Bernard Herrmann
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If John Williams is “The Beatles” of film music Bernard Herrmann is probably “The Rolling Stones”.
And yes, I have a notable collection of his movie scores and some of his other orchestral works like the opera “Wuthering Heights”, his first symphony and other stuff. Plus the Phase V boxset of his albums and some of the Joel McNeely re-recordings. The latter were my entry gate into his music. My first four of these albums, “Vertigo”, “Psycho”, “Fahrenheit 451” and “Marnie” are probably my most spinned Herrmann albums. Later I added from that series “The Trouble With Harry, “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Citizen Kane” and a digital version of “Torn Curtain” and “North By Northwest”.Apart from the Phase 4 box I think I don’t own any original recordings conducted by Herrmann himself. Only re-recordings. Luckily there exist a lot. Maybe “Taxi Driver”. Not sure if he conducted that one himself.
I have a mixed relation to his music. There is stuff, that I really enjoy and find stunning. But there is a lot of his music, especially some moody stuff which often sounds very alike and is a little meandering around. He is for me not a candidate for C&C recordings. Rather a candidate for well curated suites like he created some himself for these phase 4 albums.
In every score of his there is something brillant, even though it might just be 10 minutes in a 70 minutes score.
And in addition, he is really one of those who work brillantly in many of the movies but not necessarily on its own.
I really loved his score for “Cape Fear” in context, but wasn’t that impressed on album.What is your relation to Herrmann?
By the way, I find his symphony No. 1 great. My favourite non-movie work of his.
If John Williams is “The Beatles” of film music Bernard Herrmann is probably “The Rolling Stones”.
Not sure if I can follow the comparison since Williams and Herrmann are a different generation 😉
Haven’t listened to the symphony a while but liked it. As I did the Moby Dick Cantata and For The Fallen. Do you also know the chamber works SOUVENIR DE VOYAGE / ECHOES?
The Phase IV albums are great including the sound. I don’t have that box itself but several individually on CD for years and the Hitchock one digitally. I agree that his mimimalistic habit is sometimes and that often suites work well. If you haven’t got it I recommend the Herrmann sample by Charles Gerhardt.
I have many of the re-recordings by Tribute – only Mysterious Island I have as CD – and Intrada mostly in digital form. There are some good ones on Varese, especially VERTIGO or TROUBLE WITH HARRY, others like GULLIVER suffer a bit from that concert hall reverb IMHO. And I have several original scores, too.
Do you also know the chamber works SOUVENIR DE VOYAGE / ECHOES?
Yes SOUVENIR I got to know just recently from the album of the Singapore Symphony performing this and John Williams’ Flute Concerto.
And I have an album with String Quartets of Miklós Rózsa where it is included. And it’s also on the WUTHERING HEIGHTS album.But I am not that much of a fan of his chamber work, I am afraid.
If John Williams is “The Beatles” of film music Bernard Herrmann is probably “The Rolling Stones”.
I’m thinking more ‘Bob Dylan’ with the “lean dry-ness”. 🙂
If you’d asked me in the 90s, Bernard Herrmann would have been outside the city walls. I genuinely disliked him. Those mid-range, repetitive clusters and motifs just went on my nerves. But slowly over the years, I’ve come to a) appreciate that style a little more and b) discovered some other sides of his work.
Today, I count 11 Herrmann works in my collection, and he’s gone from outside the city walls to inside the city walls, and further on into the building’s reception area, where he currently resides. These 11 works are CITIZEN KANE, ENDLESS NIGHT, JANE EYRE, ON DANGEROUS GROUND, PSYCHO, THE BRIDE WORE BLACK, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR, THE KENTUCKIAN, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY and WILLIAMSBURG.
I’m by no means finished curating my Herrmann collection. A few more may enter, a few have departed that will never enter again. But I have whole other level of appreciation for him now.
I still struggle with his Harryhausen and sci fi efforts, but I’m particularly enamoured with his more lyrical side, like JANE EYRE and THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR. My favourite, however, remains THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY.
(I just realized that I own ALL of these as re-recordings, which helps immensely when it comes to Herrmann).
What is your relation to Herrmann?
Definitely one of my all time favorite film composers. I’m not so much into ranking as Thor, but Herrmann makes my “Top 5”.
