Above: Image adapted from artwork by Saul Bass for the theatrical release poster of Vertigo.
On October 26, 27 and 28, acclaimed guest conductor Fabien Gabel leads Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, a program of musical storytelling featuring works by Tchaikovsky, Korngold and Bernard Herrmann. Learn more about innovative film composer Bernard Herrmann and his haunting Suite from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which opens the program.
The son of Russian Jewish emigrants living in New York, Bernard Herrmann was drawn to music early in his childhood. Together with a friend, he would sometimes sneak into rehearsals at Carnegie Hall through a door with a broken lock and would surreptitiously listen to conductors like Mengelberg, Toscanini and Stokowski at work. He soon began composing original compositions, and after stints at NYU and Juilliard, he founded his own orchestra dedicated to performing new and neglected music. He soon got to know Aaron Copland, the Gershwins and other musical luminaries in New York.
In 1934, he began working for CBS by providing music for radio programs, and it was through this work that he began to collaborate with a young Orson Welles. After many successes (including the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast), Welles decided that he wanted to work with Herrmann on his 1940 masterpiece, Citizen Kane. The following year he won an Oscar for his score to the Devil and Daniel Webster, and from then on Herrmann became one of Hollywood’s leading film composers.
Herrmann took much of his experience from radio with him to the movies. Perhaps one of the most influential aspects of his approach to film scoring was his use of short cues used for transitions between scenes; in radio, cues lasting only a few seconds were often necessary to create the illusion of movement in space or time between the scenes of a radio play, and Herrmann adapted this technique to cinema to great effect. Though he also wrote many unforgettable extended sequences of film music, his sensitive, less-is-more approach and respect for dialogue, sound effects and the power of silence would make him an ideal collaborator for the master of suspense: Alfred Hitchcock.
Though he collaborated with many directors, Herrmann will always be most associated with Alfred Hitchcock. Of the eight scores Herrmann wrote for Hitchcock films, his music for Vertigo (1958) is often singled out for special praise thanks to its beauty and effectiveness. The film tells a story of love, obsession and murder, and Herrmann’s score heightens the suspense of its gripping plot. After a traumatic incident in which his partner fell to his death, Scottie (Jimmy Stewart) has retired from the police force and suffers vertigo, or fear of heights. A man then hires him to follow his wife, Madeleine, a beautiful Hitchcock blond (Kim Novak) who has suicidal ideation and believes she is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead ancestor. She and Scottie fall in love, but when Madeleine climbs the tower of an old mission, Scottie’s vertigo prevents him from following her, and she jumps to her death. Soon after, Scottie meets another woman, Judy, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Madeleine. Slowly, he tries to transform Judy into Madeleine to regain his lost love, leading to a shocking, tragic conclusion.
The suite begins with the music Herrmann wrote for the opening credits, a prelude of uncanny arpeggios and menacing brass chords:
Fittingly, the harmonies contain references to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, another tale of obsessive love that ends in death. For instance, compare the opening of the prelude from the opera with this bit of the prelude of the film. This leads to the furious tremolos and habanera rhythms of a nightmare sequence that occurs after Madeleine’s death. The haunting “Scène d’amour” (Love Scene) completes Judy’s transformation into Madeleine and concludes the suite. —Calvin Dotsey
Don’t miss Herrmann’s Vertigo Suite on October 26, 27 and 28, 2018! Get tickets and more information at houstonsymphony.org.
