Herrmann's second score won him his first and only Academy Award (he received two posthumous nominations in the same year -1976 - for Obsession and Taxi Driver, but lost out to Jerry Goldsmith's demonic choral work for The Omen). The Devil and Daniel Webster was based on a short story of the same name by Stephen Vincent Benet, but had its title changed to the less evocative All That Money Can Buy on release. It is ironic that Herrmann's feted score has not been re-recorded in full. The composer arranged the material for concert performance in 1943 and this twenty minute suite - which I'm listening to right now - is available on a Unicorn disc (UKCD 2065).
Herrmann wrote the score back to back with Citizen Kane, and he himself acknowledged that Daniel Webster was more effective as a "separate hearing" away from the movie. Perhaps this was the reason the Academy preferred it over Kane. As the original story's title suggests, the music is underpinned with a demonic tone, especially in the two minute Sleigh Ride cue which includes sleigh bells and a sound like a cracking whip. In the movie Walter Huston plays Mr Scratch not as the Devil of the Bible, but as the American incarnation of Old Nick - a familiar figure in works as diverse as Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown, Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes and even the Charlie Daniels Band's The Devil Went Down to Georgia.
Herrmann incorporated a fiddle reel into the score and to create a sense of demonic virtuosity had a violinist play the piece multiple times in different fashions. He then stitched them together to produce an impossible performance. This was an early example of how Herrmann would sometimes manipulate his music in production to achieve an unusual effect.
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