Herrmann composed many of his scores flexible, so it’s easy to compress them into shorter suites or listen to the whole thing. The principalities of the music may even remain the same and the difference may simply be one of length.
I have a sizeable portion of original film recordings and re-recordings by Herrmann.
I’m thinking more ‘Bob Dylan’ with the “lean dry-ness”.
Yes, probably a better comparison.
I still struggle with his Harryhausen and sci fi efforts,
Right. Same here.
I just checked. Considering that I am not a super fan of Herrmann I have probably too many albums. But each has its place somehow.
But I think, that is now actually all I need.
Unless one day I find a physical copy of McNeely’s re-recording of NORTH BY NORTHWEST.Oh wait, I forgot! I have Herrmann’s original TORN CURTAIN sessions on the recent album of the John Addison score as well.
Unfortunately the THE BRIDE WORE BLACK CD reached me damaged. The first six tracks don’t work. I got my money back, but I didn’t feel motivated to order it again just for the first six tracks.
(I just realized that I own ALL of these as re-recordings, which helps immensely when it comes to Herrmann).
Yes, we are lucky that there are so many re-recordings of his music.
It is a complete mystery, why we hardly find any re-recording of Alfred Newman (we had that topic already, I know), but all that much of Herrmann’s work.
The collaboration of Newman and Herrmann THE EGYPTIAN is a happy exception in that regard, too.I was a late developer when it came to buying soundtracks (with my pocket money, of course). The Phase 4 LPs were amongst the first LPs I ever bought, and I was already 13 or 14 years old. An enormous part of my (late) formative years. I think I knew all those suites note for note before I saw any of the films, and when I eventually did catch up with them, I wasn’t the only teen to think “They’re playing it too fast”! You know what I mean, I’m sure.
Over the years, his music kind of fell out of favour with me. I felt myself growing away from it for some reason, and I began to find some of my later LP acquisitions almost boring. There’s an LP of his library music for HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL (I think), which was like listening to paint dry. Having said that, some of his scores on LP and later CD are favourites of mine. OBSESSION was and is absolutely magnificent (the original LP prog – clumsy edits and all – not the full score) and I’ve “kind of” started getting back into his stuff, thanks largely to the re-recordings by Joel McNeely (I adore THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL), Bruce Broughton (JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS – tremendous) and the Tribute Classics releases, which I only happened upon recently. Of those, I have (and love) MYSTERIOUS ISLAND and FAHRENHEIT 451/ THE TWILIGHT ZONE: WALKING DISTANCE), and I feel compelled to add THE KENTUCKIAN to my collection, perhaps by the end of this month.
So, when I only had music by Bernard Herrmann and Miklós Rózsa in my collection, they were my two favourite composers. Rózsa might now still be very high, around Number 5. I’m not sure if Herrmann would now be in my Top 10, but some of his scores would.
But I think, that is now actually all I need.
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS and BENEATH THE 12-MILE REEF is kinda the Herrmann I struggle with (lots of aggressive brass). How do you like these?
I didn’t really mind the GULLIVER’S TRAVELS suite conducted by Herrmann on the Phase 4 album. But I like the McNeely rerecording. It appears a little softer.
The original BENEATH THE 12-MILE REEF album is almost unlistenable with its awful sound quality. But I quite like the suite on the Gerhardt album. It has these nice impressionistic harp tectures for the underwater scenes. I like it. But Herrmann’s brass requires good re-recordings in almost every case, I would say. They are often supposed to sound crude.
I think, Herrmann was a composer who at a very early time thought of music more in terms of sound than in terms of melody and harmony.
Today that’s common. But in that sense we was in a way ahead of his time, I think. But that also makes his music quite challenging.I recycle my reply from the Film Score Monthly forum in the thread Who do you consider to be a Film Music Genius in the Film Music Industry?, because it seems fitting here:
Herrmann was not merely a great composer. He was a great innovator, whose work, taken as a whole, forms one of the most coherent, inventive, and artistically satisfying (and fearless, as his biographies suggest) bodies of music ever written for the screen.
I mean, Herrmann’s output over his entire career is uniformly excellent. From his first score for CITIZEN KANE to his final work on TAXI DRIVER, there’s no slack, no decline… Every score is 100% pure Bernard Herrmann. From Drama to Western to Horror to Science Fiction to Fantasy to Historical Films, from chamber scores to big sweeping orchestral works: there is no mistaking Bernard Herrmann for anyone else.
