Profile of Bernard Herrmann on Famous Like Me

Bernard Herrmann (June 29, 1911 – December 24, 1975) was a composer, best known for his film scores, particularly for those directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He wrote the scores for Citizen Kane, Cape Fear and Taxi Driver as well as for the original radio broadcast of Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds. He also wrote scores for television programs in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers of all time.

Herrmann was born in New York City. His father encouraged musical activity, taking him to the opera, and encouraging him to learn the violin. After winning a $100 composition prize at the age of thirteen, he decided to concentrate on music, and went to New York University where he studied with Percy Grainger. He was also a graduate student at the Juilliard School and, at the age of twenty, formed his own orchestra, The New Chamber Orchestra of New York.

In 1934, he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) as a staff conductor. Within six years, he had become Chief Conductor to the CBS Symphony Orchestra. He was responsible for introducing more new works to American audiences than any other conductor - he was a particular champion of Charles Ives' music, which was generally ignored at that time.

Whilst at CBS, he met Orson Welles, and wrote scores for his Mercury Theatre broadcasts including the famous adaptation of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. When Welles moved to movies, Herrmann went with him, writing the scores for Citizen Kane (1941) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), although the score for the latter, like the film itself, was heavily edited by the studio.

Hermann is most closely associated with the director Alfred Hitchcock. He wrote the scores for every Hitchcock film from The Trouble with Harry (1956) to Marnie (1964), a period which included Vertigo and North by Northwest. He oversaw the sound design in The Birds (1963), although there was no actual music in the film as such, just electronically created bird sounds.

His involvement with electronic musical instruments dates back to 1948, when he wrote "Jennie's Theme" for the David O. Selznick production A Portrait of Jennie. This score was based on themes by Debussy, and utilized the theremin, which he used again for one of his most interesting scores, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Robert B. Sexton has noted that this score involved the use of treble and bass theremins (played by Samuel Hoffman and Paul Shure), electronic violin, bass and guitar together with various pianos and harps, brass and percussion, and that Herrmann treated the theremins as a truly orchestral section.

The music for the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) was only partly by Herrmann. The two most significant pieces of music in the film—the song, "Que Sera Sera", and the cantata played in the Royal Albert Hall—are not by Herrmann at all (although he did re-orchestrate the cantata, which was principally the work of the Australian-born composer Arthur Benjamin). However, this film did give Herrmann an acting role: he is the orchestral conductor in the Albert Hall scene.

Herrmann's most famous music is probably from another Hitchcock film, Psycho. The screeching violin music heard during the shower scene (a scene which Hitchcock originally suggested have no music at all) is probably one of the most famous moments from all film scores.

His score for Vertigo is just as masterful. In many of the key scenes Hitchcock essentially gave the film over to Herrmann, whose melodies, echoing Richard Wagner's Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, dramatically conveys Scotty's obsessive love for the woman he imagines to be Madeleine.

Herrmann's relationship with Hitchcock came to an end when the latter rejected a score for Torn Curtain. Herrmann subsequently moved to England, and was hired by François Truffaut to write the score for his Fahrenheit 451.

From the 1950s into the 1970s, Herrmann scored a series of fantasy films including Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Jason & the Argonauts, Mysterious Island, The Three Worlds of Gulliver, and It's Alive!

Starting in the late 1950s and extending into the early 1960s, Herrmann turned his talents to writing scores for television shows. Perhaps most notably, he wrote the scores for several well-known episodes of the original "Twilight Zone" series including the hauntingly beautiful but lesser known original theme used during the series' first season.

Herrmann's last film scores included Blood Sisters and Obsession for Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. He died in his sleep one day after the final recording sessions for Taxi Driver in 1975 (the movie is dedicated to his memory) in Los Angeles, California.

As well as his many film scores, Herrmann wrote concert pieces, including a symphony (1941); an opera, Wuthering Heights; and a cantata, Moby Dick (1938).

Herrmann's music is typified by frequent use of ostinati (short repeating patterns), novel orchestration and, in his film scores, an ability to portray character traits not altogether obvious from other elements of the film. He won an Oscar for The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), his second film score. In 1992 a documentary, Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann, was made about him. His music continues to be used in films after his death; his score for the 1968 film Twisted Nerve features in Quentin Tarantino's movie Kill Bill (2003).

In the last years of Herrmann's life he did much to create interest in film scores as a form of music worthy of appreciation and performance. He subscribed to the belief since held by many that movie music can stand on its own legs when detached from the film for which it was originally written. To this end he made several well-known recordings for Decca of arrangements of his own film music as well as music of other prominent composers.

Film scores

• Citizen Kane (1941)
• The Devil and Daniel Webster (AKA All That Money Can Buy) (1941)
• The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
• Jane Eyre (1944)
• Anna and the King of Siam (1946)
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
• Portrait of Jennie (1948) (uncredited)
• The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
• The Trouble with Harry (1955)
• The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
• The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958)
• Vertigo (1958)
• North by Northwest (1959)
• Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
• Psycho (1960)
• The Three Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
• Mysterious Island (1961)
• Cape Fear (1962)
• The Birds (1963)
• Jason & the Argonauts (1963)
• Marnie (1964)
• Torn Curtain (1966)
• Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
• Twisted Nerve (1968)
• Sisters (1973)
• It's Alive! (1974)
• Obsession (1976)
• Taxi Driver (1976)
• Featured in Kill Bill (2003)

External link

• Bernard Herrmann at the SoundtrackINFO project
• Home page of the Bernard Herrmann Society

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