Music And The Movies

I believe I mentioned Spotify a few weels ago in passing but I'm getting so much enjoyment from the site another mention is in order. Popular in Europe for some time, it recently hopped across the pond and is now available in the U.S. I have discovered and rediscovered much wonderful music via Spotify - and the basic service is free. Besides some classical, some jazz, and some rock and roll, I've also been discovering old Broadway musical cast albums (including "Oklahoma!" which we are attending tomorrow at Arena Stage), and old movie soundtracks, including those by Max Steiner and Bernard Herrmann. That's what I've been concentrating on but, whatever your musical tastes, Spotify will satisfy them. Check it out.

Bernard Herrmann was phenomenal - virtually everything he did was terrific and can stand alone easily outside the movies. He did 11 films with Hitchcock (before they had a terrible falling out) and if you listen closely to the music while watching any of those films you will understand how much the Herrmann's music contributed to the Hitchcockian atmosphere, whether it be terror, or joy, or love, or plain old silliness. The most famous example of this is "Psycho," which, the stories goes, Hitch was thinking about abandoning until he heard Herrmann's score. And the rest is history. My favorite from Herrmann, perhaps most people's, is the love theme from Vertigo ("Scene d'Amour). I tweeted earlier this week about listening to the love theme from "Vertigo" every day for a week - it's lovely music. Is it a coincidence that Hitchcock began his decline immediately after the split with Herrmann? Scene d'Amour:

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My favorite movie theme? I fell in love with this music thirty years ago when I saw "Blow Out," Brian DePalma's best movie. Wonderful, and badly underrated, one of those movies I can watch over and over again - great story, great script, terrific acting, especially Travolta, and, oh, the theme. Written by the great Pino Donaggio, who worked on many of DePalma's movies, it's beautiful and tormented and romantic and despairing all at once, which it needs to be to fulfill the movie's emotional demands. The scene near the end when Jack cradles Sally's dead body in his arms while the fireworks explode above them and the music floods in around them, well, the music must be all of those things because all of those things are what Jack, and the audience, are feeling. It's a masterful moment, one of the great scenes in movie history.

Here's the music. You can find the scene on youtube but better to see the movie in its entirety - it's great from start to finish and the emotional wallop from the scene will be all the more intense.

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