Watch any movie scored by Bernard Herrmann and it often feels as if the film had adapted itself to him rather than the other way around. His music is bold, it asserts itself. BRAAMM! before there was BRAAAM! Flip through the channels, catch a movie on TV, you hear three bars and you know it is scored by Bernard Herrmann. It is not anonymous and never generic.
Robert Wise once recalled how easily Herrmann could reshape cues on the spot. The “secret” was his modular approach. While many of his contemporary colleagues turned more to the grand symphonic tradition, Herrmann looked forward for something new. He built his scores from short, concentrated motifs, shards of melody, rhythmic cells. This gave him enormous flexibility. He could expand, contract, repeat, or reconfigure material on short notice when something was edited or switched without breaking the musical logic. His scores breathe with the film because they are constructed like the film: moment by moment, shot by shot, gesture by gesture. But always with the film as a whole in mind.
Bernard Herrmann understood that film music offered freedoms not so easily obtained in the concert hall. A composer could call for any ensemble, any combination of instruments, any number of players. He embraced this with almost childlike delight. Take the strings only orchestra of PSYCHO, or the electronic sonorities of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. These were not gimmicks. Orchestration was essential for Herrmann, he used timbre as a primary medium of expression. He didn’t just compose film scores, he conceptualized a method to compose film scores.
Herrmann’s music is so precise in its tone yet so flexible in its approach, it has been literally reused for remakes that were made decades later, not once but twice! (CAPE FEAR and PSYCHO). Because Herrmann’s musical atmospheres are archetypal. They evoke states of mind, timelessly. Which is why CAPE FEAR works in the 60s or 90s or 2020s.
So while I might find some more film music “geniuses”, I don’t have ten at hand, but Bernard Herrmann was the one that came to my mind right before any of the others. Herrmann’s genius lies not in one trait but in the convergence of all these traits: the consistency, the voice, the flexibility, the orchestral imagination, the harmonic daring, the originality… He was a composer who treated film music as a serious art (not the only one, I know), and in doing so, he elevated the medium for everyone.
Oh, and yes, lest I forget: I love his music. 🙂
Regarding Gerate’s comments about BENEATH THE 12-MILE REEF, I think the “wow” on the original FSM release was corrected in a later Kritzerland edition. That’s actually a score I love. I’d probably pick up the Kritzerland if it wasn’t so expensive. I haven’t listened to the FSM in a long time, though. Despite the “wow”, the overall sound quality never bothered me. I think in the early days of FSM we were just grateful to have the music, and accepted aural deficiencies much more readily than we would today.
I love all the underwater music in Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, that’s some of Herrmann’s most evocative scoring.
Years ago, on rec.music.movies, I once mentioned in a discussion the Herrmann score I wished would be re-recorded was The Day the Earth Stood Still. Then just a couple of years later Varèse Sarabande actually did that. My second choice would have been Beneath the 12-Mile Reef.I think in the early days of FSM we were just grateful to have the music, and accepted aural deficiencies much more readily than we would today.
I had a different development… in earlier years, I found it often difficult to tolerate poor sound quality. I had trouble compromising on that issue. Now, there is so much great music released in excellent sound quality, I don’t mind the few “old” recordings with problematic sound… it’s patina I’ve come around to accept, I’m more relaxed about it and enjoy some wonderful recordings from the 1940s and 50s.
Bernard Herrmann is quite well represented in my collection I suppose. I edited the check I made on the go a few days ago (deleted here) with a quick iTunes check now that I’m home, and iTunes lists 72 albums related to Bernard Herrmann, over five days, though this includes compilations or other albums that contain one or more pieces by Bernard Herrmann.
If I check strictly for “composer = Bernard Herrmann”, it’s about three days and seven hours or so.What is your relation to Herrmann?
Herrmann and Williams, before I ever heard their names, were foundational to my interest in film music, via one show: Lost in Space. Herrmann’s jet pack music and “Klaatu” cue, used in the early B&W episodes, were seared into my psyche.
I got further into Herrmann, still not knowing his name, via The Twilight Zone and CBS Radio Mystery Theatre, which used lots of Herrmann over the course of its run in the 1970s.
