Billed as both a
Barbra Streisand album and as an original motion picture soundtrack,
Yentl contains the songs, sung by
Streisand and written by
Michel Legrand and
Alan and
Marilyn Bergman, that the character played by
Streisand sings as internal monologues in the film, sometimes with spoken dialogue interspersed. (The album is filled out by "studio versions" of two of the songs, "The Way He Makes Me Feel" and "No Matter What Happens," played on contemporary electronic instruments, rather than in the orchestral settings used for the rest of the songs.) With such a thematic base, the music has an unusual consistency, and written specifically for
Streisand, it makes use of her emotional expressiveness, phrasing, and timing as a singer. But it was also written as a complement to the film and on its own comes across as a group of isolated musical plot highlights rather than as a coherent song cycle. (
Yentl won an Academy Award for Best Original Song Score.) ~ William Ruhlmann