Vertigo: Original Motion Picture Score (1995 Re-recording)
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Composer: Bernard HerrmannEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Soundtrack
CD Release Date: 1996-03-12
Music Label: Varese Sarabande
Soundtracks:
- Prelude and Rooftop
- Scotty Trials Madeline
- Carlotta's Portrait
- The Bay
- By the Fireside
- The Forest
- The Beach
- The Dream
- Farewell and the Tower
- The Nightmare and Dawn
- The Letter
- Goodnight and the Park
- Scene d'Amour
- Necklace and the Return and Finale
Free Music Notes for Vertigo: Original Motion Picture Score (1995 Re-recording)
Free Music Review: Elegant Release of a Uniquely Haunting, Powerful Score
Hit: 5 Stars
Unlike most composers both before and after, Bernard Herrman was not interested in creating a melodic score reflective of popular music of the time. He instead approached the work as something of a "tone poem" that reflected the uniqueness of each scene and of the film in its totality. From the 1940s through the 1970s his work fueled the power of many famous films such as CITIZEN KANE--but it was really with the legendary director Alfred Hitchcock that he found his best partnership.
VERTIGO is possibly the single most studied American film of the 20th Century, a remarkably complex film that fuses everything from story to color design to create an almost inexhaustible vision of obsession. Not the least of the film's layers are the score, which is regarded as not only one of Herrmann's finest works, but one of the finest film scores in film history.
Much of the score has the dreamy, fluid tone of a calm stream--and Herrmann unexpectedly punctuates the flow to incredible effect with unexpected jabs of sound, sound that sometimes comes as suddenly as an unexpected blow, that sometimes rises from a covertly ominous tone to an overwhelmingly paranoid edge. The overall structure is open-ended, with little in the way of any direction that be considered a resolution.
Two of Herrmann's themes here are particularly famous. The most obvious of these might be termed "the Vertigo Waltz"--a strange, cyclical series of notes that emerges from the background flow and perfectly expresses the film's repeating themes of building obsession, disorientation, and emotional discord. Equally haunting is the "Madeline" theme, which seems based on a four-note, open-ended phrase that rises above everything from the "waltz" to Spanish accents associated with the figure of the long-dead Carlotta. This particular theme has the quality of the human voice calling out in tremendous longing--but without hope of a saving response.
The Varse Sarabande release, which offers the score as recorded by Joel McNeely and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, is very fine in quality. It also includes an extremely well-written and well-researched fourteen page booklet that describes Herrmann's work both here and in other films as well as the film itself. It is an elegant offering, well worth seeking out.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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