I think the great film has a great score also! I love the main theme and also small parts including in the last story where Tom Baker draws and finds out that he has the power of voodoo. Very mysterious, exciting music to my mind!
shareI'm glad you said that because I was thinking the same thing. Also, I believe that this is one of the very few Amicus films that didn't use a music piece composed by someone other than Amicus films for their intro.
shareUm...actually, it's not all original. In the last scene, where the men are leaving the meeting room, the melody of the music is Saint-Saens' "March to the Scaffold" (which is also the main title theme of "The Shining" [1980]).
shareActually the composer you're thinking of is Hector Berlioz. It is the March to the Scaffold, but it's taken his Symphonie Fantastique (4th Mvnt). I think the score may have also referenced the 5th Mvnt (Dream of a Witch's Sabbath), but I can't be too sure without checking.
shareA lot of the Amicus films had scores composed by the underrated Australian composer Douglas Gamley.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0006093/
Like a lot of composers for horror films or death related themes, he quotes heavily from the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) chant which is a very familiar tune to our Western ears. It's been used by the likes of Rachmaninov and Berlioz in their work. By all accounts Rachmaninov was obsessed with the chant and it re-appears in several of his compositions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_Irae#Musical_settings
I agree, that Douglas Gamley wrote fine scores for the Amicus portmanteau films and to my ears he "IS" the musical voice of Amicus in the same way that James Bernard is for Hammer.
Well you all are right in that an existing piece of music was the basis for much of the score, but the tune is actually not written by Berlioz or Saint-Seans. The tune is a Gregorian Chant from the Medieval Days said to be sung to Pope Gregory by one of God's doves (like all the Chants). This one in particular, "Dies Irae," means "day of the dead" and has been used over and over again by composers throughout history and in films. Berlioz was one of the first to use it, not in "March to the Scaffold" but in "The Witch's Sabbath," and it was also used by Saint-Seans, Liszt, Holst, and numerous others to evoke death and the fires of Hell. "Vault of Horror" and "The Shining" both make use of the tune in their soundtracks, though they are still considered original soundtracks just as the pieces by composers of the 1800s were original pieces. Hope this helps!
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