Bernard Herrmann

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Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann and Twi his dog
Born	June 29, 1911(1911-06-29) New York City, New York
Died	December 24, 1975(1975-12-24) (aged 64) North Hollywood, California
Years active	1941–1975
Spouse	Lucille Fletcher (2 October 1939–1948) Lucy Anderson (1949–1964) Norma Shepherd (27 November 1967–his death) [2]

Bernard Herrmann (June 29, 1911 – December 24, 1975) was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.

An Academy Award-winner (for The Devil and Daniel Webster, 1941), Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo. He also composed notable scores for many other movies, including Citizen Kane, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Cape Fear, and Taxi Driver. He worked extensively in radio drama (most notably for Orson Welles), composed the scores for several fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen, and many TV programs including most notably Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone and Have Gun–Will Travel.

Early life and career

Herrmann, the son of a Jewish middle class family of Russian origin, was born in New York City. He attended high school at DeWitt Clinton High School, at that time on 10th avenue and 59th Street in New York City.^[1] His father encouraged music 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 and Philip James. He also studied 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 two years he was appointed music director of the Columbia Workshop, an experimental radio drama series for which Herrmann composed or arranged music (one notable program was The Fall of the City). Within nine years, he had become Chief Conductor to the CBS Symphony Orchestra. He was responsible for introducing more new works to U.S. audience than any other conductor — he was a particular champion of Charles Ives's music, which was virtually unknown at that time. Herrmann's radio programs of concert music, which were broadcast under such titles as Invitation to Music and Exploring Music, were planned in an unconventional way and featured rarely-heard music, old and new, which was not heard in public concert halls. Examples include broadcasts devoted to Music of Famous Amateurs or to notable royal personages, such as the music of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Henry VIII, Charles I, Louis XIII and so on.

Herrmann's many US broadcast premieres during the 1940s included Miaskovsky's 22nd Symphony, Malipiero's 3rd Symphony, Richard Arnell's 1st Symphony, Edmund Rubbra's 3rd Symphony and Ives's 3rd Symphony. He performed the works of Goetz, Gretchaninov, Gade and Liszt, and received many outstanding American musical awards and grants for his unusual programming and championship of little-known composers. In Dictators of the Baton, David Ewen wrote that Herrmann was "one of the most invigorating influences in the radio music of the past decade." Also during the 1940s, Herrmann's own concert music was taken up and played by such celebrated maestri as Leopold Stokowski, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Thomas Beecham and Eugene Ormandy.

In 1934, Herrmann met a young CBS secretary and aspiring writer, Lucille Fletcher. Fletcher was impressed with Herrmann's work, and the two began a five-year courtship. Marriage was delayed by the objections of Fletcher's parents, who disliked the fact that Herrmann was a Jew and were put off by what they viewed as his abrasive personality. The couple finally married on October 2, 1939. Fletcher was to become a noted radio screenwriter, and she and Herrmann collaborated on several projects throughout their career. He contributed the score to the famed 1941 radio presentation of Fletcher's original story, "The Hitch-Hiker," on the Orson Welles Show; and Fletcher helped to write the libretto for his operatic adaptation of Wuthering Heights. The couple divorced in 1948. The next year he married Lucille's cousin, Lucy (Kathy Lucille) Anderson. That marriage lasted 18 years, until 1964.^[2]

While at CBS, Herrmann met Orson Welles, and wrote or arranged scores for his Mercury Theatre broadcasts which were radio adaptations of literature. He conducted music for Welles's famous adaptation of H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds broadcast on October 30, 1938, which consisted entirely of pre-existing music.^[3] 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. Between those two movies, he wrote the score for William Dieterle's The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), for which he won his only Oscar. In 1947, Herrmann scored the atmospheric music for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

Collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock

Herrmann is most closely associated with the director Alfred Hitchcock. He wrote the scores for almost every Hitchcock film from The Trouble with Harry (1955) to Marnie (1964), a period which included Vertigo, Psycho, and North by Northwest. He oversaw the sound design in The Birds (1963), although there was no actual music in the film as such, only electronically made bird sounds.

