The Bernard Herrmann/Alfred Hitchcock collaboration

[Bonn1827]

A new book, "Hitchcock's Music and New World Symphonies" (which seems an odd title) by Jack Sullivan (Yale Uni Press) has been discussed in the Wall Street Journal. The book refers, inter alia, to this wonderful collaboration, as follows:

"The harmonic irresolution and brooding malevolence of Herrmann's scores became an indelible part of Hitchcock's late Hollywood masterpieces. Herrmann was Hitchcock's secret sharer, a catalyst for energies darker and more dangerous than Hitchcock's cool sensibility easily allowed."

The article concludes that, after several disastrous rows between Herrmann and Hitchcock, "they ended up being two matadors opposing one another".

Hitchcock ultimately failed to understand the extent to which Herrmann's music was central to the success of many of his later films and after Herrmann was fired by Hitchcock in 1966, over a dispute with "Torn Curtain", his films not longer had the artistic clout of his earlier ones.

What do people think of the music composed for film by Bernard Herrmann? He didn't just compose for Hitchcock, as his career started in the late 1930's. And does anyone know of any specialist internet forums dedicated to classic film? I've tried unsuccessfully to find one.

[Michael]

I must have been about twelve when I first saw "Vertigo" and the opening sequence has always stayed in my mind: the close-ups of Kim Novak's face and the music (which almost induces vertigo).

[Ed C]

What do people think of the music composed for film by Bernard Herrmann? He didn't just compose for Hitchcock, as his career started in the late 1930's. And does anyone know of any specialist internet forums dedicated to classic film? I've tried unsuccessfully to find one.

Hi Bonn - I LOVE Herrmann's music! He's my 2nd after LvB! I have pretty much his entire complete recording legacy on my iPod. I will write more but I'm about to have dinner but briefly here's the BH forum -
http://herrmann.uib.no/talking/list.cgi?forum=thGeneral

here's the best film music forum (besides the semi-legal ones... )

http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/boar....cfm?forumID=1

[Bonn1827]

Oh Wow, thanks Ed! I'm so glad to find somebody who loves BH!! I'm into Hitchcock in a big way too, BTW. Have read several bios. Will look at the film website.

I've got an excellent book which discusses the music of BH, amongst others. It is by Prof. Royal S. Brown (he used to write reviews in "Fanfare" - probably still does). When I return to my home and books next week I'll send you the title, which I can't explicitly remember word for word right now. It is a difficult, but rewarding, read. The chapter on Herrmann/Hitchcock is called "Music of the Irrational".

I met an interesting fellow from New York when I was teaching - he came in as a casual and was ex-USA by some 15 years. He started talking in the staffroom about music and I pricked up my ears. He used to hum tunes from films and shows and ask me to guess after only a few bars! What a joy this was - even though it annoyed my colleagues!! I always got it right and he said, "This kid knows her music"!! His surname was Herrmann, believe it or not - no relation, but we both laughed heartily about this.

Please tell about your fave scores of BH and WHY?

[Ed C]

The first time I heard BH was "The Day The Earth Stood Still". That's still a jaw-dropping sound track even 60 years later. I guess it might sound cheesy to some people, but his use of 4 theremins and organ, as well as electric bass with a heavy brass arrangement is positively unique. The beginning even features backwards tape. It's a perfect marriage of electronic music and small orchestral forces. Revolutionary for its time.

Vertigo: a long analysis of the music for Vertigo:
http://writings.tomschneller.net/VertigoN.htm

The main theme is brilliant. Try to play it on piano - it is a perfectly symmetrical fingering pattern, the kind of thing a baby would play, yet totally complex. It has no real key. To me BH is saying to hell with rules, this is what VERTIGO sounds like. Very similar to what Beethoven did in his time! In fact BH often didn't use key signatures in his manuscripts - he just put in accidentals wherever needed. He didn't think in those terms.

However the main great thing about BH is his genius at orchestration. Listen to "Torn Curtain" - it's basically a nightmare labyrinth of brass and percussion, no violins. "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef" featured an unheard of 4 harps. "KIng of the Khyber Rifles" is a percussion tour-de-force, I kind of think of it as BH's response to Varese's "Ionization" percussion piece. "Anna and the KIng of Siam" is the first Hollywood score to incorporate world music - yet believe it or not there were no authentic instruments in the orchestra at all. All the sounds were made on regular orchestral materials but played using unusual techniques. BH was a true master of orchestral color. Yet Psycho has ONLY strings - and for a B&W film it adds all the red!

