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DERIE
HERRMANN COULD NOT HAVE KNOWN
HOW PRESCI ENT H IS QUESTION
WOULD BE
—only four of Spielberg’s
movies do not carry the credit “Music
by John Williams.”
Two of the duo’s most cherished
projects,
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial
and
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, will be shown at
Ravinia this season, with the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra supplying Wil-
liams’s music live—
E.T.
on August 1 and
Raiders
on August 2. One of Herrmann’s
most critically acclaimed scores, that
accompanying Alfred Hitchcock’s 1
classic
Vertigo
(which recently unseated
Citizen Kane
atop the British Film In-
stitute’s list of the best films of all time),
will be shown a couple weeks later, on
August 1, with the CSO again bringing
the score to life.
Despite their fateful meeting in De-
cember 1, Spielberg and Herrmann
would never work together. The creator
of the music for
Citizen Kane
,
The Day
the Earth Stood Still
, and
Mysterious
Island
—and even the first version of the
title theme for
The Twilight Zone
TV
series, as well as scores for multiple epi-
sodes—died of a heart attack in his sleep
only hours after glaring at the young
director of the new movie
Jaws
.
In a sense, their meeting earlier that
day marked a metaphorical passing of
the baton from cinema’s greatest com-
poser/director team to that of the next
generation, and an arguably even greater
team at that.
Until their bitter falling out over the
1 political thriller
Torn Curtain
, Her-
rmann and Hitchcock had
made a magical marriage
of music and moving images. Herrmann
supplied the music for 1 episodes of
The Alfred Hitchcock Hour
TV series and
scores for seven Hitchcock films, includ-
ing the disorienting, chaotic title track
of
North by Northwest
, the rhythmi-
cally piercing strings of
Psycho
, and, of
course, the lush, ominous orchestrations
of
Vertigo
.
Then the Soaring Sixties hit with
electric guitars and synthesizers.
Hitchcock, worried that Herrmann’s
traditional score to
Torn Curtain
sound-
ed outdated and old-fashioned, urged
the composer to come up with some-
thing more pop and jazzy. Herrmann
agreed, but simply created another
one of his “old-fashioned” scores, one
instantly scrapped by Hitchcock. The rift
between the two artists never mended.
Their relationship—the clash of the
titan egos—sharply contrasts with how
Spielberg and Williams have worked
together for years.
JULY 23 – AUGUST 5, 2018 | RAVINIA MAGAZINE
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