{"id":1219,"date":"2024-09-16T16:30:29","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T20:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=1219"},"modified":"2024-09-16T16:30:29","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T20:30:29","slug":"authenticity-and-beauty-in-the-musical-center-of-rear-window","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2024\/09\/16\/authenticity-and-beauty-in-the-musical-center-of-rear-window\/","title":{"rendered":"Authenticity and Beauty in the Musical Center of Rear Window"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alfred Hitchcock was an unusual filmmaker in that he storyboarded the vision of his musical narrative just as he mapped out the plot and cinematography for all his films. Though not trained with any musical education, Hitchcock gradually became more interested in the narrative effects of the musical material in his films, and continued throughout his career to modernize his approach in incorporating it into the larger context of the mise-en-scene (Sullivan <\/span>Maestros<\/span><\/i>). The use of popular song in <\/span>Rear Window<\/span><\/i> was one of the most effective and influential filmic designs of musical diegesis Hitchcock implemented into the larger spectrum of the Hollywood canon. Though <\/span>Rear Window<\/span><\/i> had an official composer in Franz Waxman who contributed the opening credits score and main musical ideas and motifs, he was additionally accompanied by a range of other songwriters and pieces across genres including orchestral, ballet, jazz improvisation, and names such as Leonard Bernstein, Richard Rodgers, and Felix Mendelssohn (Sullivan 170). Hitchcock pioneered popular song as incidental music in the Hollywood thriller, most notably in the film <\/span>Dial M for Murder<\/span><\/i>, where an excerpt from Richard Wagner\u2019s <\/span>Tristan und Isolde<\/span><\/i> underscores the realization of the crime the murderer has committed\u00a0 in the bathroom mirror (Sullivan <\/span>Maestros<\/span><\/i>). The use of the Tristan chord specifically is crucial in understanding the murderer\u2019s internal dialogue in the scene, as musically the Tristan chord is known for being ambiguous across key designations and tonal contexts. Its use portrays the ambiguity of not only the murderer\u2019s internal feelings concerning the action, but the implications of the action itself. Subsequently in <\/span>Rear Window<\/span><\/i>, Hitchcock garners the same effect using a blend of pre-composed and score material to impose upon the film a complicated portrayal of authenticity and beauty.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Though other songs are integrated into the largely diegetic score, Waxman\u2019s thematic musical motives are what ground the intertwined narratological elements. Often, the diegetic pre-composed songs or pieces will have elements of Waxman\u2019s motives woven into them to create a singular musical idea that blurs the intended undertone Hitchcock designs for each character. The concepts of beauty and authenticity then come through in how these popular songs engage with Waxman\u2019s musical material, and what plays at the center of it all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lisa\u2019s theme is the most important out of all of Waxman\u2019s imposed material, as it exists inside of Hitchcock\u2019s grander musical narrative as well as eventually becoming the end result of the piece the composer writes throughout the film. When the musical theme \u201cLisa\u201d is first introduced, Leonard Bernstein\u2019s \u201cFancy Free\u201d plays from the composers radio as he begins to write what will become the \u201cLisa\u201d theme, which is the music Lisa herself is continually enchanted by, and later is what saves Ms. Lonelyheart\u2019s life. This is the first instance of \u201csimultaneous musical layers\u201d (Sullivan 172), where the musical theme \u201cLisa\u201d acts as nucleus to the surrounding musical drama. The idea of the authentic nucleus goes back to Walter Benjamin, and the art object as an authentic center with its contexts and outside aesthetic ideas surrounding it. The authentic is then measured through an object\u2019s aura, or the distance between audience and art object (Benjamin 714), with consideration of the internal authentic center and its surrounding contexts performed by audience perception. This is not unlike Lisa\u2019s role in the film, where she is the authentic center to Jeff\u2019s constant aesthetic presumptions. Through the dichotomous musical process of layering pre-composed and thematic musical material, and the composition of Lisa\u2019s theme itself within the film itself, the mise-en-scene then incorporates a sonic representation of the character transformations of aesthetic ideas imposed by Jeff into solid realities. Lisa herself is one of these ideas, and the process of her theme\u2019s composition by the composer reflects her transformation into a real person through Jeff\u2019s eyes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Benjamin, Walter. \u201cThe Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.\u201d 1936.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sullivan, Jack. \u201cMaestros of Suspense: Music in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock.\u201d YouTube, uploaded by Simply Charly, 20 November 2020, <\/span>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TGv4SqV5BSQ<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sullivan, Jack. \u201crear window: the redemptive power of popular music.\u201d <\/span>Hitchcock\u2019s Music<\/span><\/i>. 1st ed., Yale University Press, 2006, pg. 169-182.\u00a0 <\/span>https:\/\/doi.org\/10.12987\/9780300134667<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n



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Alfred Hitchcock was an unusual filmmaker in that he storyboarded the vision of his musical narrative just as he mapped out the plot and cinematography for all his films. Though not trained with any musical education, Hitchcock gradually became more interested in the narrative effects of the musical material in his films, and continued throughout … Continue reading Authenticity and Beauty in the Musical Center of Rear Window<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5501,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145914],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2024-blog-posts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5501"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}