The awakening

Starring Rebecca Hall and Dominic West and opening in UK theatres on November 11, Nick Murphy’s supernatural thriller The Awakening created a lot of buzz during the Toronto Film Festival where Studiocanal sold the US distribution rights to Cohen Media Group for “a seven-figure sum” according to Variety. The film takes place in 1921 England and is a ghost story where the storytelling and visuals is beautifully underlined by a large, gothic orchestral score composed by Daniel Pemberton, who won the 2010 Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Soundtrack (Desperate Romantics). Dark orchestral sonorities, haunting vocals and elements of almost operatic choir writing form the backbone of this elegant and engaging score, which was beautifully recorded at Abbey Road in London. Particularly memorable is “The Awakening Theme” which is used throughout the score, an instantly memorable arpeggio motif that has the same effective ‘hook’ as many of the most famous horror scores in the history of film music.