"From Whence These Dire Portents Around" from #TheManWhoKnewTooMuch

Hitchcock had the Ambrose Chapel sing the hymn "From Whence These Dire Portents Around" in "The Man Who Knew Too Much"



1 From whence these dire Portents around,
That Earth and Heav'n amaze?
Wherefore do Earthquakes cleave the Ground,
Why hides the sun his Rays?


6 Let Sin no more my Soul inslave!
Break, Lord, the Tyrant's Chain!
O save me, whom thou cam'st to save,
Nor bleed nor die in vain!









Hymn based on the Bufford tune:







In case the link breaks - a kludgy recording

I love how the composer for the film's soundtrack, Bernard Herrmann, or at least his name, made a cameo in the film:

And a dissertation on how Hitchcock employed music in his films:

The above video explains why my joke about the cymbal player was rather pedantic:

I suppose it was cinematic to have one dedicated cymbal player but percussion players 🥁would probably multitask on different instruments, depending on union rules [no cymbal emoji ] pic.twitter.com/5ZAVnL3V9g

— 🎼AdagioForStrings🎻 (@adagioforstring) March 16, 2018

Notice the pages and pages of rests on the cymbal player's sheet music:

In case I'm excommunicated from twitter, the video: