Why Hitchcock is Still our Contemporary?
Why Hitchcock is Still our Contemporary?

Summary/Abstract: There are pieces of classical music which, in our culture, became so deeply associated with their later use in some product of commercial popular culture that it is almost impossible to dissociate them from this use. Since the theme of the second movement of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 20 was used in Elvira Madigan, a popular Swedish melodrama, this concert is even now regularly characterized as the “Elvira Madigan” concert even in editions by serious classical music editions like Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft… But what if, instead of exploding in an Adornian rage against such commercialized music fetishism, one makes an exception and openly confesses the guilty pleasure of enjoying a piece of music which is in itself worthless and draws all its interest from the way it was used in a product of popular culture? My favorite candidate is the “Storm Clouds Cantata” from both versions of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.

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