We’ve reached the denouement of the Lady Usher film score, a reprise of the opening theme for protagonist Morgan.

As always, it’s tough to describe what’s going on cinematically without spoilers. Suffice to say that the final musical twist suggests an appropriately Poe-like closing.

It’s been a pleasure sharing with you selections from this score, which picked up an award during the course of these posts. A final shoutout to the musicians who made the music come to life: Cosima Luther, Steven Huber, Daniel Adams (violins); Laurann Woods, Brandon Encinas (violas); Simone Vitucci (cello); Tom Strahle (guitars); Jennifer Lin (conductor). And thanks as always to filmmaker George Adams, with whom artistic collaboration is always a pleasure.

Every movie about a domineering matriarch needs final confrontation music, or so they taught us in composer school. This week’s music from Lady Usher accompanies the final face-off between the earnest Morgan and her most unaccommodating hostess.

The score’s string quartet is playing rather furiously here. Stick around to the end for some hair-raising effects!

Late in the film Lady Usher, protagonist Morgan learns increasingly uncomfortable secrets about her beloved Roderick and his family. It’s hard to say more without revealing key plot details, so I’ll let you hear the music for this moment and leave it to your imagination to fill in the blanks!

In a late scene in the film Lady Usher, Morgan desperately tries to persuade the conflicted Roderick to join her in escaping the Usher family estate — and its domineering Lady.

A prior cue from the score introduced the “relationship theme”, which here is mixed with restless accompaniment from the strings. What used to be a reflective and intimate melody has become something more urgent. As elsewhere in the score, you can thank the talented Tom Strahle for the sensitive guitar solo.

Next from the score of the film Lady Usher is this textural theme for the Ushers’ gardener, Gordon. Hiding his face behind a beekeeper’s mask and speaking in halting fragments, the enigmatic figure evokes both nervousness and pity.

The strings here express the character’s gentle response to Morgan, but also the poignance of his broken psyche.

Sometimes a composer’s job is to not write music.

I put a lot of TLC into this cue accompanying Lady Usher‘s funeral scene. (Name of deceased redacted in order to prevent spoilers.) The score attentively follows the motion of the camera and the emotional dynamics of each of the bereaved. Well done, self.

But when I experienced the scene with sound design, including the distant tolling of a bell, I realized that the moment didn’t need music at all. So even though the cue was written, recorded, and edited, I petitioned director George Adams to omit it. The end result is a scene that breathes more naturally, and lets the performers carry the emotion.

The soundtrack, per tradition, will provide a home for rejected cues, as will this blog. Enjoy!

This music from Lady Usher accompanies a reflective moment in the shower which becomes visceral with the arrival of an unwelcome plus one.

The hair-raising effects at the end are entirely acoustic, with no processing other than reverb. One of the reasons I love working with live strings is because they’re capable of creating these kinds of alien sounds for moments of tension.