Certainly some of this material is already covered in Smith's Herrmann biography, and some of the Hitchcock stuff will likely be familiar also.

But it's good to have all of this in one place and coherently organized. And the various analyses of how Herrmann's music works and how certain tendencies were essential to his style are quite good and made accessible to the general reader.

The tracking of Herrmann's influence beyond the films that he scored can be hit or miss. The success of a Quentin Tarantino film or Lady Gaga music video probably isn't especially dependent on the use of Herrmann cues. (And did Smith neglect to tag the whistling of the Twisted Nerve theme in Kill Bill?)

One really neat Easter egg that Smith includes is John Williams's dropping Herrmann's "The Madhouse" cue into his score for Star Wars.

The source material available is what it is and Smith leans on a BBC radio play that dramatized Hitchcock and Herrmann's time together. I haven't heard this but I wasn't impressed by the selections quoted herein.

Herrmann admirers will have to read this book and it's well worth their time. Hitchcock fans, too, will enjoy approaching the director from this angle.

The first line is "The screen stretched across the studio wall more than twenty feet wide and eight feet tall".