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 (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)", and the Storm Cloud Cantata played in the Royal Albert Hall—are not by Herrmann (although he did re-orchestrate the cantata by Australian-born composer Arthur Benjamin written for the earlier Hitchcock film of the same name). However, this film did give Herrmann the opportunity for an on-screen appearance: he is the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra in the Albert Hall scene.

Herrmann's most recognizable music is from another Hitchcock film, Psycho. Unusual for a thriller at the time, the score uses only the string section of the orchestra. The screeching violin music heard during the famous shower scene (which Hitchcock originally suggested have no music at all) is one of the most famous moments in film score history.

His score for Vertigo (1958) is seen as just as masterful. In many of the key scenes Hitchcock let Herrmann's score take center stage, a score whose melodies, echoing the "Liebestod" from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, dramatically convey the main character's obsessive love for the woman he tries to shape into a long-dead, past love.

A notable feature of the Vertigo score is the ominous two-note falling motif that opens the suite — it is a direct musical imitation of the two notes sounded by the fog horns located at either side of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco (as heard from the San Francisco side of the bridge). This motif has direct relevance to the film, since the horns can be clearly heard sounding in just this manner at Fort Point, the spot where the character played by Kim Novak jumps into the bay.

However, according to Dan Aulier(author of Vertigo : The Making of a Hitchcock Classic), Herrmann deeply regretted being unable to conduct his composition for Vertigo. A musician's strike in America meant that it was actually conducted in England by Muir Matheson. Herrmann always personally conducted his own works and while he considered the composition among his best works, regarded it as a missed opportunity.

In a question-and-answer session at the George Eastman Museum in October 1973, Herrmann stated that, unlike most film composers who did not have any creative input into the style and tone of the score, he insisted on creative control as a condition to accepting the film’s scoring assignment:

I have the final say, or I don’t do the music. The reason for insisting on this is simply, compared to Orson Welles, a man of great musical culture, most other directors are just babes in the woods. If you were to follow their taste, the music would be awful. There are exceptions. I once did a film The Devil and Daniel Webster with a wonderful director William Dieterle. He was also a man of great musical culture. And Hitchcock, you know, is very sensitive; he leaves me alone. It depends on the person. But if I have to take what a director says, I’d rather not do the film. I find it’s impossible to work that way.^[4]

Herrmann stated that Hitchcock would invite him on to the production of a film and depending on his decision of the length of the music, would either expand or contract the scene. It was Hitchcock who asked Herrmann for the "recognition scene" near the end of Vertigo (the scene where Jimmy Stewart's character suddenly realizes Kim Novak's identity) to be played with music.^{[citation needed]}

Herrmann's relationship with Hitchcock came to an abrupt end when they disagreed over the score for Torn Curtain. Reportedly pressured by Universal's front office, Hitchcock wanted a score that was more jazz- and pop-influenced. Hitchcock's biographer, Patrick McGilligan, stated that Hitchcock was worried about becoming old fashioned and felt that Herrmann's music had to change with the times as well. Herrmann initially agreed, but then went ahead and scored the film according to his own ideas in any case.^[5]

Hitchcock listened to only the prelude of the score before turning off a recording of the music and angrily confronting Herrmann about the pop score he had promised. Herrmann, equally incensed, bellowed, "Look, Hitch, you can't outjump your own shadow. And you don't make pop pictures. What do you want with me? I don't write pop music." Hitchcock unrelentingly insisted that Herrmann change the score, violating Herrmann's general claim for creative control that he had always been maintained in their previous films. Herrmann then said, "Hitch, what's the use of my doing more with you? I had a career before you, and I will afterwards."^[6]

According to McGilligan, Herrmann later tried to patch up and repair the damage with Hitchcock, but Hitchcock refused to see him. Herrmann's widow disputes this, painting a somewhat different picture, of two friends whose egos were in the way. In a 2004 interview with Günther Kögebehn for the Bernard Herrmann Society (titled Running with the Kids: A Conversation with Norma Herrmann), she states:

