Mr. Holland's Opus

The opening track of the score album. It portrays the ambition of the young Holland, who still believes himself a composer rather than a teacher.

• The short four-note fanfare at the opening (a brass signal announcing a celebration or an entrance) is the leitmotif (a short recurring melody tied to a character) that stands for Holland. It is worth following all the way to the end of the film.
• On the album, only this track and the symphony were performed by the London Metropolitan Orchestra. The film's beginning and end are joined by the sound of the same orchestra.
• One critic noted that the piece's construction resembles Kamen's theme for “Robin Hood.” The likeness comes through in the way the brass drives it forward.
• Bright and reaching straight ahead, this melody sounds like the music of someone who has not yet lost anything. It is worth comparing how much heavier the same theme becomes in the final track.

The theme for Iris, the wife who believes in Holland's dream. It holds the warmth of the home a husband returns to, worn out by the world outside.

• A solo piano sings the melody over woodwinds and soft strings. The choice of instruments calls to mind the couple seated at the piano at home.
• The four-note fanfare of the first track returns here, softened into something like a lullaby. The same melody becomes a different person depending on how it is played.
• This theme fills the opening of the symphony “American Symphony.” In the later concert version it became a movement in its own right, titled “Iris.”
• Without ornament, the piano picks out each note one at a time, sounding like the sincerity of someone of few words.

A 1960s hit included on the song album. It echoes Holland's way of teaching, which finds the classical within popular music.

• The melody's roots lie in the Minuet in G major attributed to Bach. Today the prevailing view is that the minuet was written by Christian Petzold.
• It turns the original minuet (a court dance in 3/4 time) into 4/4 pop. A single change of meter, and music for a court ball becomes a 1960s girl-group song.
• The song climbed as high as No. 2 on the US Billboard singles chart. For the students in the film, it was music far closer to home than classical.
• Holland's way of teaching, starting from what students know and leading them toward what they do not, is captured in this single song.

The theme for Cole, the son who cannot hear. The film's irony begins with a melody the son will never be able to hear.

• A flute sings a lyrical melody. One critic likened its romantic mood to Ennio Morricone's “La califfa.”
• As the piece unfolds, Cole's melody overlaps with Holland's theme. In the scene where father and son grow closer through sign language, the two leitmotifs are woven together.
• The pop version, with lyrics set to this melody, is “Cole's Song,” sung by Julian Lennon. The same tune was used twice, once as an instrumental and once as a song.
• In the concert version of the symphony, this melody became a standalone movement called “Cole's Tune.”

The theme for Rowena, the gifted student who dreams of New York. The road Holland did not take lives on in music.

• Woodwinds and cello carry the melody over slow strings. A harp glissando (a technique of sweeping across the strings so the notes slide into one another) adds a wistful haze.
• One critic reads this melody as an inversion of the love theme for Iris. The same longing splits into a love fulfilled and a love unfulfilled.
• At over 6 minutes, it is one of the longest cues on the score album. Its length sounds like a hesitation drawn out.
• Within the symphony this theme returns, both plainly and by suggestion. One can hear it as a sign that Holland put even this feeling into his work.

A song Lennon dedicated to his young son. In the film, Holland sings it while signing it, offering it to his son who cannot hear.

• The original, from Lennon's last studio album “Double Fantasy,” sounds as if it were whispered beside a sleeping child. It holds a father's promises and worries.
• In the film, the song Holland sings and his signing hands carry the song together. It is a scene in which sound and gesture say the same thing.
• The song compilation album includes the original by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. It is worth listening to Holland's version in the film side by side with the original.
• A father-son quarrel that began with Lennon's death is resolved through Lennon's song. This structure makes the scene feel not like coincidence but like inevitability.

A cue that follows Holland as he enters the auditorium on his last day. The themes scattered throughout the film return here one after another.

• Cole's melody, the love theme with Iris and a playful scherzo (a fast, humorous piece) go by in turn. The structure looks back over the whole film once more.
• The final climax belongs to Holland's theme, first heard in the opening track. The same melody now sounds far heavier and grander than at first.
• Because the music doesn't explain in advance but calls up memories one by one, the audience comes to grasp on its own what the scene means.
• This cue serves as the threshold to the symphony that follows immediately.

The symphony Holland has been writing for thirty years. Every theme heard in the film is bound together in this one piece.

• The album version runs about 8 minutes 30 seconds, passing through Holland's theme, Iris's theme, Cole's melody and Rowena's theme before reaching a finale built on Holland's theme. Only the last 3 minutes or so are heard in the film.
• A rhythm section (the group of instruments that holds down a band's beat) of drums, electric guitar and bass is added to the orchestra. It was controversial at the film's release, but the reading that this is the music of a teacher who taught through rock won people over.
• With this piece Kamen won the 1997 Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement.
• It was later expanded into an 18-minute concert version in five movements, and a recording by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Leonard Slatkin survives.