Community College, said the theme stirs up the appropriate emotions when it is repeated during Conan's vow to avenge his parents. The film's main musical theme, the "Anvil of Crom", which opens the film with "the brassy sound of 24 French horns in a dramatic intonation of the melody, while pounding drums add an incessantly driven rhythmic propulsion" is played again in several later scenes. Poledouris completed the music that accompanies the attack on Conan's village at the beginning of the film in October 1981. Milius initially wanted a chorus based on Carl Orff's Carmina Burana to herald the appearance of Doom and his warriors in this sequence. After learning that Excalibur (1981) had used Orff's work, he changed his mind and asked his composer for an original creation. Poledouris's theme for Doom consists of "energetic choral passages", chanted by the villain's followers to salute their leader and their actions in his name. The lyrics were composed in English and roughly translated into Latin; Poledouris was "more concerned about the way the Latin words sounded than with the sense they actually made." He set these words to a melody adapted from the 13th-century Gregorian hymn, Dies irae, which was chosen to "communicate the tragic aspects of the cruelty wrought by Thulsa Doom." The film's music mostly conveys a sense of power, energy, and brutality, yet tender moments occur. The sounds of oboes and string instruments accompany Conan and Valeria's intimate scenes, imbuing them with a sense of lush romance and an emotional intensity. According to MacDonald, Poledouris deviated from the practice of scoring love scenes with tunes reminiscent of Romantic period pieces; instead, Poledouris made Conan and Valeria's melancholic love theme unique through his use of "minor-key harmony". David Morgan, a film journalist, heard Eastern influences in the "lilting romantic melodies". Page Cook, audio critic for Films in Review, describes Conan the Barbarians score as "a large canvas daubed with a colorful yet highly sensitive brush. There is innate intelligence behind Poledouris's scheme, and the pinnacles reached are often eloquent with haunting intensity." From late November 1981, Poledouris spent three weeks recording his score in Rome. He engaged a 90-instrument orchestra and a 24-member choir from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, and conducted them personally. The pieces of music were orchestrated by Greig McRitchie, Poledouris's frequent collaborator. The chorus and orchestra were recorded