I met Hitchcock very briefly. Everybody says they never spoke again. I met him, it was cool, it was not a warm meeting. It was in Universal Studios, this must be 69, 70, 71ish. And we were in Universal for some other reason and Herrmann said: 'See that tiny little office over there, that’s Hitch’. And that stupid little parking place. Hitch used to have an empire with big offices and a big staff. Then they made it down to half that size, then they made it to half that size… We are going over to say hello.' Actually [Herrmann] got a record; he was always intending to give him a record he just made. But it wasn’t a film thing. It was either Moby Dick or something of his concert pieces to take it and give to Hitch. Peggy, Hitchcock’s secretary was there. Hitch came out, Benny said: 'I thought you’d like a copy of this.' 'How are you?' etc. and he introduced me. And Hitchcock was cool, but they did meet. They met, I was there. And when Herrmann came out again he said: “What a great reduction in Hitch’s status."

In 2009, Norma Herrmann began to auction off her late husband's personal collection on Bonhams.com, adding more interesting details to the two men's relationship. While Herrmann had brought Hitchcock a copy of his classical work after the break-up, Hitchcock, in fact, gave Herrmann an inscribed copy of his Hitchcock-Truffaut interview book, signed "To Benny with my fondest wishes, Hitch." The Orson Welles website, wellesnet.com, mentions this in an article written Sunday, April 12, 2009, along with a bit more information, giving the impression that Hitchcock, more and more, wanted to patch up the damage done as his Hollywood power waned:

Of course, once Herrmann felt he had been wronged, he was not going to say 'yes' to Hitchcock unless he was courted and it seems unlikely that Hitchcock would be willing to do that, although apparently Hitchcock did ask Herrmann back to score his last film Family Plot right before Herrmann died. Herrmann, who had a full schedule of films planned for 1976, including DePalma’s Carrie, The Seven Per Cent Solution and Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To, was reportedly happy to be in a position to ignore Hitchcock’s reunion offer.

At any rate, Herrmann's unused score for Torn Curtain was later commercially recorded, initially by Elmer Bernstein for his Film Music Collection subscription record label (reissued by Warner Bros. Records), and later, in a concert suite adapted by Christopher Palmer, by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Sony. Some of Herrmann's cues for Torn Curtain were later post-synched to the final cut, where they showed how remarkably attuned the composer was to the action, and how, arguably, more effective his score could have been.

Ironically, Herrmann had composed some jazz for the "picnic" scene in Citizen Kane and he later used some jazz elements (much in the vein of Maurice Ravel's two piano concertos) for The Wrong Man when he scored the nightclub scenes showing Henry Fonda as a double bass player in a jazz band, and for Taxi Driver.

Herrmann subsequently moved to England, where he was hired by François Truffaut to write the score for Fahrenheit 451 and, later, for The Bride Wore Black. (During this period he unfortunately became confused with another conductor of the same name who worked with the BBC Northern Dance Orchestra.) His final work, the score for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), received high acclaim.

Other works

From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, Herrmann scored a series of notable mythically-themed fantasy films, including Journey to the Center of the Earth and the Ray Harryhausen Dynamation epics Jason and the Argonauts, Mysterious Island, The Three Worlds of Gulliver, and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad .

During the same period, 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 lesser known theme used during the series' first season, as well as the opening theme to Have Gun–Will Travel.

In the mid-1960s he composed the highly-regarded music score for François Truffaut's Fahrenheit 451. Scored for strings, two harps, vibraphone, xylophone and glockenspiel, Herrmann's score created a driving, neurotic mood that perfectly suited the film. It also had a direct influence on producer George Martin's staccato string arrangement for Beatles 1966 smash hit single "Eleanor Rigby".

In 1967, he married his third wife, Norma Shepherd.

