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Strings (2007) - Hitchcock's Music

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Rare is the avid movie watcher who doesn't mention Vertigo, Psycho, or The Birds when asked to name some of the most important suspense films in history. But while filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock's works are widely celebrated as among the best ever created, his pioneering use of music in these films has not, until now, been thoroughly documented and appreciated. Rider University professor Jack Sullivan breaks that silence with his fascinating new book, aptly titled Hitchcock's Music.

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Hitchcock's Music by Jack Sullivan. Yale University Press, www.yalebooks.com, $38.

Rare is the avid movie watcher who doesn't mention Vertigo, Psycho, or The Birds when asked to name some of the most important suspense films in history. But while filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock's works are widely celebrated as among the best ever created, his pioneering use of music in these films has not, until now, been thoroughly documented and appreciated. Rider University professor Jack Sullivan breaks that silence with his fascinating new book, aptly titled Hitchcock's Music.

Sullivan asserts that Hitchcock was the first filmmaker to realize music's potential as much more than background ambiance in the world of motion pictures. He experimented with arguably every music genre imaginable during his long tenure, from the waltz to jazz to electronic music, and he understood the unique psychological ability of music to evoke emotions and ideas that other artistic mediums could not achieve.

Hitchcock saw how music could transform a scene from languid to tense, peaceful to suspenseful, or heart-wrenching to humorous, and knew how to use that to his advantage. The author writes, "Music is an alternate language in Hitchcock, sounding his characters' unconscious thoughts as it engages our own." Sullivan maintains that the legendary, innovative director changed the perception of film music from superfluous to integral, just as important to the work's success as the visual images. And in a wider sense, the author implies that Hitchcock completely revolutionized the ways that all sound may be used in films, from the musique concrète nature of rain pelting the city streets to the bold choice of silence at crucial moments.

Hitchcock's Music leads its readers through the Hitchcock timeline from the early days of "talkies" through the "color era" and beyond. The intense, sometimes rocky relationships between the director and his composers, most prominently his longtime collaboration with composer Bernard Herrmann, are laid out in detail and provide Interesting context to some of Hollywood's most memorable soundtracks.

His relationships with other composers, such as Henry Mancini and John Williams, are detailed as well.

For the film aficionado, the book is an entertaining and Informative look into the history of Hitchcock's works from a new perspective. For the aspiring film composer, it offers important lessons in the evolution of the film score and artistic collaboration. And finally, for any string player who's ever marveled at the terrifying, shrieking glissandos during the famous Psycho shower scene, scored by Herrmann, Hitchcock's Music is a fun and worthwhile read.

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