On a purely emotional level, The Ghost and Mrs Muir has themes in there which bring tears to my eyes, even after repeated listenings. This score has more of a "classical" structure, but never gets tiring. The train theme from North by Northwest - the most romantic theme ever. The "transformation" cue from Vertigo - sublime.

Anyways I could blab on but here's my fav scores:

1950 On Dangerous Ground
1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still
1953 King of the Khyber Rifles
1958 The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
1958 Vertigo
1959 Journey To The Center of the Earth
1959 North By Northwest
1960 Psycho
1961 Cape Fear
1961 Mysterious Island
1963 Jason & the Argonauts
1966 Fahrenheit 451
1972 Sisters
1975 Obsession
1975 Taxi Driver

what are your favs?

After my year-long Beethoven blog is complete I'm considering a year-long Herrmann blog.....

("Journey to the Center of The Earth" has an incredible ambient organ cue when they are in Atlantis - unheard of bold concepts - sound familiar?)

[Ed C]

Here's Bill Wrobel's cue by cue analyses of Herrmann scores. He examined the manuscripts at the BH archive in California and wrote out these analyses I think because he wasn't allowed to photocopy them. That's why they are so detailed....


http://www.filmscorerundowns.net/herrmann/index.html

This is pretty cool here, you can listen to radio shows that Herrmann scored an conducted WEEKLY and LIVE:

http://www.otr.net/?p=camp

These were the first collaborations between Orson Welles and Herrmann before they did Citizen Kane.

[Bonn1827]

Ed, Ed, Ed....you are FANTASTIC. Thank you so much for this - I'm having a ball. Yes, "Vertigo", with the unresolved Dominant 7ths and the Wagnerian Tristan love theme heavily paraphrased in his inimitable style! Wonderful, wonderful!

My faves:

Vertigo
Psycho
Taxi Driver
Farenheit 451
Citizen Kane
Marnie
North by Northwest

I actually didn't know he scored "The Day the Earth Stood Still". Yes, as you say, BH was a revolutionary. (However, many composers chose to use accidentals instead of a key signature!) Your comment about strings "providing the red" in a monochrome (B&W) film is apposite. Very true - I wish I'd used this expression when I was teaching the film in high-school. Oh well.

This has been a joy! Please keep up your BH comments.

[Bonn1827]

BTW - did you see the remake of Cape Fear and hear what was done to "reference" BH's original score? Was it Elmer Bernstein (another huge fave!)?

[Ed C]

BTW - did you see the remake of Cape Fear and hear what was done to "reference" BH's original score? Was it Elmer Bernstein (another huge fave!)?

Glad to find another BH fan! I spent a year tracking down every cue he ever recorded and I made a compilation of every main title he ever composed - 56 of them. Just a couple months ago I got my BH "grail" - the ORIGINAL White Witch Doctor main title. There is no official release but I found a copy of the film and extracted the audio. Charles Gerhardt rerecorded WWD with Herrmann's presence in this record, but the original is amazingly even more maniacal!
Having said that I highly recommend the Gerhardt record if you don't already have it - it's largely regarded as the best Herrmann rerecording of his scores.

One other tidbit about Psycho - the music for he shower scene. I'm sure you've heard BH's talk about how Hitch originally didn't want music but BH recorded it anyways. When Hitch heard it he admitted: "Inappropriate suggestion" or something close to that. But the other cool thing is that the music for the shower scene sounds unique because there is massive tape distortion there. There are many rerecordings of the shower cue but none have the same feeling as the original - and that is because BH ercorded that cue at levels beyond what the microphones could handle. Therefore actual audio information is lost and you get that really "weird" sound. The way I figured this is because I did an spectral analysis on the original source cue to figure out what made it so bizarre (besides bowing hard near the bridge).

oh yeah the Bernstein (Elmer) thing - he didn't want to do it but Scorcese begged him. He used a combination of the Cape Fear cues as well as the Torn Curtain material. I think it's good, fairly respectable. Of course the original Cape Fear score is great.

OK here's a cool thing - you can find scans of Bh original autograph scores in this thread at FSM about orchestration
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/boar...2814&archive=0
Alright gotta get some breakfast...

How did you discover Herrmann?