Herrmann's last film scores included Sisters and Obsession for Brian De Palma. His final film soundtrack, and the last work he completed before his death, was his sombre score for the 1976 film Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese. It was De Palma who had suggested to Scorsese to use the composer. Immediately after finishing the recording of the Taxi Driver soundtrack on December 23, 1975, Herrmann viewed the rough cut of what was to be his next film assignment, Larry Cohen's God Told Me To, and dined with Cohen, after which he returned to his hotel for the night. Bernard Herrmann died from cardiovascular disease in his sleep at his hotel in Los Angeles, during the night. Scorsese and Cohen dedicated both Taxi Driver and God Told Me To to Herrmann's memory.

As well as his many film scores, Herrmann wrote several concert pieces, including a symphony in 1941; the opera Wuthering Heights; the cantata Moby Dick (1938), dedicated to Charles Ives; and For the Fallen, a tribute to the soldiers who died in battle in World War II, among others. He recorded all these compositions, and several others, for the Unicorn label during his last years in London.

Use of electronic instruments

Herrmann's involvement with electronic musical instruments dates back to 1951, when he used the theremin in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Robert B. Sexton has noted^{[citation needed]} that this score involved the use of treble and bass theremins (played by Dr. Samuel Hoffmann and Paul Shure), electric strings, bass, prepared piano, and guitar together with various pianos and harps, electronic organs, brass, and percussion, and that Herrmann treated the theremins as a truly orchestral section.

Herrmann was a sound consultant on The Birds, which made extensive use of an electronic instrument called the mixturtrautonium, although the instrument was performed by Oskar Sala on the film’s soundtrack. Herrmann used several electronic instruments on his score of It’s Alive as well.

Compositional style and philosophy

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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.

Early in his life, Herrmann committed himself to a creed of personal integrity at the price of unpopularity: the quintessential artist. His philosophy is summarized by a favorite Tolstoy quote: ‘Eagles fly alone and sparrows fly in flocks.' Thus, Herrmann would only compose music for films when he was allowed the artistic liberty to compose what he wished without the director getting in the way. Most famously, after over a decade of composing for all of Hitchcock’s films, Hitchcock requested a more “pop” score from Herrmann. Herrmann’s score was not what Hitchcock had requested, and since Herrmann was so committed to having artistic liberty and would not compromise his values, the two went their separate ways, never to collaborate again. This shows Herrmann’s persistence in being able to compose as he saw fit to represent the film.

His philosophy of orchestrating film was based on the assumption that the musicians were selected and hired for the recording session—that this music was not constrained to the musical forces of the concert hall. For example, his use of ten harps in Beneath the 12 Mile Reef created an extraordinary underwater-like sonic landscape; his use of four bass flutes in Citizen Kane contributed to the creepy opening, only matched by the use of 12 flutes in his unused Torn Curtain score; and his use of the serpent in White Witch Doctor is possibly the first use of that instrument in a film score.^{[clarification needed]}

Herrmann said in an interview: "To orchestrate is like a thumbprint. I can't understand having someone else do it. It would be like someone putting color to your paintings."^[7]

Herrmann subscribed to the belief since held by many that the best film music should be able to 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.

Legacy and recording

Herrmann is still a prominent figure in the world of film music today, despite his death over 35 years ago. As such, his career has been studied extensively by biographers and documentarians. His string-only score for Psycho, for example, set the standard when it became a new way to write music for thrillers (rather than big fully orchestrated pieces). In 1992 a documentary, Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann, was made about him. Also in 1992 a 2½ hour long National Public Radio documentary was produced on his life —Bernard Herrmann: A Celebration of his Life and Music (Bruce A. Crawford). In 1991, Steven C. Smith wrote a Herrmann biography titled A Heart at Fire's Center, a quotation from a favorite Stephen Spender poem of Herrmann's.

