Psycho (1960) [Archive] - The Back Alley Forums

Christina Delassalle

07-08-2010, 12:37 PM

Hitchcock owes a great deal to Bernard Herrmann. I can't imagine any of the films he scored, which are my favortie Hitchcock films, without Herrmann's music! Sorry for the long post, but I got so excited! I love Bernard Herrmann, his Hitchcock films are just a small drop in the bucket!

(from Wikipedia)
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 sonal 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", 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 Man Who Knew Too Much from 1934). However, this film did give Herrmann the opportunity for an on-screen appearance: he is the orchestral conductor 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 Richard Wagner's "Liebestod" from 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.

Bernard Herrmann said, in a question-and-answer session at the George Eastman Museum in October 1973, that unlike most film composers who did not have any creative input into the style and tone of the score, Herrmann insisted on creative control or he would not score the film at all:

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

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.

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.

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.