Hermann

• Bernard Herrmann - 1911 - 1975
• Track of Psycho

  Prelude

  The City

  Marion

  The Murder

  The Toys

  The Cellar

  Discovery

  Finale
• Psycho Released - 1960
• Psycho Director - Alfred Hitchcock
• This was Hermann and Hoitchcock's 6th film together
• Hitchcock said "33% of the effect of Psycho was due to the music"
• Hermann refused to accept Hitchcock's proposal for a reduced fee
• When Hitchcock heard the music for the murder, apparently, he almost doubled the fee for the music
• The musical Forces of only strings (14, 12, 10, 8, 6) reflect the black and white of the film used
• The movie was in black and white due to the budget
• Hitchcock had originally asked for a Jazz score but Bernard had done his own orchestration
• There is little obvious thematic / melodic connection between these 8 cues or others in the score
• Hermann did not often use leitmotivs, however, there is a consistent harmonic language, favouring chromaticism and more complex extended chords chords (7th, 9th, 11th, 13th etc) to suggest an unresolved narrative line
• Hermann learned his craft writing incidetal music for radio plays at CBS afterb formal training from NYU and the Julliard School in New York (America's most famous conservative)
• Hitchcock didnt want underscore for the shower scene originally but Hermann wrote some anyway and won Hitchcock over
• Other Well-known scores by Hermann include

  • Citizen Kane (1941)
  • Vertigo (1957)
  • North by North West (1959)
  • Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
  • Taxi Driver (1976)
• The musical idiom feels contemporary, reflecting European Art Music from the first half of the 20th Century. Dissonance is part of an essentially non-diatonic harmonic language, extended techniques inform the original approach to the texture (and extreme dynamic contour), the rhythmic drive is often obsessive and asymmetric
• Plenty of extended string techinques are used:

  • Con sordini
  • Sul ponticello
  • Sul tasto
  • Pizzicato
  • Divisi
  • Glissando
  • Tremolando
  • Extreme bowing
• The five main characters are:

  • Maroin Crane
  • Sam Loomis
  • Lila Crane
  • Milton Arbogast
  • Norman Bates
• Nobody plays Norman Bates's mother, three different voices are used for her
• BH did not always think it necessary to use conventional forces for his film scores and would frequently employ exotic or rare instruments, or unusual combinations of familiar ones
• BH used these methods right from the beginning, with Citizen Kane
• BH: ''In orchestrating the picture I avoided, as much as possible, the realistic sound of a large symphony orchestra. The motion picture soundtrack is an exquisitely sensitive medium, and with skilful engineering a simple bass flute solo, the pulsing of a bass drum, or the sound of muted horns, can often be more effective than half a hundred musicians sawing away. Save for the opera sequence, some of the ballet montages, and a portion of the final scene, most of the cues were orchestrated for unorthodox instrumental combinations.''
• BH's score for The Devil and Daniel Webster (which won him an Academy Award in 1941) used a mixture of rustic barnyard style music and advanced electronic effects
• BH used several electronic instruments on his score of It's Alive, as well as the Moog synthesizer for the main themes in Endless Night and Sisters
• BH's score for Anna and the King of Siam utilized authentic Siamese music; White Witch Doctor was based on the pentatonic scale; The Day the Earth Stood Still – an early science-fiction movie from 1951 – had the eerie sounds of Theremins (treble and bass!), electric violins, electronic basses and electronic guitars; Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef featured nine harps; On Dangerous Ground employed eight French horns in a set piece entitled The Death Hunt; Journey to the Centre of the Earth used five organs – one cathedral, four electronic; Jason and the Argonauts used ancient Greek modes in an orchestra of winds, brass and percussion – with no strings at all (the opposite of Pyscho), whilst Fahrenheit 451 had strings, harps and percussion but no winds or brass
• Other famous director/composer relationships include: Erich Korngold/Michael Curtiz; John Williams/Steven Spielberg; Thomas Newman/Sam Mendes; Danny Elfman/Tim Burton
• A visual reference point for Psycho is American painter Edward Hopper's The House by the Railroad. Hopper's style of realism, with its signature concern of the contrast of light and dark, is cited as an influence on Ridley Scott's film Bladerunner (Nighthawks painting / Vangelis score) and Sam Mendes's film Road to Perdition (New York Movie painting / Thomas Newman score)
• BH committed himself to a creed of personal integrity at the price of unpopularity: the quintessential artist
• BH: ''The 21st Century won't be interested in our painting, our literature or our architecture so much as in our motion pictures, because the motion picture is the first truly original art form of the twentieth century. Real composers welcome any opportunity to write music and any composer who disdains writing music for films, radio or television, or any other medium, is doomed to oblivion.''
• BH did all his own orchestration – often for unusual combinations of instruments that would only be effective in a recording studio
• BH's use of nine harps in Beneath the 12 Mile Reef created an extraordinary underwater-like sonic landscape; his use of four alto flutes in Citizen Kane contributed to the creepy opening, only matched by the use of 12 flutes in the unused Torn Curtain score (when he fell out with AH); and his use of the serpent in White Witch Doctor is possibly the first use of that instrument in a film score
• BH: ''To orchestrate is like a thumbprint. I can't understand having someone else do it. It would be like someone putting colour to your paintings.''
• The murder scene in Psycho is very famous! It was the subject of a 2017 documentary 78/52, the title of which references the number of cuts and set-ups, respectively, that Hitchcock used to shoot it
• To capture the straight-on shot of the shower head, the camera had to be equipped with a long lens. The inner holes on the shower head were blocked and the camera placed a sufficient distance away so that the water, while appearing to be aimed directly at the lens, actually went around and past it
• The blood in the shower scene is reputed to have been Bosco chocolate syrup, which shows up better on black-and-white film, and has more realistic density than stage blood
• The sound of the knife entering flesh was created by plunging a knife into a casaba melon
• A popular myth emerged that, in order for Janet Leigh's scream in the shower to sound realistic, ice-cold water was used. Leigh denied this on numerous occasions, saying the crew was very accommodating, supplying hot water throughout the week-long shoot
• All of the screams in the shower scene are Leigh's
• The singular contribution of Herrmann's score for Psycho may be inferred from the unusual penultimate placement of the composer's name in the film's opening credit sequence, as it is followed only by Hitchcock's directing credit