Vertigo (1958, Paramount is one of the most analyzed films in the history of cinema. An endless parade of books and articles havebeen published about it, each offering its own angle on the text and subtext of the film. ‘The inter- pretations have ranged from the lazy (dismissing the picture as a standard entry in the “mystery/ suspense” gente) to the illuminating (the film has been placed in a feminist perspective). Whether the readings are deep or shallow, con- fused or revolutionary the analyses arrive at one indisputable conclusion: Vertigo is a spectacular work of movie art. ‘When the film first opened it was met with positive, negative, and lukewarm reviews from both the intellectual and popular critical arenas. The ambivalent status of Vertigo in the canon of Westem cinema was clarified when the 1992 Sight and Sound poll of international directors and critics selected the film as one of the ten best pictures ever made. Most of the credit must go to Alfred Hitchcock, a director who succesfully navigated the line between film as center-tainment and film as art. But as brilliant as he was, Hitchcock could not have made Vertigo without James Stewart. In Stewart he was blessed with a much-loved artist and a strong personality, a man whose very presence inspired instant believability. The integrity behind the production was also evident in the San Franciso locations. ‘Vertigo is not merely set in San Francisco - the locations were selected with so much care and attention to detail that the characters seem to truly inhabit the city. Another feature of the film that has never received anything less than unconditional praise is the score by Bernard Herrmann. Indeed, one of the cinema's great collaborations was the relation-ship between Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Prior to Vertigo they had worked together on three other films, although nothing in those pictures could hhave prepared viewers for the film/music amalgamation of Vertigo, This time Herrmann was asked to compose ‘more music than was usual for a Hitchcock picture. The interaction between the director and the composer seems to have been minimal, Herrmann once claiming that “Hitchcock left it completely to me.” ‘This might be an exag- gration but there is no doubt that he was given the freedom to explore his own ideas. In retrospect, the Hitchcock/Herrmann partnership looks like a match made in heaven, But a look at their backgrounds and personal- ities leaves one wondering how they ended up working together at all, The British-born Hitchcock was a man of dry ‘wit with a personality as precise and structured as his filmmaking style, whereas the American-born Herrmann was radical individualist with a romantic approach to life that resulted in great art but also a considerable amount of personal volatility, Perhaps itis this equilibrium that holds the key to Herrmann’s understanding of the Hitchcock ‘universe, with its complex dichotomies (reality/fantasy, atraction/repulsion, rationality/irrationality) and allusions to Freud (the significance of dreams, the power of unconscious emotional drives, the central role of sexuality). Or per- hhaps it was the fact that Hitchcock’s art did include romance, although his concept of it involved fear, fetishism, and homicide. ‘The screenplay for Vertigo was based on the Pierre Boileau/Thomas Narcejac book D' Entre les Morts, a free vati- ation of the Celtic-derived myth Tristan und Isolde. The influence of the book on the script (Alec Coppel and Samuct ‘Taylor were the writers) was actually small, but the Wagner music drama does have some relevance to Vertigo. In Tristan und Isolde Wagner presented passion as a force transcending every aspect of existence including morality ‘and reason. As such a clear distinction is made between the world of the lovers and the world of everyone else, ‘The characters live in a realm where love is both the ultimate end and a destructive force. ‘This could just as easily describe the situation in Vertigo.From a musical point of view romanticism requires that the artist free himself from the restraints imposed by con- vention and create art infused with great emotion, sometimes at the expense of form (a sacrifice the fist school of Viennese classicists was not prepared to make). Romantic composers wanted their music to stand on its own but they also liked the idea of having their music associated with an external meaning, whether the association be descriptive or programmatic. In short, what we see developing here is the beginning of film music. Richard Wagner ‘wanted to unify otherwise disparate art forms in his “music dramas,” the same way that Herrmann viewed film as “an illusion of many arts working together.” The difference is that Wagner was able to have the orchestra carry the ‘weight of the dramatic argument. This is difficult to achieve in film, where the music is meant