Gladiator (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture)

Ridley Scott’s multi-Oscar-winning 2000 film, Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe in arguably his best role to date, was matched for power and impact by Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack. Enhanced by the haunting voice of Australian musician, singer, and composer Lisa Gerrard, it enjoyed enormous commercial success thanks to one of Zimmer’s most beautiful melodies (“Now We Are Free”). Zimmer brings the brutality of the Roman Empire to dramatic life with music that, in one instance, recalls “Mars, the Bringer of War” from Holst’s The Planets (in fact, the Holst estate later sued Zimmer for plagiarism). But the score also features a variety of world music instruments, including the duduk, an Armenian wind instrument, and the yangqin, a type of dulcimer.