I had been a big fan of the series from the beginning, more than half in love with the paradoxally sensitive and irrascible Morse. But while watching the series, I found my *true love* in the City of Oxford itself. Morse without the dreaming spires of Oxford is like Holmes without his foggy, Victorian London... only a shell of his true personality. During my sojourn there, I found that Pheloung's music intimately captured that symbiotic relationship between person and environment.
Imagine my delight when I found the music of man and city available on CDs. I bought all three and have nearly worn them out. I really cannot review them individually (though Vol. 2 is the one I play most often), since it is the entire collection that contains the paradoxal nature of the man and City it captures. And, like that paradox, the music soothes and uplifts, makes melancholy and inspires. Always, it haunts my dreams and my imagination and vividly recaptures my entire Oxford experience whole and alive for me.
I have only to hear the first few bars of the evocative theme to be transported back to Oxford. I am again walking the narrow streets and admiring the sun-washed palantine stone of Oxford's glorious buildings. The memory shines through my darkest days and lightens winter gloom. I can catch, just from the corner of my eye, the glimmer of a red Jag rounding the corner of the Broad or see a glimpse of a greying head entering the White Horse Pub.
Even if you are not a Morse fan, or have never visited Oxford, Pheloung's work and the wonderful operatic and classical pieces contained in the collection have a beauty and clarity guaranteed to captivate any music lover. For me though, the three CDs capture everything I loved best about the City and the literary creation it gave birth to. I highly recommend the collection.
