I'm working on a tribute article to Bernard Herrmann, & would very much like to include the thoughts of the film music collecting community.

If anyone has anything they wish to say about the great man, I'd love to hear it. Either reply here or feel free to drop me a personal note.

Many thanks in advance.

I think what Elmer Bernstein and David Raksin said about Herrmann in the Joseph Waletsky documentary on Herrmann is the best summation of Herrmann's legacy and talent I've come across.

Basically they said that more than any other composer to work in film, Herrmann understood the function of film music as providing an emotional subtext for the colder surface imagery.

He could provide "functional scoring", that is, he could write music that helped with film's technical side: improving the pace or covering transitions or to set a time period; but the thing which Herrmann brought to the table in 1941 that hadn't been applied previously, or at least as well, was that his music represented the emotions of the on-screen character involved in the dramatic situation and because the audience was identifying with that character, the music "spoke" the emotions of the audience's concern as well.

Whether it was romance or sheer terror, Herrmann finds the right sound/music that reflects the emotion in the most basic, straight-forward, and undeniable terms.

His search for that sound led him to use unique instrumentations, a harmomica for a serial killer, a viola d'amour for the sensitivity of a blind woman, a serpent for a dinosaur, 12 flutes for the emotional apathy of life behind the Iron Curtain, and so on and so on. It led him to find unorthodox effects. It led him to use subtle devices or, more often, it led him to use primal screams. For instance, there's a moment in THE NAKED AND THE DEAD where a soldier is insulted about his race and he becomes angry, reacts emotionally, and falls to his death. The music swirls and blares. It seems over-the-top but it's the right sound dramatically. It's not the sound of someone physically falling but the sound of how you yourself would feel being pissed and falling to your death suddenly without being able to strike back or do anything about it. And having heard it, everyone in the audience knows what that would feel like. But, in the audience, you're still alive and so you want to get that guy who insulted the soldier and you turn your sympathy away from him and everything he's about. And that's how a film with Herrmann's music can change who you are as a person. The music that accompanies Janet Leigh's drive through the rainstorm in PSYCHO is so unnerving that you'll do anything for relief. You come out of PSYCHO knowing the world is not a safe place, that madness and punishment lurk beneath everything, and you vow never to steal so much as a dime or ever lose your wits about you again. And that's much less due to Hitchcock than it is to Herrmann.

So today, even if we find composers like say Jerry Goldsmith who have a wider range and versatility of style, melody, and effects than Herrmann had, they still can't reach the kernal, the soul, the basic guts of feeling that Herrmann could.

Bruce Broughton, who can put a thousand notes on paper for every one that Herrmann does, was conducting Herrmann and said he didn't understand the Herrmann mystique, he didn't feel Herrmann was a good composer. But Broughton missed the boat.

Herrmann uses the orchestra, not to write music per se, not to create within the structures of tunes and counterpoint, but to find the sound that hits home.

Eastern traditions tell us the world and its energies is in vibration. Make certain sounds with your voice and you can feel different organs in your body vibrate in response. The chant Om (pronounced Aum with a long O sound) is supposed to be the sound of the world vibrating and chanting it brings you into alignment with the world. Yeah, whatever. But humming the sound still effects you. Om isn't music. But it vibrates your whole body when you chant it. And that's what Herrmann does. With two clarinets and six notes, he can effect you in the same way as chanting Om can, in a way that all the skillful composition by others in the world can't get to. If Herrmann wants you to feel love, hate, fear, shock, dread, bliss, whatever, his sound goes to where you feel and create that emotion.

Because Herrmann didn't write more while he was alive, because his approach and personality didn't land him enough work, and because he burned himself out 10 years too early, we don't have as much quality Herrmann as we could have had. But what he could do was unique and what we have is more valuable than gold.

Here's one example that affected me as a child and still has the power today.
The short muted trumpet 5 note fanfare motif used in "Mysterious island" whenever we see the island from long shot. To me, either the timbre of those muted trumpets and/or the actual harmonic intervals of that small motif captures perfectly the feeling of enigma and mystery of what is on that Island. It taps into our primal fears. It is a strange, unsettling, quirky fanfare which evokes these feelings in the listener.

That is only one example of many that come to mind. It is also used similarly in "Journey to the Centre (UK spelling ) of the earth"

The obvious one is the "Psycho" stabbing music where the violin itself is used as a knife with its stabbing glissandos. Here, not only the dissonant harmonic interval are effective but the actual instrument is used as a metaphoric weapon in the way it is played, in a slicing, forcing and stabbing-like motion. You can almost feel the strings of the violin cutting into the bow. The music,instrument and performance works on a gut visceral level. Add to that some spooky reverb and Hey Presto "Instant Horror Music" that has inspired generations.

Gae NP Minority Report

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Day Earth Stood Still-always a fav-that radar music is great and the robot yes!

All the ones mentioned above too.

And---Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, Gulliver, Battle of Neretva, Cape Fear, Jason and Argonauts, all the stuff on that old RCA classics, Night Digger, and radio scores, and TV stuff for Twilight Zone-great stuff.