The Stendhal Syndrome was Ennio Morricone's fourth score for director Dario Argento, & remains, to my mind at least, their best to date- at least in musical if not cinematic terms. Their first collaboration for about 22 years, Stendhal marked Argentos' return to Italian films after two poorly received American ones (scored by Pino Donaggio). It invoked polar reactions from his fans – from rampant adoration to outright scorn. And this score is likely to provoke similarly opposite reactions from film music fans. Make no mistake, with track titles like “Desperation & Madness”, & “A Perturbed Mind”, this is Morricone in suspense mode: dark, difficult, dissonant, & sometimes bordering on the impenetrable; but yet also fascinating, compelling, obsessively mesmerising, & utterly unforgettable. Light, easy listening this is not.

It’s essentially a monothematic score – but what a theme! Present in pretty much every track, it’s a simple 8-note lullaby that will stick in your head for days. The opening title track, running over seven minutes is a brilliantly constructed passacaglia – a form rarely if ever heard in film music, & which explains a large part of this scores’ particular appeal. The theme is swiftly introduced on piano over a mysterious discordant string background before passing to a “little girl” (as the booklet credits her) “la”ing. Ably performed by Alexys Schwartz, this is an important element of the score – at once evoking a little girl lost, & simultaneously cruelly taunting. The piece builds with the theme constantly repeating, passing around the orchestra, often performed almost as a round, maintaining an almost monotonous, yet hypnotic style that is almost Herrrmannesque, taking an agonisingly premeditated pace that refuses to hurry - & refuses to let go of you. The theme is added again over the top but at twice the speed, & the build becomes inexorable, &, as it moves towards it’s climax, is heard at four times the original speed, brass wailing over the top, before shattering into mysterious, discordant strings.

The majority of the score is impressively constructed upon variations of the style & treatment of the theme as heard in the opening track. Which is not to suggest that there is no other material in the score- far from it. The most noticeable other element is one that will probably cause most listeners to dislike the score, particularly if they haven’t seen the film & can’t fully appreciate the dramatic relevance. You see, the lead character (played by the director’s daughter Asia) suffers from the eponymous syndrome, which means that she gets emotionally overwhelmed when confronted with great works of art. What this means in the film is that paintings seem to come to life, & she “enters” into the pictures. And when there’s people in these pictures, she hears their voices all around her, whispering, taunting. In the film, it’s easy to mistake these voices for sound effects, but listening to the disc it becomes quite clear that, ingeniously, it’s all part of Morricones' music. Probably best heard in tracks 2 & 3, it’s a chaotic, seething mass, a whispering, chanting, malevolent chorus that is supremely disturbing. It showcases a terrific invention, & demonstrates the director & composers’ willingness to push back the boundaries of what film music is, & what role it can play in the film.

Elsewhere, the strings urgently wail discordantly or tremble with an edgy nervous intensity, brass & woodwinds wail & scream, & the percussion thumps away remorselessly. Track 11 utilises a device heard in Morricones’ first score for Argento, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage – that of a woman moaning with what could equally well be orgasmic delight or a pained final breath. Almost twenty-five years on, it’s still every bit as breathtakingly daring &dangerously disturbing as it ever was. Even in the quieter tracks there is nowhere to shelter from the overall mood of relentless nightmarish insanity. Listen to this score too frequently, & it may drive you mad – which is one of it’s dramatic purposes, to put the listener/viewer into the mindset of the killer (I can’t say more without a huge spoiler), yet also containing enough emotional heart to make it devastatingly powerful 7 moving. When the Stendhal theme returns in the final track, it hasn’t changed from when it was first heard – the story has come full circle, the characters' fate, inevitably sealed from the opening frame, has now come to pass.