BERNARD HERRMANN - Film Noir Foundation

Alfred Hitchcock warily considers his favorite overworked compose
Obsession), suspenseful pursuit (Five Fingers, North by Northwest)
and psychological disorder (A Hatful of Rain, Marnie). Fueling his
empathy for the tragic side of life was his own growing pessimism
and anger. By the 1960s, his dreams of a conducting career and of
producing his grand opera Wuthering Heights were largely crushed.
Casualties of his explosive temper included countless professional
relationships and two marriages—first to writer Lucille Fletcher
(Sorry, Wrong Number), then to Fletcher’s cousin, Lucy Anderson.
A third marriage to Norma Shepherd, a BBC producer 29 years Herrmann’s
junior, survived similar storms until his death.
If Herrmann was unable to control his rage, he could still channel
his anxieties into music of striking psychological force. The ultimate
outlet was his decade-long partnership with Alfred Hitchcock,
launched with The Trouble with Harry (1955).
Hitchcock involved his favorite composer from the start of each
project, adjusting his approach to sound design and pacing to reflect
Herrmann’s input. That trust would shape two of their most influential
collaborations: Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960).
“All of this will naturally depend upon what music Mr. Herrmann
puts over this sequence.”
—Hitchcock production notes on Vertigo
Music communicates character and story from the first seconds
of Vertigo’s score. Herrmann’s main title Prelude opens with a hypnotic,
rising/falling triplet pattern for winds and strings. It describes
both the fear of heights and the emotional disorientation that will
cripple detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart), as he falls in love
with a woman destined for death.
Over that triplet ostinato (the term for a repeated musical pattern),
Herrmann adds a plunging, two-note motif for horn that
evokes the nightmarish series of falling bodies that motivate the
story from its first scene to its last.
Much of Vertigo plays without dialogue, achieving tension on the
soundtrack almost solely through music. These sequences include
Scottie’s shadowing of the mysterious Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak);
Madeleine’s apparent death; and most unforgettably the “recognition
scene,” as Judy Barton, Madeleine’s double, embraces Scottie
while dressed as her dead alter ego.
Herrmann’s climbing strings deliberately echo Wagner’s Liebe-
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stod from Tristan und Isolde, since Scottie is by
now a man in love with death; years later, Herrmann
recalled with pride Hitch’s description of
how this perverse love scene would be staged:
“We’ll just have the camera and you.”
“I think that we’re all in our private traps—
clamped in them, and none of us can escape.”
—Norman Bates in Psycho,
screenplay by Joseph Stefano
Homicidal transvestites, matricide, and onscreen
gore were uncharted turf in late 1959
when Psycho was shot. Hitchcock hedged his
bets with a modest budget, including less money
than usual for music. Herrmann embraced the
limitation, foregoing woodwinds, brass, and
percussion to write a score for string orchestra
only. His reason for the selection: “to complement the black-andwhite
photography of the film with a black-and-white score.”
During Psycho’s first 40 minutes, charting the doomed flight of
secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) after stealing 40,000 dollars, it
is the role of the music to “tell the audience, who don’t know something
terrible is going to happen to the girl, that it’s got to.” Herrmann’s
main title immediately sets the tone, with its stabbing opening
chords and frenetic rhythm that pulses like a skipping heartbeat.
This music returns to stalk Marion from the start of her panicked
exodus to her rain-drenched arrival at the Bates Motel.
Herrmann’s score for Hitchcock’s Vertigo may be his most psychologically complex