His music continues to be used in films and recordings after his death. "Georgie's Theme" from Herrmann's score for the 1968 film Twisted Nerve is whistled by one-eyed nurse Elle Driver in the hospital corridor scene in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003). The opening theme from Vertigo was used in the prologue to Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" video, and during a flashback sequence in the pilot episode of FX's American Horror Story, which also featured "Georgie's Theme" in later episodes as a recurring musical motif for the character of Tate. Fellow film composer Danny Elfman adapted Herrmann's music for Psycho for use in director Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake and borrowed from Herrmann's "Mountaintop/Sunrise" theme, from Journey to the Center of the Earth, for his main Batman theme. On their 1977 album Ra, American progressive rock group Utopia also adapted "Mountaintop/Sunrise," in a rock arrangement, as the introduction to the album's opening song, "Communion With The Sun." And most recently, Lucovie Bource liberally used the love theme from "Vertigo" in the last reels of 2011's "The Artist"

Herrmann's film music is well represented on disc. His friend, John Steven Lasher, has produced several albums featuring urtext recordings, including Battle of Neretva, Citizen Kane, The Kentuckian, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Night Digger and Sisters, under various labels owned by Fifth Continent Australia Pty Ltd.

Herrmann was also a champion of the romantic-era composer Joachim Raff, whose music had fallen into near-oblivion in the 1960s. During the 1940s, Herrmann had played Raff's 3rd and 5th Symphonies in his CBS radio broadcasts. In May 1970, Herrmann conducted the world premiere recording of Raff's Fifth Symphony "Lenore" for the Unicorn label. The recording did not attract much notice in its time, despite receiving excellent reviews, but is now considered a major turning-point in the rehabilitation of Raff as a composer.

In 1996, Sony Classical released a recording of Herrmann's music, The Film Scores, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen. This disc received the 1998 Cannes Classical Music Award for "Best 20th-Century Orchestral Recording." It was also nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Engineered Album, Classical." In 2004 Sony Classical re-released this superb recording at a budget price in its "Great Performances" series (SNYC 92767SK).

Decca has reissued on CD a series of Phase 4 Stereo recordings with Herrmann conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra mostly in excerpts from his various film scores, including one devoted to music from several of the Hitchcock films (including Psycho, Marnie and Vertigo). In the liner notes for the Hitchcock Phase 4 album, Herrmann said that the suite from The Trouble with Harry was a "portrait of Hitch". Another album was devoted to his fantasy film scores—a few of them being the films of the special effects animator Ray Harryhausen, including music from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and The Three Worlds of Gulliver. His other Phase 4 Stereo LPs of the 1970s included Music from the Great Film Classics (suites and excerpts from Jane Eyre, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Citizen Kane and The Devil and Daniel Webster); and "The Fantasy World of Bernard Herrmann" (Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Fahrenheit 451.)

Fellow composers Richard Band, Graeme Revell, Christopher Young, Danny Elfman and Brian Tyler consider Herrmann to be a major inspiration. In 1985, Richard Band's opening theme to Re-Animator borrows heavily from Herrmann's opening score to Psycho. In 1990, Graeme Revell had adapted Herrmann's music from Psycho for its television sequel-prequel Psycho IV: The Beginning. Revell's early orchestral music during the early nineties, such as Child's Play 2 (which its music score being a reminiscent of Herrmann's scores to the 1973 film Sisters, due to the synthesizers incorporated in the chilling parts of the orchestral score) as well as the 1963 The Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll" (which inspired the Child's Play franchise), were very similar to Herrmann's work. Also, Revell's score for the video game Call of Duty 2 was very much a reminiscent of Herrmann's very rare WWII music scores such as The Naked and the Dead and Battle of Neretva. Young, who was a jazz drummer at first, listened to Herrmann's works which convinced him to be a film composer. Elfman has said he first became interested in film music upon seeing The Day the Earth Stood Still, and he paid homage to that score in his music for Mars Attacks! Tyler's score for Bill Paxton's film Frailty was greatly influenced by Herrmann's film music.

Sir George Martin, best known for producing and often adding orchestration to The Beatles music, cites Herrmann as an influence in his own work, particularly in Martin's scoring of the Beatles' song "Eleanor Rigby". Martin later expanded on this as an extended suite for McCartney's 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street, which features a very recognizable hommage to Herrmann's score for Psycho.