to be supportive. One device carried over from Wagner to film was his concept of the leitmotif, whereby music is connected with a part ular character, object, or situation. There is some evidence of the leitmotif in Vertigo, most notably in the love ‘music, but Herrmann was more inclined to make his points through short phrases and orchestral colorations. On the other hand Herrmann was not afraid to take a Wagner-like expedition into the relationship between the major and ‘minor modes. The technique used was chromaticism, the mobilization of all twelve notes in the scale without assign- ing centrality to any one tone in particular. Hermann was influenced by these romantic traits but he was a composer living in the twentieth century. ‘Consequently he is best defined as a neo-romantic in the tradition of Bruckner, Mahler, and Vaughan Williams. Like his predecessors, Herrmann took advantage of the expanded orchestra pioneered by the romantics and created a style that combined the grand orchestrations of late-romanticism with the harmonic language of the modemists. The score for Vertigo is dominated by romantic and neo-romantic precepts but there are times when the composer reacts against the emotionalism he so openly embraced. This is the case in several early cues where he uses a technique ‘that anticipated minimalism. Herrmann composed Vertigo between January 3 and February 19, 1958. A musician's strike prevented the score from being recorded in America, so the sessions ended up being conducted overseas by Englishman Muir Mathieson {atthe time it was illegal to use an American conductor). ‘There are varying accounts of what Herrmann actually thought of Mathieson’s conducting, but since the performance is wedded to the film for eternity we must give it some respect. Nevertheless there are difficulties with the performance, and if Herrmann’s own concert suite addressed ‘some of these problems, it ereated some others. Conductor Joel McNeely also observed that the tempi as indicated in the scores are sometimes different from those used in the film. McNeely opted to remain as faithful as possible 10 the composer's original markings. Herrmann was known as an experimentalist when it came to orchestrations. Ironically, Vertigo is one of his more conventional scores as far as the orchestra that was assembled (assuming we don’t include his decision to use five clarinets). Nevertheless, Vertigo was a demanding score to record, in part because of the composer's use of high-range string writing. Perhaps the most serious complaint about Vertigo is that the original soundtrack album failed to include many of the score’s important cues. In taking care of this deficiency producer Robert Townson tried to strike a balance between the needs of completists and the imperative of ere rewarding listening experience. Vertigo is divided dramatically into three acts with an explanatory prologue. ‘Herrmann’s music reflects this division but maintains a flow that allows the cues to be sequenced in the same order a they appear in the film.Track 1: PRELUDE ana THE ROOFTOP ‘The Prelude accompanies the spiral images of Saul Bass as the opening credits are displayed. This dream-like com. position is divided into two sections. The first begins with the strings, woodwinds, vibraphone, harps, and celeste playing a chord broken into two triplets that ascend and descend simultaneously. ‘The brass intone several ominous chords before rising strings segue into the second section, in which Herrmann introduces a four-note motif that will later be developed into a love theme. The richly scored Prelude (Wagner's term for “Overture”) is written in 2/2 time, but the triplets create a waltz-like feel that one normally associates with romance. With the exception of the motif and a few seconds prior to the transformation sequence, none of the music in the Prelude reappears in the score Author Robin Wood described the overall effect of the main titles: “Before the film proper has begun, we are made aware that the vertigo of the ttle is to be more than a literal fear of heights.” The credits conclude and the tempo changes from the “Moderato Assai” of the Prelude to the “Allegro Con Brio” of The Rooftop. An ostinato in the ower strings and ferocious brass drive Scottie’s nocturnal pursuit of a criminal over the roofs of San Francisco. A failed attempt to jump between two buildings leaves Scottie hanging onto a gutter. A policeman falls dead to the ground after trying to lend Scottie a hand. Scottie looks down and experiences dizziness brought on by verti depicted visually with a zoom-in/track-back shot. His acrophobia is represented musically by a dissonant chord with hharps adding their glissandi to the frenzy. ‘Track 2: SCOTTI TRAILS MADELEINE (Including MADELEINE'S FIRST APPEARANCE, MADELEINE'S CAR, ‘THE FLOWER SHOP, THE ALLEYWAY, THE MISSION, GRAVEYARD and TOMBSTONE)