[Thor Joachim Haga]

I definitely think it’s a question of ‘subverted expectations’, wherein expectations to certain forms of music or musical structures are undermined. For example, denying us the return to a tonal centre. Bernard Herrmann was very aware of this, as he favoured tone clusters, or choppy building blocks (repetitive motifs) over the long melodies – melodies being the most “rational” element in music, and by chopping it up into bits, allowed him greater access to the ‘irrational’, and thereby creating suspense.

Herrmann was never really ‘atonal’ as such. But he subverted expectations in different ways.