Avant-garde composer/saxophonist/producer John Zorn, in the biographical film A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky, cited Bernard Herrmann as one of his favorite composers and a major influence.

Elmer Bernstein adapted and arranged Herrmann's original score from J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear (1962), and used it for the 1991 Martin Scorsese remake. After Bernstein realized there was not enough music in the score from the original film, he added sections from Herrmann's unused score for Hitchcock's Torn Curtain, including the music composed for the murder of the character "Gromek". The score for Cape Fear evokes both the gathering clouds of the destructive hurricane and the murderous intent of killer Max Cady. Bernstein also recorded Herrmann's score for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which was released in 1975 on the Varese Sarabande label later reissued on CD in the 1990s.

Charles Gerhardt conducted a 1974 RCA recording entitled "The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann" with the National Philharmonic Orchestra. It featured Suites from Citizen Kane (with Kiri te Kanawa singing the 'Salammbo' aria) and White Witch Doctor, along with music from On Dangerous Ground, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, and the Hangover Square Piano Concerto.

During his last years in England, between 1966 and 1975, Herrmann made several LPs of other composers' music for assorted record labels. These included Phase 4 Stereo recordings of Gustav Holst's The Planets and Charles Ives's 2nd Symphony, as well as an album entitled "The Impressionists" (music by Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Faure and Honegger) and another entitled "The Four Faces of Jazz" (works by Weill, Gershwin, Stravinsky and Milhaud). As well as recording his own film music in Phase 4 Stereo he made LPs of movie scores by others, such as "Great Shakespearean Films" (music by Shostakovitch for Hamlet, Walton for Richard III and Rozsa for Julius Caesar), and "Great British Film Music" (movie scores by Lambert, Bax, Benjamin, Walton, Vaughan Williams, and Bliss).

For Unicorn Records, he recorded several of his own concert-hall works, including the cantata Moby Dick, his opera Wuthering Heights, his Symphony, and the suites Welles Raises Kane and The Devil and Daniel Webster.

Pristine Audio has released two CDs of Herrmann's radio broadcasts. One is devoted to a CBS programme from 1945 that features music by Handel, Vaughan Williams and Elgar; the other is devoted to works by Charles Ives, Robert Russell Bennett and Herrmann himself.

AFI

The American Film Institute respectively ranked Herrmann's scores for Psycho and Vertigo #4 and #12 on their list of the 25 greatest film scores. His scores for the following films were also nominated for the list:

• The Devil and Daniel Webster, aka All That Money Can Buy (1941)
• Citizen Kane (1941)
• The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
• Jane Eyre (1944)
• North by Northwest (1959)
• Taxi Driver (1976)

In popular culture

Part of Herrmann's score for The Trouble with Harry was used in a 2010 U.S. television commercial for the Volkswagen CC.^[8][9]

Music from the Vertigo soundtrack was used in BBC Four's Spitfire Women documentary, aired in the UK in September 2010.^[10]

A 2011 TV commercial entitled "Snowpocalypse" for Dodge all-wheel drive vehicles uses Herrmann's main title theme for Cape Fear.^[11]

"Gimme Some More" by Busta Rhymes is based on a sample from Herrmann's score from Psycho.

The prologue to Lady Gaga's 2011 video for the song Born This Way features Herrmann's Vertigo prelude.^[12][13]

The phrase "Bernard Herrmann lives" is graffitied under a train overpass at the intersection of Bethlehem Pike, Skippack Pk (PA Route 73), and Camp Hill Rd. near Flourtown, Pennsylvania. It has been there for at least 20 years.^[14]

The 2011 FX series American Horror Story has utilized cues from "Twisted Nerve", "Psycho", and "Vertigo" for episode scores.

The 2011 film "The Artist" used a soundtrack recording of the love theme from Vertigo. Film actress Kim Novak later voiced her concern about the use of the music, saying that her work "had been violated by the film, 'The Artist'." ^[15]

Film scores

Radio scores

Melodrams

These works are for narrator and full orchestra, intended to be broadcast over the radio (since a human voice would not be able to be heard over the full volume of an orchestra). In a 1938 broadcast, Herrmann distinguished "melodrama" from "melodram" and explained that these works are not part of the former, but the latter. The 1935 works were composed before June 1935.

