Based on Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved 1905 children’s book, A Little Princess (released 90 years later) was Alfonso Cuarón’s second film, and his first English-language one. It stars Liesel Matthews as a young girl, Sara, who encounters cruelty at the boarding school she is sent to following the death of her father at war. Greeted with almost universal acclaim, the film highlights the power of childhood imagination and magic as it tells what is actually a rather sad story (but one, of course, with a happy ending).
Cuarón couldn’t have selected a better composer for the project – Patrick Doyle was at the peak of his powers and this is one of his greatest works, itself full of all the requisite magic. His musical accompaniment to the tale is graceful, charming, lilting and truly, exquisitely beautiful – and it is so full of colour. Some of this colour is provided by Indian elements, particularly in the early sections – the opening “Ramayana: A Morning Raga” is a feast of flavours of the subcontinent, and this continues into “Children Running”, full of youthful exuberance – and just a hint of the score’s main theme, though Doyle holds back revealing it in all its glory for a while.
The standalone “Cristina Elisa Waltz” is indeed a joyful little waltz, classically elegant. In the following tracks Doyle continues to hint at his main theme – its fullest performance so far arrives in “Letter to Papa” and it is so soft and gentle at this moment, its full power is still to be revealed. There’s a quite magnificent secondary theme too, which debuts in “Angel Wings” – a track of only 67 seconds but it leaves such an impression, Doyle’s gentle orchestra joined by a heavenly choir.
Shortly after we hear the third major theme in a beautiful sequence of tracks, “The Trenches”, “Crewe and the Soldier” and “Alone”. The first of these is actually an extract from Michael Haydn’s String Quintet in C Major, but Doyle manages to play it perfectly as introduction to his own music, as the quintet segues into the following cue and the full string section swells, ultimately gets joined by the choir and plays like a requiem; and finally the forces sink down again, this time an oboe carrying the melody with modest orchestral accompaniment, the composer evoking a quite beautiful sadness, a sombre reflection on war.
There is a different kind of beauty in “On Another’s Sorrow”, in which mezzo-soprano Catherine Hopper provides wordless vocals. A reprise of the “Angel Wings” theme in “Compassion” sees a multi-layered children’s choir adding real depth to what is such a lovely piece of music, a feeling continued in the following “For the Princess” with one of the other themes.
The main theme is finally unleashed in all its glory in “Kindle My Heart”, with some of the Indian elements reappearing for the first time in a while to accompany the composer’s then-young daughter Abigail whose angelic voice has just the right delicateness to it. (To be clear, while I assume she is no longer as young as she was in 1995, I imagine she is still younger than her father even today.) In the piece’s middle section, the melody is carried on by the orchestra with ethnic accompaniment before Abigail returns over greater instrumental forces this time to conclude.
Alongside all the wonderful thematic statements, one of the score’s great joys is the set of standalone vignettes – there was the waltz early on, and then later comes the delightful “The Locket Hunt”, a grand piece of classically-inspired adventure music. Later on, “Emilia Elopes” is a charming little scherzo that leads into the score’s only piece of action music, the dynamic “The Escape”, Doyle’s thematic material heard this time in a very different guise.
The “Angel Wings” theme has another exquisite treatment towards the end of the score in “Just Make Believe”, the melody carried this time primarily by harp, in magical fashion; then “Touched by an Angel” is everything you might want a track with that name to sound like, the main theme getting to shine in non-vocal form. It’s such a beauty. “Papa!” explodes with unadulterated joy in its second half – the main theme again – before “The Goodbye” offers a perfect conclusion to the score, various thematic elements coming into play including a reprise of the vocal version of the main theme (sung by the film’s young lead this time).
While the score features a number of quite short cues, Doyle ensures that each of them is a proper piece of music and so it never feels at all bitty. The core of themes which form the building blocks for it is really quite special, and the composer’s deft touch renders the work as a whole one of sheer class, shot through with childlike magic. In truth, the ten or so minutes of new music (a mixture of source music, brief previously-unreleased score cues and one alternative version) on Varese’s 2025 Deluxe Edition add little, but hopefully the release allows a new audience to appreciate a pure gem of a film score.
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