Herrmann,
despite Hitchcock’s instructions,
scored the murder scene (as did Addison) and the music he writes changes
the flow of the
scene entirely 65. The
sequence is scored with a “canonical
horn pattern, echoing flutes, and driving timpani” and serves
to highlight certain moments in the sequence while the unscored version
remains drawn out, with the moments weighted almost equally.
The music begins when the farmwife throws a pot of soup
at Gromek’s head while he tries to phone the police. Low brass
notes sound ominously and continue until the farmwife takes hold of
the knife. As she approaches the struggling Gromek and Michael, the
five-note repeating scale variation changes to six-note scale variation,
this one rising and falling and occasionally rising in pitch on the
fourth note of the phrase. The repetition combined with the rising
pitch place the impact upon the farmwoman and her knife, drawing the
audience’s expectation toward this moment. The six-note phrase
shortens to the last three falling pitches, the quickened pace of the
repetition seeming to signify a culminating action but Gromek retorts
with “Tell the cookie she should put that down. She’s going
to cut your fingers off” and the horn phrases drop out, leaving
only the low brass as if to match the farmwife’s hesitation.
When she finally does strike, a high flute trill matches the action,
the more feminine instrument signifying the woman’s action but
also matching the metallic sound of the knife breaking off below Gromek’s
clavicle.
As the woman searches for a new murder instrument, low
brass and timpani beats (new musical instruments) accompany the choice
of
the shovel and three-note low brass repeating phrases accompany the
beating of Gromek’s knees, once again mimicking the sound of
the weapon against the body. Gromek lies on the floor while the brass
continues but as he rises and moves toward the window a flute begins
to repeat the same note until Gromek starts to choke Michael and then
heavy brass enters, this time to signify the masculine action of Gromek
since his strangling, unlike Michael’s is actually effective,
as demonstrated by a close-up shot not only of Gromek’s hands
on the front of Michael’s throat but also around the back. Thus
during the “lulls” in action, Herrmann uses low brass that
creates a sense of danger but does not become obtrusive.
The music
leads the spectator from “high point” to “high point,” that
is from the stabbing to the beating to the strangling, emphasizing
the moments of the most danger with instrumentation to match the action.
A completely different effect is created when John
Barry's 007 music is used with the scene. While the 007 motif is frequently used with large
scale battles and so seems little bit over the top for this scene, doing
a commutation and adding the piece "007 Steals the Lektor" from From
Russia With Love demonstrates how a change in music can change the
pace of a scene. While Herrmann's music moves the scene in a less linear
fashion, driving the view to moments of climax as indicated by the music,
Barry's score, with its repeating brass ostinato, serves in a way more
analagous to the silence of the original murder. The repetition of the
beat helps to unify the scene, creating one long sequence, while at the
same time the driving rhythm speeds up the scene in general when compared
to the silent version.