Collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock
Herrmann is most closely associated with the director Alfred Hitchcock. He wrote the scores for every Hitchcock film from
The Trouble with Harry (1955) to
Marnie (1964), a period which included
Vertigo, and
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, just electronically created 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
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 recognizable music is from another Hitchcock film,
Psycho. Unusual for a thriller, the score uses only the string section of the orchestra, no brass or percussion. 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 from all film scores.
His score for
Vertigo 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 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.
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, but Herrmann disagreed and recorded a traditional orchestral score (albeit with an extravagant orchestration consisting of 12 flutes, 16 french horns, 9 trombones, 2 tubas, 2 sets of timpani, celli and double basses only). Hitchcock did not use it, fired Herrmann, and hired
John Addison to rescore the film. Herrmann's unused score 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 Orchestra for
Sony. 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.
rss feed