• La Belle Dame Sans Merci (September 1934)
• The City of Brass (December 1934)
• Annabel Lee (1934–1935)
• Poem Cycle (1935):
  • The Willow Leaf
  • Weep No More, Sad Fountains
  • Something Tells
• A Shropshire Lad (1935)
• Cynara (1935)

Incidental music for radio shows and dramas

• Palmolive Beauty Box (1935?) (2 existing cues)
• Dauber (October 1936)
• Rhythm of the Jute Mill (December 1936)
• Gods of the Mountain (1937)
• A Christmas Carol (1954, a CBS-TV special, after Dickens)
• A Child Is Born (1955, a TV special hosted by Ronald Reagan with singers Nadine Conner and Theodor Uppman)
• Brave New World (1956)

Stage works

• Wuthering Heights: Opera (1951)
• The King of Schnorrers (1968) Musical comedy

Concert works

• The Forest: Tone poem for Large Orchestra (1929)
• November Dusk: Tone Poem for Large Orchestra (1929)
• Tempest and Storm: Furies Shrieking!: for Piano (1929)
• The Dancing Faun and The Bells: Two Songs for Medium Voice and Small Chamber Orchestra (1929)
• Requiescat: Violin and Piano (1929)
• Twilight: Violin and Piano (1929)
• March Militaire (1932), ballet music for Americana Revue (1932)
• Aria for Flute and Harp (1932)
• Variations on "Deep River" and "Water Boy" (1933)
• Prelude to Anathema: for Fifteen Instruments (1933)
• Silent Noon: for Fourteen Instruments (1933)
• The Body Beautiful (1935), music from the Broadway play
• Nocturne and Scherzo (1935)
• Sinfonietta for Strings (1935)
• Currier and Ives Suite (1935)
• Violin Concerto: Unfinished (1937)
• Moby Dick: Cantata (1937)
• Johnny Appleseed: Unfinished Cantata (1940)
• Symphony (1941)
• The Fantasticks (1942)
• The Devil and Daniel Webster Suite (1942)
• For the Fallen (1943)
• Welles Raises Kane (1943)
• Echoes: String Quartet (1965)
• Souvenirs de Voyage (1967)

See also

Biography portal

• Columbia Workshop - a radio series for which Herrmann was music director and composed or arranged many episodes.
• High Anxiety—a comedy spoof that parodies many Hitchcock devices including Herrmann's music.
• Hitchcock & Herrmann—a stage play about the relationship between Herrmann and Alfred Hitchcock.

Selected bibliography

• Smith, Steven C. (1991). A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann. US: University of California Press. ISBN 0520071239. 
• Cooper, David (2001). Bernard Herrmann's Vertigo: A Film Score Handbook. US: Greenwood Press. ISBN 031331490X. 
• Cooper, David (2005). Bernard Herrmann's The Ghost and Mrs Muir: A Film Score Guide. US: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0810856794. 
• Johnson, Edward (1977). Bernard Herrmann - Hollywood's Music-Dramatist - Foreword by Miklos Rozsa. Rickmansworth, UK: Triad Press - Bibliographical Series No. 6. 

References

External links

• The Bernard Herrmann Estate (website incomplete as of November 2011)
• The Bernard Herrmann Society (without a list of Herrmann's music)
• Bernard Herrmann at the Internet Movie Database
• Bernard Herrmann discography at Discogs
• Bernard Herrmann papers, at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• Bernard Herrmann: The Early Years
• Bernard Herrmann at Soundtrackguide.net
• Bernard Herrmann: A Celebration of his Life and Music
• Bernard Herrmann: A Centennial Tribute
• Gramophone magazine obituary, February 1976.
• Citizen Kane: The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann at Allmusic
• Bernard Herrmann at Find a Grave