Hi James, I'm familiar with Le Chat theme being re purposed - what are some other scores he borrowed from for Ghost Story?
The love theme (heard for example in the "Love Suite" track of GHOST STORY) has been taken from L'ADOLESCENTE from 1978. In my opinion, the orchestration is even more beautiful in L'ADOLESCENTE (above all with accordion - played by Marcel Azzola - and violin - played by Stéphane Grappelli - as solo instruments) than in GHOST STORY, which is just the more famous and popular score due to its genre and because it is an US movie. Unfortunately, too few collectors nowadays still know L´ADOLESCENTE which is also one of Sarde´s own favourite scores as he had stated a few years ago in a French interview. And I would agree with him because it is indeed one of his most touching works. Almost the complete ADOLESCENTE score had then been reused for the André Techiné film LES ÉGARÉS in 2003. So if you buy the LES ÉGARÉS CD, you can listen to the ADOLESCENTE music - it is the same original recording, but the track sequencing is different- , although ADOLESCENTE itself had never been issued on CD under its corect title. Missing on the ÉGARÉS CD however is the really lovely song "L´adolescente" with the main theme sung by Yves Duteil and Jeanne Moreau (L´ADOLESCENTE was also directed by her) - this was the first track on side A of the ADOLESCENTE LP. Also here you can already hear the theme which later on becane the love theme in GHOST STORY:
Stefan - I now have the attention span of an amoeba. After hearing something then moving onto something else I've already forgotten the first thing I heard. But anyway, I listened to GHOST STORY again in bed this morning with my champagne breakfast, and it was great. But I still can't place the music from L'ADOLESCENTE (as heard in your YT clip) in it. On the other hand LE CHAT is quite clear. It's a fully developed theme in both. Is the material from L'ADOLESCENTE just a brief quote or something?
Everybody else - Great score this. It's almost bigger than life. I can imagine it scoring a sumptious expressionistic ballet or something, or even as a "foreground" to some Tim Burton-universe imagery. I wonder how much orchestrator-conductor Peter Knight contributed to the overall sound. His name came up in previous posts, including some irrelevant ones from years ago when I only had one finger. Some of the music has a French lilt to it, or at least I hear it that way. There's no French connection (Don Ellis - superb!) in the plot, is there? So why does it sound French to me? "Because Philippe Sarde is French" is not a valid answer, thanks.
I'm going to listen to this again now. It's great. And then THE TENANT. Or was it the other way around? Never mind. Two Sardes are up for a re-spin. Goodbye!
This is a awesome release, however in the future I wish they would use a larger font to make the text a bit easier to read even if the means a few less photos.
But other then that one of my favorite CDS of this year thus far
Ford A. Thaxton
Glad it's not just me struggling to cope with the liner notes. Pity they don't put them up as a PDF or online on their website for easier read.
It's the same font and size as usual, and nobody has complained in ten years. I have the Apes Box-set on my desk right now and the typography size is practically the same and I can read it perfectly, although I understand that perhaps the problem is that the background of the Ghost Story booklet is black and this can make the reading a bit more difficult, although I think it's pretty well printed, we were very careful on this.
Stefan - I now have the attention span of an amoeba. After hearing something then moving onto something else I've already forgotten the first thing I heard. But anyway, I listened to GHOST STORY again in bed this morning with my champagne breakfast, and it was great. But I still can't place the music from L'ADOLESCENTE (as heard in your YT clip) in it. On the other hand LE CHAT is quite clear. It's a fully developed theme in both. Is the material from L'ADOLESCENTE just a brief quote or something?
Graham, just listen to the theme in the "Love Suite" from GHOST STORY for example at minute 0:48 or 1:20 - of course, the theme is written in another key than in L´ADOLESCENTE, but is more or less the same you hear in the passage from about 0:30 onwards in the song I had posted from L´ADOLESCENTE. There are even more conspicuous similarities in some of the purely instrumental tracks on the L´ADOLESCENTE LP, but I don´t thinkl they are on Youtube.
Glad it's not just me struggling to cope with the liner notes. Pity they don't put them up as a PDF or online on their website for easier read.
It's the same font and size as usual, and nobody has complained in ten years. I have the Apes Box-set on my desk right now and the typography size is practically the same and I can read it perfectly, although I understand that perhaps the problem is that the background of the Ghost Story booklet is black and this can make the reading a bit more difficult, although I think it's pretty well printed, we were very careful on this.
Oh it's probably my eyesight changing, not the type sizes in the booklets. I would prefer black lettering on white though, although I appreciate that the art direction was generally dark to match the horror theme of the film.
Cheers Stefan. I'm old and decrepit and senile, so you will forgive me for still not quite hearing L'ADOLESCENTE in GHOST STORY.
What I do hear is a big, sumptious horror score, almost as if it were for an Expressionist ballet with big painted trees, or even a Tim Burton-inspired visual trip. Did I say that yesterday? I'll add that some parts also conjure up cartoons about the Big Bad Wolf.
