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- Bernard Herrmann
North by Northwest: Mount Rushmore (concert version) (1959)
- EMI Music Inc (World)
edited by Christopher Husted
- 3(3pic).2+ca.3+2bcl.2+cbn/4.3.3.1/2timp+5perc/2hp/str; (18.16.14.10.8)
- 13 min
Programme Note
Born in New York City in 1911, Bernard Herrmann began his career as a composer and conductor in the late 1920's. Early associations with Charles Ives, Percy Grainger, Philip James and Aaron Copland's Young Composers Group formed the cornerstones of his musical development. In 1934 he began a long association with CBS Radio. The experimental bent of CBS programming greatly encouraged his development as a musician. He excelled at incidental music for both poetry readings (La belle dame sans merci, A Shropshire Lad) and for radio dramas by Orson Welles (Mercury Theatre of the Air), Norman Corwin (Columbia Presents Corwin) and Irving Reis (Columbia Workshop).
Herrmann honed his conducting skills in many novel programs of his own devising for the CBS Symphony Orchestra, and served as its principal conductor from 1943-1950. Ready access to the Symphony — and the many world-class soloists who performed with it — elicited a steady stream of concert music from him, including his Nocturne and Scherzo (1936), a Symphony (1939-41), and a song cycle on Nicholas Breton's The Fantasticks (1941-43). His most ambitious works are a dramatic cantata on Melville's Moby Dick (1937-38), and an opera on Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1943-51).
Herrmann's association with Orson Welles led him to film scoring, beginning with Citizen Kane in 1941. He subsequently worked actively at 20th-Century Fox (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Day the Earth Stood Still) before his decade-long association with Hitchcock began in 1954 with The Trouble With Harry, later including The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho. The influence of his work with Hitchcock and Welles led Herrmann to important work with François Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451, The Bride Wore Black); Brian DePalma (Sisters, Obsession) and Martin Scorcese (Taxi Driver).
North by Northwest is rightly admired among Alfred Hitchcock's late films for the masterful ease of its movement between suspense, surprise, mystery, humor, pathos and romance; Bernard Herrmann's score is similarly admired for its deftness in aiding that movement and capturing those moods. Herrmann develops an array of thematic materials in the course of the film, most of which are brought to bear on its flamboyant finale — the protracted chase down the faces of the monument at Mount Rushmore. Shortened significantly when it was synchronized with the film, the Mount Rushmore sequence is one of the longest — and most captivating — musical sequences Herrmann created in his film career, and is a "natural" for the concert hall.
The sequence is constructed from seven separate pieces of music which segment it into discrete episodes. As is typical with chase sequences, there is a brief period of suspenseful build-up, which Herrmann titles "The Airplane." Walking down to a waiting plane on the airstrip of his private estate, the villain, Philip van Damme (James Mason), and his "right-hand man" Leonard (Martin Landau), escort van Damme's girlfriend Eve (Eva Marie Saint). Aware that Eve is the spy they thought was a man named George Kaplan, Philip and Leonard plan to kill Eve once the plane has flown to the ocean. What they don't know is that Eve knows their plan: she was told a short time before by Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), whom Philip's henchmen were mislead by chance to identify as George Kaplan days before, and whom they've been trying to kill ever since. The suspense builds steadily as Eve anxiously awaits Thornhill's surprise appearance to rescue her before they reach the plane. Unbeknownst to her, Roger has been discovered by the maid, who holds him at gunpoint in the house. Herrmann relies on arpeggiated triads that rise and fall in chromatic sequence to build tension — but motivs of a familiar theme begin to overtake the patterns: noticing Eve's nervous glances at the house, he asks her if she's alright: as she makes an excuse, Kaplan's theme coalesces from the motivs. It is a sly gesture on Herrmann's part: Eve — the real "Kaplan" — looks back in hope of seeing Roger, who has been mistaken for Kaplan and, now, has assumed his identity! Joined previously by the love theme, they are now also joined by Kaplan's theme. As the plane is reached, the arpeggiations return, turning with quickly mounting tension until they stop with a lurch as shots ring out.
Thornhill is seen running from the house to the car sitting nearby, which he drives down the driveway toward the airfield: Eve runs to the car, gets into it, and manages to lock the door before the henchmen can apprehend them. With the lock of the door the chase music is on with a piece called "The Gates." Using a secondary theme derived from Kaplan's theme, it drives the duo forward with the fandango rhythm associated with Roger's previous, adventuresome escapes from his would-be killers. The gates leading to the road are locked; they run into the forest as the henchmen close in with flashlights and guns. In short order Eve and Roger stop and look ahead with surprise…
As they realize they've reached the top of the monument "The Stone Faces" begins. Scored for winds, percussion and harps, it relies on a slightly altered version of Kaplan's theme and fragments of the fandango music that work in alternation with driving rhythms scored for percussion. Trapped, the duo begin climbing down.
Soon they've temporarily eluded their pursuers and stop to rest. "The Stone Faces" gives way here to "The Ridge," where the orchestration is inverted to strings and low winds. The two pieces share the altered version of Kaplan's theme: it will be heard now for the last time. As Roger proposes marriage, a chordal figure — heard earlier in the film when she seems to be a predatory seductress — emerges. Shortly after asking about his previous marriages, one of Eve's heels breaks; trills, and the Kaplan theme, overtake the ensemble as she falls a short distance to another ledge. The seductress figures return as they recover, giving way to the Kaplan theme again as they press on.
Moments later, Leonard spots them from where he is on the monument: as the pursuers close in, Herrmann captures Roger's final brush with the killers with the score's "Overture." Though presented completely, he has re-orchestrated it in a way that thoroughly transforms its playfulness and ebullience into menace. Mindful of the numerous references in the film to drunkenness — and of the "drunken" quality of the "Overture" itself, Herrmann drolly titles this menacing tranformation "On the Rocks." As the inevitable confrontation arrives, a new coda is added that marks the impending eruption of violence with swelling and receding chords.
One of the henchmen, waiting behind a boulder with a long knife, springs on Roger as the final struggle unfolds. In this music — entitled "The Cliffs" — crashing chords in the low registers evoke the might Roger directs at subduing his assailant. The henchman looses his footing and falls from the mountain just as Leonard accosts Eve, pushing her over a ledge. Major and minor chords are piled upon one another to create shattering dissonances as Roger rushes to her aid: a crash of the cymbals is heard as he sees her hanging helplessly at the edge. The dissonance ends as Roger seizes her hand: the pitch C is heard in succession from the trombones, trumpets, oboes and clarinets, and piccolo as Leonard moves toward Roger and steps on his hand so he will fall; the pitch retraces its steps through the orchestra and gives way to growling gestures in the lowest registers as Roger winces in pain — until a shot rings out….
Leonard falls dead, shot to death by a policeman at the last moment, as the "Finale" begins. Roger urges Eve to hold on as the police climb down to save them, spurred on by a rising tide of chords scored for trombones — but the point has been made, and Hitchcock spares us the dreary details of being saved from immanent death so we can revel — for a chaste moment — in the beginning moments of the honeymoon! The love theme makes its final appearance as Roger lifts Eve to their berth on the train headed back to New York, working its way quickly to the only stable resolution the theme — and the newly-married couple — has so far had the freedom to enjoy.
— Christopher Husted
Media
North By Northwest: Mount Rushmore scene clip
Scores
Score