Music Notes: Kingdom of Heaven

Just came back from watching Kingdom of Heaven on IMAX. Good movie though it dragged for a bit. Don't watch this movie unless you're prepared to sit through a long movie. Still, it's a good movie.

I'm not going to give away any plot details except for that I believe that this movie is more historically accurate than Ridley Scott's other blockbuster, Gladiator.

About the music, there was one wierd point. At some point in the middle of the movie Bach's arrangement (originally composed by Hans Leo Hassler) of the Passion Chorale (O Sacred Head Surrounded, or in German, O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, literally O head full of blood and wounds) sung in German. For the vast majority of the movie the soundtrack consisted of music reminscent of Medieval music with some chant type stuff, music reminiscent of the Arabic tradition and generic "battle music" found in movies.

Then all of a sudden you hear a choir singing just the first two phrases of O haupt voll blut und wunden and then it aburptly stops. They just radomly inserted a Lutheran chorale composed in the 1700's in a movie about the Crusades. The most surprising part is none of the characters in the scene are anywhere near Christ-like.

It just doesn't make sense. And now I have that chorale, in German and English stuck in my head.