Tag Archives: Alfred Hitchcock

Mind-boggling Mother of Us All

It was excellent, this Canadian premiere of The Mother of Us All, Virgil Thomson’s setting of Gertrude Stein’s poetic libretto. The opera tells us about Susan B Anthony starring Meghan Lindsay in the title role, presented under the auspices of … Continue reading

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The history of film music = the history of film

A friend of mine asked me to suggest a way to begin studying film music, knowing that I teach a course at the Royal Conservatory called Cinematic Music: How We Hear Film.  The course begins later in March. As a … Continue reading

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Psycho and the art of horror with the Toronto Symphony

For Halloween the Toronto Symphony presented their latest film with a live accompaniment, namely Psycho. A film buff might call it “Hitchcock’s Psycho.“ A film-music buff might prefer “Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho” which is closer to how I see it. Without … Continue reading

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Symbolist horror

What’s in a name? Sometimes we grab onto something in a name, think we know what we have, and miss something else through our assumptions.  We’re so enamoured for instance with the mystique of the rose, but we don’t usually … Continue reading

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The Descent of Psycho

I don’t know very much about Charles Darwin, but have always been fascinated by the profound reverberations set off in my head by the title The Descent of Man.  I am not a naturalist.  I understood that Darwin meant “descent” … Continue reading

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