How Well Do You Know Bernard Herrmann - The Master of Film Scores?

The Life and Work of Composer Bernard Herrmann

• Bernard Herrmann was an American composer and conductor known for his work on film scores, including Citizen Kane, Jason and the Argonauts, Fahrenheit 451, and Taxi Driver.
• Herrmann won an Academy Award in 1941 for his score for The Devil and Daniel Webster.
• He is particularly associated with the films of Alfred Hitchcock, scoring seven films between 1955 and 1966.
• Herrmann's scores for Psycho, North by Northwest, and Vertigo are regarded as classics of the genre.
• Unlike the previous generation of film composers, Herrmann was born in New York and studied at the Julliard School, with influences that were far more varied and modernist.
• Herrmann insisted on artistic freedom, orchestrating his own scores, giving him complete control of the actual details of the sounds being made.
• Psycho was the sixth collaboration between Hitchcock and Herrmann and established the horror/thriller movie genre.
• Hitchcock acknowledged the importance of Herrmann's music, saying that "33% of the effect of Psycho is due to the music."
• Herrmann created a tense, cold, ruthless score for Psycho, using only the string section of the orchestra and breaking the mold of previous film score styles by his widespread use of ostinati.
• The film's most iconic scene, where the character Marion is murdered in the shower, was originally intended to have no music, but Herrmann convinced Hitchcock to add his now integral string chords.
• Herrmann's decision to limit the forces to the orchestral string section was bold and forced him to be enormously creative in his string writing.
• Perhaps Herrmann's motives in making this decision were in trying to reflect the film's stark black and white images and tense claustrophobia with what might seem like a similarly limited "closed-in" sound world.