I eventually put two and two together, and I ended up with a sprawling Herrmann accumulation on both LP and CD, though I’m not a completist (of him or anyone).
I consider Herrmann to be a totally unique voice in film music, and I often feel that he invented, or stumbled upon, his own strain of “modernism” without relying on modernist techniques or cliches.
I don’t make top ten lists of anything, but Morricone is my hands-down favorite film composer, and if I had to choose a second favorite, it would very likely be Herrmann.
Dr. Jacoby, allow me to be so bold as to register “mild surprise” at your statement in which you single out Morricone as your “hands-down favorite (sic) film composer”. Correct me if I am being presumptious, but I imagine that you only really like Morricone 1967-’75, especially his psychedelic scores for gialli and Italian “erotica”. Now, I don’t know you, but based on the fact that you look a little bit like Russ Tamblyn in your photo (is that really you?), I just can’t imagine you “getting into” the trillions of “Spaghetti Westerns” that Morricone wrote, much less such “Hollywood mainstream fare” as THE UNTOUCHABLES. Russ himself adores “1960s counterculture rock, folk and experimental”.
Dr. Jacoby’s avatar is a picture of the character Dr. Jacoby from TWIN PEAKS, the TV show of David Lynch and Mark Frost.
Dr. Jacoby, allow me to be so bold as to register “mild surprise” at your statement in which you single out Morricone as your “hands-down favorite (sic) film composer”. Correct me if I am being presumptious, but I imagine that you only really like Morricone 1967-’75, especially his psychedelic scores for gialli and Italian “erotica”.
Hi, Graham,
Please feel free to call me Doc.
The 1975 cutoff is not my choice: Because Herrmann died in 1975, I feel that it is wrong to listen to any film music after 1975, allowing for clean, apples-to-apples comparisons to Herrmann’s music.
All seriousness aside, there were a lot of cultural changes in the mid-1970s that affected film and film music, so any real or imagined cutoff dates are driven by what I am likely to encounter in film music rather than a slavish devotion to the Gregorian calendar. In Morricone’s case, he stopped working with Nicolai sometime around 1975. He even states in the documentary (which you must see, if you haven’t) that his music was getting too out there, and that his colleagues warned him that he would stop getting gigs if he didn’t dial it back. Some of his post-1975 scores that enjoy include Exorcist 2, and Il Gatto. I think I also have a CD of Bugsy in a crate someplace.
And even if I did ignore everything by Morricone after 1975, his 1965-1975 period still blows away the career output of any film composer that I’ve heard.
Just one gal’s opinion.
Yours,
Doc
Thanks, “Doc”! I understand.
Are there any Herrmanns that you don’t much care for? That question is for all of you. I think I already have “enough” Herrmanns, meaning that I have a nice “cross-section” of his body of work. As he’s very much “on/off hot/cold” with me, I feel I could live without more – although I’m still considering getting THE KENTUCKIAN at the end of the month, and will probably die before I really know if I would have liked THE BATTLE OF NERETVA (for example).
Are there any Herrmanns that you don’t much care for?
Like Thor mentioned as well, I struggle with his scifi and fantasy stuff. I dipped into Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts or Journey to the Center of the Earth. But it didn’t really do anything for me.
Also I don’t enjoy listening to “The Day the Earth Stood Still” even though I can appreciate the creative effects. But most parts I find rather boring on its own.
Also I am not a huge fan of “Obsession”. Apart from the music appearing somehow out of place in the movie it has too many similarities to his older scores.
although I’m still considering getting THE KENTUCKIAN at the end of the month
I like that one, and you get WILLIAMSBURG as a bonus as well. Both examples of Herrmann doing his own spin on the Americana sound. I think this was one of Jim Titus’ first gigs as artwork designer.
I think, Herrmann was a composer who at a very early time thought of music more in terms of sound than in terms of melody and harmony.
Today that’s common. But in that sense we was in a way ahead of his time, I think. But that also makes his music quite challenging.He built his scores from short, concentrated motifs, shards of melody, rhythmic cells. This gave him enormous flexibility. He could expand, contract, repeat, or reconfigure material on short notice when something was edited or switched without breaking the musical logic. His scores breathe with the film because they are constructed like the film: moment by moment, shot by shot, gesture by gesture. But always with the film as a whole in mind.
