Basil Poledouris has written one of the year's best scores for one of the year's most wretched films, Conan the Barbarian. Whatever Poledouris saw when he scored this film is a wonder. Suffused with a sense of heroic tragedy, his music could have easily been the score for an important film instead of this ineffectual mess. The score is handsome, strikingly original and, wonder of wonders, sensitive and often convincing in spite of the film's ghastly stupidity. This is a ceremonial work but is in its own way also concerned with joy. What is celebrated in Poledouris' ode is nothing less than a triumph over pain and despair, with music of deeply felt certitude. The drama of Poledouris' sensibilities is not laid on externally, but rises unselfconsciously and drawn to fable scale.

Poledouris' music is thoroughly revelatory, content to radiate a heroism of fairy-tale sadness and beauty that is often luminous, as in the wiving sequences. The music eases onto its own evocation of some other history with seamless naturalness and an authenticity of idiom borne of communicative speculation of a high nature. Evidently, Poledouris worked hard on this fine score, and we are treated to a virtuosic account in his orchestral and choral writing. He imparts great excitement to his rough-hewn battles and equally captivating esprit to the romance, including a stunning funeral pyre threnody for the death of Conan's wife. There is a lyricism here that is noble and rich with the contemplation articulated without indulging in excessive rhetoric. Poledouris' music is, in the best sense, theatrical and does not knuckle under to irrelevant incident. Thoroughly accessible, suggestive of a celebration of life that is compelling, this score creates a space of distinct enchantment and something foreign and primeval - occasionally incredibly haunting. Impressive architecture, fine choral outburst, an underlying cathartic puissance give real power to the score.

Conan is one of the most atrociously recorded films - the entire soundtrack is a gigantic swamp sludge. MCA's soundtrack album of Poledouris' splendid score is not much better. The scoring and playing are much more sonorous than the disc allows. Despite such distractions, the listener is inescapably drawn into the orbit of a moving musical drama.