MohicanLand Musical Musings: The Music of the Last of the Mohicans
"I Will Find You" is the haunting song we hear when our three heroesHawkeye, Uncas, and
Chingachgookrace up the mountainside to rescue their charges, having left them to Magua and the Hurons in
the cave behind the waterfall. This scene has a strange dream-like quality to it, which may be due to
the fact that the scene is shot from a distance and because the vocals seem to "fill the space" between us
and the distant action and so we do not hear the sounds in the scenes (e.g., panting breath or footsteps).
[Note that "I Will Find You" was removed from the DVD version.]
This song was written and performed by the Irish group Clannad. It occurs in a long-play and much varied
version on three of their CDs: Banba, Themes, and Ultimate
Collection. This piece was created for the movie, and then added to the CD when
it was released in 1993. Clannad talks about the making and recording of this scone in a wonderful interview in
Dirty Linen, #47 Aug/Sep '93, including
their conversations with Michael Mann about which languages to use in the song.
The song was obviously recorded, even written or rewritten, a number of times, because there
are actually three versions of "I Will Find You", which are compared below: the one we hear in the movie, the
one on the LOTM CD soundtrack, and the one on Banba. All three are similar in orchestration but
vary somewhat in how the vocals are arranged. The choice of the wording "I Will Find You" is interesting. These
words are in the script twicefirst, at the stockade, Hawkeye tells Cora to stay close to her father and
the other officers, but she says to him, "No, I will find you." And again, of course, in the now famous scene behind
the waterfall when Hawkeye says "Stay alive... I will find you."
It is worth noting, also, that on the Banba CD liner notes, Clannad give special thanks to
Wes Studi,
possibly for assistance with the Cherokee.
As mentioned above, the three versions of the piece are similar but different. They all begin with the
same deep tones of the bass and the high, haunting voice of Máire Brannan (Clannad Lead Vocalist).
On to "Promontory"
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Copyright �1999 - 2001 by Sarah F. Melcher - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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