These are crucial points in regards to Herrmann, I think. Not only how he uses the cells dynamically, i.e. they’re very flexible in a narrative sense. But also how they allow access to the irrational more easily. If melody is the most rational element in music, Herrmann chops it up and gains access to the irrational, the fragmented, the unfulfilled. I think that’s one of the reasons for why his music works so well in suspense films.
This is not my observation, by the way. I read it in Russell Lack’s (otherwise uneven and scatterbrained) book TWENTY FOUR FRAMES UNDER: A BURIED HISTORY OF FILM MUSIC (1997). But it was a total eye-opener to me, and made me appreciate and understand Herrmann’s mode of composition more clearly. It didn’t necessarily make me like the music more as music, but definitely why it was so effective in the films.
I love and hate Bernard Herrmann music in equal measure, at the same time!! 🧐😉
I can’t say I play/listen to his stuff that often (certainly in comparison to my other musical stalwarts), but when I’m in the mood for that certain ‘classically minimal Golden Age’ vibe, my favoured scores by him really do the trick.
Like others have noted above, I much prefer his music in a curated fashion, or in those Suites and Collections that abound for his scores.
I discovered him via the LPs of TWILIGHT ZONE TV Series and the Elmer B conducted GHOST & MRS MUIR (Varese Sarabande), way back when in my collecting days. Walking Distance really landed with me emotionally, alongside THE GHOST & MRS MUIR. Utterly beguiling and heart-breaking. Gorgeous music.
I prefer OBSESSION in that lengthy tracks/suites album that I had on LP and recently bought on that BSX/DD CD re-issue.
I think I have all I need by him now. My collection of his isn’t huge, but it’s good enough for me.
Although as Graham notes, I can’t rule out some future random CD buy, if he dies again, or someone mentions his name and subliminally tells me to GO BUY A NEW HERRMANN CD!!!
Lovely music! God, I hate it!!One thing is, even in his romantic music Herrmann manages to appear gloomy. Therefore, I like the few scores of his like THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY, THE MAGNIFICIENT AMBERSONS and the few passages of CITIZEN KANE where Herrmann shows that he can write brillant happy music.
By the way, just when I said, my Herrmann collection is complete I couldn’t prevent ordering another one. I just saw a used copy of the Joel McNeely conducted double album with Herrmann’s TWILIGHT ZONE scores. Probably, in case I find them at a good price I went for the remaining McNeely albums as well.
and the few passages of CITIZEN KANE where Herrmann shows that he can write brillant happy music.
Yes, I got the Joel McNeely CITIZEN KANE shortly before I saw the film for the first time, and this track took me completely by surprise:
Are there any Herrmanns that you don’t much care for? That question is for all of you.
None. Sure, I like some more than others, but there aren’t any I don’t like at all.
I dipped into Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts or Journey to the Center of the Earth. But it didn’t really do anything for me.
Those are actually favorites of mine.
Journey to the Center of the Earth is one of my all time favorite film scores. That organ with the orchestra, and the serpant in the scenes with the giant lizards, just great stuff. The type of music I listen to film music in the first place.
I dipped into Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts or Journey to the Center of the Earth. But it didn’t really do anything for me.
Those are actually favorites of mine.
Journey to the Center of the Earth is one of my all time favorite film scores. That organ with the orchestra, and the serpant in the scenes with the giant lizards, just great stuff. The type of music I listen to film music in the first place.Yeah, I like those fantasy scores as well. As mentioned above for some reason GHOST & MRS. MUIR never really got me…
Yes, I got the Joel McNeely CITIZEN KANE shortly before I saw the film for the first time, and this track took me completely by surprise:
Somehow I don’t like the recording or it’s sound. Some McNeelys I have and like but this one (or Waxmans SUNSET BOULEVARD). CITIZEN KANE is in general not my top favorite, here I am quite content with the Gerhard suite and/or the Phase IV suite.
I love the McNeely recordings of Bernard Herrmann scores, I have all of them. I think they sound fantastic! Rich, dynamic sound. I have every single one of them.
My first Bernard Herrmann album was the Unicorn LP of PSYCHO and the concert arrangement “Wells Raises Caine” with music from CITIZEN KANE and THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. My second may have been the Mercury CD release of VERTIGO, a score I noticed watching the movie when it was re-instated in the cinema (after it was kept under locks for decades). Those were probably my “entry cards”.
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