THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (Original Motion Picture Score) - Bernard Herrmann/Elmer Bernstein

YEAR: 1975

LABEL: Varese Saraband

TRACK LISTING: Prelude/Local Train/The Sea, The Ghost/The Storm/The Apparition, The Lights/Bedtime, Poetry, Lucia/Dictation/Boyhood's End/Pastoral, Nocturne, London/The Reading/Local Train, The Spring Sea, Romance/Love/Farewell, The Home/Sorrow, The Passing Years/The Late Sea, Forever

IMPRESSIONS: This is one of my favourite film scores. It's lush and romantic and probably not what you'd think about when you think about Halloween music. This score, as an anonymous reviewer in the September 1947 issue of "Film Music Notes" wrote, has "...many passages of quiet loveliness"; it perfectly evokes the romantic ghost story of the film as well as the note of sadness which pervades the movie and a certain note of loneliness in the sound of this exquisite film music. Halloween does not have to be all blood and thunder and sometimes ghost stories are quiet and romantic evoking solitude; THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR (the film and the score) are a prime example of this.

MY FAVOURITE TRACKS: Prelude/Local Train/The Sea, The Ghost/The Storm/The Apparition, The Lights/Bedtime, Poetry, Nocturne, The Spring Sea, Romance/Love/Farewell, The Home/Sorrow, The Passing Years/The Late Sea, Forever

FACT SHEET: THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR is Bernard Herrmann's 7th film score composed for the 1947 20th Century Fox film starring Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison and George Sanders. Herrmann was a relatively little known young film composer when he scored this film. Following his usual custom, Herrmann orchestrated the entire score himself; it is mostly symphonic in texture with limited use of percussion or brass. In many sections, the size of the orchestra is greatly reduced and many pieces use a very limited musical palette generally of woodwinds. There are approximately 52 minutes of music in the film; this cd contains 38 minutes or around 3/4ths of the entire score. Small musical cues have been grouped together into continuous music to avoid a great many small cuts of music of less than a minute's duration. This particular recording of Bernard Herrmann's score is conducted by fellow film composer Elmer Bernstein.