I mentioned before (undoubtedly) that I hear a foreshadowing of Goldsmith's soon-to-come (then) POLTERGEIST. Just listen to those trilling woodwind (?) statements at the start of Track 2. And the whole "danse macabre" business puts me in mind of the spectre on the staircase in the Goldsmith score. Maybe all that's from the classical repertoire, Debussy, Ravel... and maybe that's why I said yesterday (I think I said it) that some of the score sounds "French", and not because Philippe Sarde is French. And yet I don't know... there is a kind of chanson-type lilt to the Love Theme, not from the Old Masters. Maybe I'm thinking of the song in L'ADOLESCENTE.
This is one helluva great score, but I take no responsibilty for the rambings of a maniac either here or on THE TENANT thread. Or anything else I've contributed to.
I've got a Yeah and a No and general Right On for you Graham. The Yeah is absolutely one can hear the music Goldsmith would go on to deploy in Poltergeist a year (?) later. Unmistakable. That low reedy vibe and sensual/sensuous tone that conjures spooky spooky sexy spirits. The No is the French vibe, which I canna hear at all. It's more Golden Age sounding to me, but shot through with doses of modernism. The Right On is this score and CD release is friggin brilliant in every way (even the text, which is fine to these aging eyes). Cos I never ever bought the Varese reissue and I generally stopped playing vinyl the minute I could be done with that infernal format, it's a score that has stayed on the cusp (gotta love that word) of my memory for almost 40 years. This release is like the removal of cataracts, when compared to the vinyl listens I gave it years ago. It sounds amazing, even if the Varese was decent sounding? It's also had me digging out all my old Sarde CDs (Tess/The Tenant, Lord Of The Flies, Fort Saganne, Music Box, Manhattan Project, Quest For Fire etc) to take for another spin AND checking out eBay and Amazon for any bargains/cool deals I can take a Sardey gamble on. I also realised that I have used, in day to day speak, It Is Time To Tell The Tale for the past 30+ years without truly remembering where I heard it from, until it jumped out at me from the CD inlay.
Stefan - I now have the attention span of an amoeba. After hearing something then moving onto something else I've already forgotten the first thing I heard. But anyway, I listened to GHOST STORY again in bed this morning with my champagne breakfast, and it was great. But I still can't place the music from L'ADOLESCENTE (as heard in your YT clip) in it. On the other hand LE CHAT is quite clear. It's a fully developed theme in both. Is the material from L'ADOLESCENTE just a brief quote or something?
Graham, just listen to the theme in the "Love Suite" from GHOST STORY for example at minute 0:48 or 1:20 - of course, the theme is written in another key than in L´ADOLESCENTE, but is more or less the same you hear in the passage from about 0:30 onwards in the song I had posted from L´ADOLESCENTE. There are even more conspicuous similarities in some of the purely instrumental tracks on the L´ADOLESCENTE LP, but I don´t thinkl they are on Youtube.
I don't care whether this is a reuse a rehash or whatever. All I know is that this track is THE reason I bought the soundtrack. It is so stunningly beautiful that it floored me the first time I heard it. It is so very very...... very beautiful .
I don't think it's much of a secret that Mr. Sarde reuses his music in multiple movies. I recently uploaded every Sarde score I own (a lot) and listened to them all - you can hear the note for note repetition over and over again.
The thing that really stands out about this score (and many other horror scores from the period) is how musical and lyrical they are, despite the horror aspects going on. So many of today's horror scores are dominated by dissonance and sound design, completely disregarding how scary and unsettling 'nice' or 'involving' music can be, in a supernatural setting. It also makes them a damn fine superior listen when removed from the film.
I don't know if I would say Poltergeist is influenced by Ghost Story--I'd say that both use familiar horror movie orchestrations (the low contrabassoon and Ghost Story's fiddle--Goldsmith used the fiddle sound at least as far back as his "The Invaders" Twilight Zone TV score and he really doesn't lean on it much in Poltergeist; it's more a feature in his Twilight Zone feature film score and his earlier The Mephisto Waltz. I know I've seen at least one other movie where reuses the Ghost Story theme and I'm not sure it was Le Chat--as Bruce says, he seemed to do this often, and since he was involved in the album I didn't feel like expounding on that in the notes.
I think Jerry deliberately keyed off the tree image in using the low woodwinds in Poltergeist and that it wasn't just because it was ominous sounding or an expectation of the genre.
The "Danse Macabre" fiddling heard in Twilight Zone was then applied even more prominently in Gremlins the following year.
Wasn't this one of the Peter Knight-orchestrated scores, like Tess and Quest for Fire? (Also Jones's Dark Crystal and Nate and Hayes.) Wonderful arranger!
Lukas
I agree. I recall Knight being credited on more than one arrangement for Richard Carpenter, and they had a beautiful sound much in keeping with what I heard in his Sarde works.
Hearing the Carpenters' Christmas recording recently, I hear Knight's sound especially in the long medley.
