In Chapter 9 of his work Hitchcock's Music, Jack Sullivan discusses the score of Notorious and its role in the movie and the audience's experience.  Sullivan argues that though the movie's score, composed by Roy Webb, is often overlooked by Hitchcock scholars, it is one of the best scores of any Hitchcock movie.  Although Hitchcock had hoped for a more well-known composer than Webb, in the end Webb's subdued, non-flashy style and his use of dissonance and jagged rhythms fit well, even perfectly, as Sullivan argues, with Hitchcock's vision for the movie.  The music, which often meshes so well with a scene that it seems to fade imperceptibly into the background, enhances the drama and danger that is written into the plot and that Hitchcock works so painstakingly to portray in the film through careful use of the camera and coaching of his actors.

        The chapter provides a clear example of one of the many unexpected and unconventional elements of Notorious that, when combined with the other building blocks of the movie, creates the classic suspense for which Hitchcock is so well-known.  The music is in no way a typical Hollywood film score - the tunes are not particularly catchy or melodramatic.  However, Webb's varied and sometimes unsettling style works in the moment and matches the movie's plot, with its characters buried in layers of unresolved conflict and life-threatening danger, and its audience immersed in the uncomfortable coexistence of personal and political conflict embodied by both Devlin and Alicia's love vs. duty conflicts.