Vertigo (Bernard Herrmann)

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo features composer Bernard Herrmann and his ominous, suspenseful score. Like previous film composer, Herrmann uses leitmotifs meant to help represent an idea or a character. A couple obvious leitmotifs are the somewhat sappy strings used to represent Judy's complex character and the strings that buzz like bees during John Ferguson's most intense chase scenes which are directly linked to high-adrenaline moments evoking vertigo--when he looks down while hanging off the gutter, when he sees the stairs in the mission chasing after Judy, and when he has a nightmare about "Marilyn" falling out of the tower. The Judy theme is important because it is used at least once when she is not there, but John is in his car thinking about her after talking with Midge or looking at her old car after Marilyn's death: each of which provides some foreshadowing because Judy's still alive.

Herrman seems to employ some common film music techniques of the day--such as leitmotifs and turning diagetic music into underscoring (i.e. the church organ in the mission church)--, but he also uses some interesting interplay between instruments playing the same tune at different octaves and also often uses one instrument as a backdrop and then switches between other instruments intermittently to add meaning to this undertone. After John Ferguson talks to the concierge of the former Valdez house, Herrmann switches back and forth a couple times between trombones and then flutes playing a string of about 8 notes. This technique helps the music stay in the front of the viewer's mind instead of becoming easily unnoticeable background drivel. Yet it still remains subdued enough to allow the action to take center stage. Later on, Herrmann uses a modest harplike tune as a backdrop complemented individually by strings, then trombone, and then other instruments. The background music in turn can be viewed differently alongside stronger or weaker, deeper or higher instruments much as the plot can be viewed differently looking from different perspectives of each character. This may be a stretch, but I believe it is a valid interpretation because Herrmann uses this technique right after Midge visits Ferguson in the hospital and the direction of the plot is in a rather liquid, unpredictable state.