The Dark Knight Rises (soundtrack)

Commercial performance

The album debuted at number 10 on the Canadian Albums Chart. and peaked at number 25 in the Spanish Albums Chart.

HDTracks version

A high-resolution, digital version of the soundtrack was released by HDTracks in 24-bit/192 kHz. It contains all the bonus tracks from the standard digital edition, but spectral analysis of the audio files shows they were not true high-resolution files, with no frequencies at all above 22 kHz or so (basically equivalent to a 48 kHz sampling rate).

Chant

The film features a prevalent chant of the phrase deshi basara, which, according to Hans Zimmer himself, means "rise up" in a language which he says he's happy to have kept secret (allegedly Moroccan or another Arabic dialect, though this is disputed).

Though the chant is not considered proper Arabic, it can be transcribed phonetically into dialectal Arabic as تيجي بسرعة (Tījī basara’ah), translated as either "come quickly" or "she comes quickly" (both forms are identical in Arabic, but the latter meaning would be a foreshadowing in the story), which is loosely consistent with Hans Zimmer's provided meaning of the chant.

When asked about the development of the chant, Zimmer said, "The chant became a very complicated thing because I wanted hundreds of thousands of voices, and it's not so easy to get hundreds of thousands of voices. So, we tweeted and we posted on the internet, for people who wanted to be part of it. It seemed like an interesting thing. We've created this world, over these last two movies, and somehow I think the audience and the fans have been part of this world. We do keep them in mind."

Reception

The score received mostly positive reviews. Heather Phares of Allmusic commented that "while Hans Zimmer's music for Christopher Nolan's Batman movies aren't as high-concept as some of his other scores, such as Inception or Gladiator, Zimmer ties the music for the final installment of Nolan's Batman trilogy to his previous scores, but allows these pieces to have their own flourishes as well".

Filmstracks, on the other hand, stated that "Lost in all of the media hype and sensationalism surrounding this franchise's second coming is the artistic merit of Nolan's achievements, and a contributing factor to the frenzy is undoubtedly Hans Zimmer's involvement as the concept's now most frequent musical voice." Filmtracks even went to the next level by stating that "Unfortunately for Zimmer, his actual speaking voice is so prevalent in interviews that the soundtracks for these films have become their own form of spectacle. Not since John Williams of the early 1980s has a film composer become such a mainstream attraction, and Zimmer indulges the attention by constantly unleashing his thought process and sense of humor in interviews that don't always make much sense when strung together."

Jonathan Broxton of Movie Music UK stated that "In many ways, The Dark Knight Rises showcases the best and the worst of Hans Zimmer's musical personality in one all-encompassing score", "on the one hand, the intellectual design and intelligent use of Bane’s Chant shows Zimmer at his creative best, taking a simple idea and working it around to suggest complex concepts and subtle changes in context", and that "On the other hand, you have the same old arguments: the Zimmer sound permeating the Hollywood mainstream to such a degree that composers as talented as Alan Silvestri and Patrick Doyle are being asked to ape the style; the fact that Zimmer himself seems to be stuck in a rut, writing what in effect are little more than variations of the same score on almost every action film he tackles; the over-reliance on electronic enhancements, ghostwriters, arrangers, and so on and so on. The bottom line is this: fans of the Zimmer style will love it, fans and of the current Batman style will love it, whereas anyone whose musical tastes tend to veer towards the predominantly orchestral will find a great deal of it boring, or unpalatable, or both."

Track listing

Digital Bonus Tracks

Enhanced CD Bonus Tracks

MovieTickets.com Exclusive Track

Z+ App Origins Pack

Tracks not included within the release of the soundtrack:

Music from and Inspired by The Dark Knight Rises

Forgotten-Spineshank

Powerless-Linkin Park

Beloved Freak-Garbage

Tomorrow-The Cranberries

Dentro L'anima-Nek

Deshi Basara-Hans Zimmer

Recurring Motifs

The score of The Dark Knight Rises contains many musical references to the previous films in the trilogy. Some notable examples of this are the following:

With regard to recurring themes for the Batman character, Zimmer said, "I thought if we set up a couple of things you can recognise in a second from right at the beginning, like the ostinato, the little bubbling string figure, when he’s coming, when we get to the moment in the movie when he’s actually going to appear, you’d hear that stuff and really get excited. It was as simple as that. I wanted some little symbolic motifs that would signal to the audience that really, honestly, it is going to happen."