Henry V Soundtrack available on CD from Amazon
[N.B.: See also Debra's appreciation of Branagh's Henry V, and our We Happy Few section of L.I.T.S. Lists.]
Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 Henry V was not only a game changer in the realm of Shakespeare film adaptations, it also introduced us to a major new talent in the world of movie music, Patrick Doyle.
From the first dramatic, even alarming-sounding opening riffs, appropriate to what is, when all is said and done, something of a war movie, Doyle’s score transports the audience clean out of the fairy-tale-ish land of medieval gentiitiy called up by Olivier’s previous (and wonderful, just not to my taste) reading of Shakespeare’s play. (That score was penned by classical composer William Walton.
For many fans, myself included, the high point of the Doyle’s score is the heart-rending music behind the battle of Agincourt, as one sees the terrible muddy cost of Henry’s ambitions in France. This melody is only a few moments later transformed into the major-chord triumphalism of Henry’s victory lap through the battlefield as a male chorus sings a Latin Non Nobis, which translates, “Not to us, O Lord, but to your Name be all the glory.”
After leaving the theatre the first time I saw this film, I had Non Nobis in my head for days after—one of the better examples of an earworm!
Here’s the entire Non Nobis scene by way of YouTube. [N.B.: That's Patrick Doyle who begins the singing, and the slain boy Branagh carries to the wagon is a young Christian Bale.]