[Bonn1827]

Ed, thanks for those great links! The distortion with the music for the shower scene in "Psycho" - yes, it makes perfect sense! I remember Hitchcock telling Truffaut he wanted no music in that scene! Often the composer is the one who is right! I recently saw a documentary about Philip Glass ("In Twelve Parts") and he was working with Woody Allen and the director of "The Thin Blue Line" - sorry, name forgotten. Apparently the latter director is a cello graduate from Julliard! Anyway(s), they both talked about working with Glass on his scores for their films. It's a fascinating topic. Glass said it was "worse" for a composer working with a Director who had a music degree!! Can you imagine? Also, I've read the Todd McCarthy bio of another fave, Howard Hawks. Apparently when making "Hatari" Hawks was specific about using African-type music and when he discussed this with Tiomkin, who was assigned to the picture, the composer said "it can't be done". Hawks sacked him immediately and replaced him with Mancini and, voila, the magic score we have today!! Who'd have thought Hawks had such a an innate musical understanding? He was hardly ever even involved in editing his own films!

About first becoming a BH fan: this goes way back to the days of "Psycho", actually, and that extraordinary score. Since then I've watched and listened for him. Loved the atmospheric score of "Citizen Kane". Well, Benny's scores are all so different. The jazz "riffs" in "Taxi Driver" - powerful!!

[Bonn1827]

Ed, it was very touching looking at those BH autographs on the link you provided. I would love to see and touch the originals, but George Gershwin has priority if these kinds of things are ever going to happen!

So sad that Benny died alone in that London hotel, and on Xmas eve!! He was a difficult man to get along with, I believe, and many have said he was his own worst enemy. In "Hitchcock: a Life in Darkness and Light", Patrick McGilligan paints Hitchcock as an avuncular type and a bon vivant who could get along well with most people if he had a mind to, so one is left wondering to what extent Benny Herrmann made life difficult for himself.

What do you think of the idiosyncratic, whimsical score for "The Trouble With Harry"? This is seldom mentioned in discussions, yet it's an excellent little vignette.

[Ed C]

What do you think of the idiosyncratic, whimsical score for "The Trouble With Harry"? This is seldom mentioned in discussions, yet it's an excellent little vignette.

That's a pretty unusual score for BH - it's one of his most comical for sure. Some really great cues in there, tho, very rustic, you can hear the "American sound" in that one. Benny was part of Aaron Copland's circle of friends before Hollywood.

I highly recommend "A heart at fire's center: the life and music of Bernard Herrmann" by Steven Smith. It's an excellent biography of BH and I have 2 copies - 1 in HC and one in ppbck for quick flipping!

Benny reminds me of LvB somewhat - they were both very nice in the beginning but became bitter in the last decades of their lives. Tho Benny was always nice deep inside. There's the story of how this kid waited for him in a hotel lobby to get his autograph and Benny was like "Get the Hell away from me!" The kid followed him persisting and when Benny finally said OK he wrote out his signature along with the first 4 bars of the Psycho theme! Can you imagine what that would be like on ebay now - LOL!

[Bonn1827]

Thank you, I'll get that book to which you referred. Also, I don't know whether you've read Donald Spoto's hagiography about Hitchcock - not sure if there's much about BH in there, but I won't touch the book because I read Spoto's Olivier bio and found that offensive. Perhaps I should continue my musings on that film forum you've told me about!?

[Bonn1827]

Ed, do you know anything about 'Salaambo' in "Citizen Kane" - the opera which Susan sings so badly? Did this have anything to do with Benny Herrmann? It was a terrifyingly funny moment in the film when the vocal coach couldn't get Susan to those high notes!! Welles used those vocal attempts quite powerfully to contrast with Kane's decline into a kind of madness. Was there ever a more innovative theatre/film director, apart from Houseman, Kazan, and Harold Clurman and the Actors' Studio? I've just read a biography of Kazan and those early days with Clurman, Odets, Miller et. al - these people were at the cutting edge! Where are their equivalents today?

[Ed C]

Sorry for dropping this thread Bonn, I actually have the "other" section bookmarked so I forget about this part!
Yeah Benny composed Salaambo, I remember reading a telegraph from Welles to BH describing what he wanted. On the CD I think I mentioned before Charles Gerhardt did a great rerecording of the opera scene with Kiri Te Kanawa. It's a pretty fascinating look at how Benny might have composed a "traditional" opera. Benny himself only did one opera (hey, that sounds familiar...) "Wuthering Heights" which is actually going to be performed next year for Benny's centennial...it's very interesting, but a little bit too long IMHO. He used themes from Ghost & Mrs Muir as well as Jane Eyre...

Funny you mention Kazan, I just saw a doc on TV last night bout him with Martin Scorcese. I have to watch more of his films....