Travels with Rhody

When You've Seen Hitchcock's Vertigo Too Many Times...

…you start to hear Bernard Herrmann’s score everywhere. Tonight I watched a Netflix DVD of the 2007 Tim Burton version of Sweeney Todd. I swear there’s a moment in the main titles when the dripping blood forms a Lissajous spiral like the ones in the main titles for Vertigo, and Sondheim’s music (adapted here from the original overture) is cut through by a brass note that’s straight out of Herrmann’s score. Am I crazy? I don’t think so, but I can’t find anyone else on the Internet who has bothered to note the homage. (Apparently Sondheim himself has written that “It’s an open secret that the music for Sweeney is in homage to Herrmann’s harmonic language.”)