that Spielberg had an animated film production company prior to this time that was called Amblimation. The last movie that was made by this team was Balto, a Universal Pictures film that was a retelling of a true story that involved a dog in Alaska. In the historical version, the dog, named Balto, helped to save many children from an epidemic of diphtheria by carrying medication over the frozen landscape to the city of Nome, Alaska. To give the movie more emotional resonance, the expertise of James Horner was hired to compose the film score.

Even among serious fans of movie soundtrack albums, the film score for Balto is not known very well and remains a hidden treasure. For those who managed to get a copy of the movie soundtrack before it went out of print, it is a revered classic, both with children and adults. The suspense and urgency of the trip that Balto must make is reflected in pieces like The Journey Begins and Balto Brings the Medicine. Other songs that deserve mentioning are the somber Heritage of the Wolf and Jenna, a secondary theme that is associated with another dog character. Almost all of the songs on the film score play with the main theme and add variations to the song structure.

For the main theme, James Horner wanted a musician with a recognizable voice that would be able to carry his composition through high and low points. In Steve Winwood, Horner found the man he wanted. The resulting main theme, also called Reach For the Light, is an obvious high point and one that is mirrored in many other pieces on the album. The ability of James Horner to take a simple theme and manipulate it in a way that can provide different emotional reactions has become a hallmark of his work with many different movie soundtrack albums.