60 Facts About Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers.

An Academy Award-winner for The Devil and Daniel Webster, Herrmann is known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, notably The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds and Marnie.

Bernard Herrmann worked in radio drama, composing for Orson Welles's The Mercury Theater on the Air, and his first film score was for Welles's film debut, Citizen Kane.

Bernard Herrmann scored films that were inspired by Hitchcock, like Francois Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black and Brian De Palma's Sisters and Obsession.

Bernard Herrmann, the son of a Jewish middle-class family of Russian origin, was born in New York City as Maximillian Herman.

Bernard Herrmann was the son of Ida and Abram Dardik, who was from Ukraine and had changed the family name.

Bernard Herrmann attended high school at DeWitt Clinton High School, an all-boys public school at that time on 10th Avenue and 59th Street in New York City.

Bernard Herrmann's father encouraged music activity, taking him to the opera, and encouraging him to learn the violin.

Bernard Herrmann studied at the Juilliard School, and at the age of 20, formed his own orchestra, the New Chamber Orchestra of New York.

Bernard Herrmann performed the works of Hermann Goetz, Alexander Gretchaninov, Niels Gade and Franz Liszt, and received many outstanding American musical awards and grants for his unusual programming and championship of little-known composers.

In 1947, Bernard Herrmann scored the atmospheric music for The Ghost and Mrs Muir.

In 1934, Bernard Herrmann met a young CBS secretary and aspiring writer Lucille Fletcher.

Fletcher was to become a noted radio scriptwriter, and she and Bernard Herrmann collaborated on several projects throughout their career.

Bernard Herrmann contributed the score to the famed 1941 radio presentation of Fletcher's original story The Hitch-Hiker on The Orson Welles Show, and Fletcher helped to write the libretto for his operatic adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

Bernard Herrmann used large sections of his score for the inaugural broadcast of The Campbell Playhouse, an adaptation of Rebecca, for the feature film Jane Eyre, the third film in which Welles starred.

When Welles gained his RKO Pictures contract, Bernard Herrmann worked for him.

Bernard Herrmann wrote his first film score for Citizen Kane and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Score of a Dramatic Picture.

When more than half of his score was removed from the soundtrack, Bernard Herrmann bitterly severed his ties with the film and promised legal action if his name were not removed from the credits.

Bernard Herrmann was music director for Welles's CBS radio series The Orson Welles Show, which included the debut of his wife Lucille Fletcher's suspense classic The Hitch-Hiker; Ceiling Unlimited, a program conceived to glorify the aviation industry and dramatize its role in World War II; and The Mercury Summer Theatre on the Air.

Bernard Herrmann was among those who rebutted the charges Pauline Kael made in her 1971 essay "Raising Kane", in which she revived controversy over the authorship of the screenplay for Citizen Kane and denigrated Welles's contributions.

Bernard Herrmann wrote the scores for seven Hitchcock films, from The Trouble with Harry to Marnie, a period that included Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho.

Bernard Herrmann was credited as sound consultant on The Birds, as there was no actual music in the film as such, only electronically made bird sounds.

Bernard Herrmann's score for Hitchcock's The Wrong Man is in a jazz style and makes heavy use of bass; Emmanuel Balestrero, the wrong man of the title, is a jazz bassist.

Bernard Herrmann's score had a direct influence on producer George Martin's staccato string arrangement for the Beatles' 1966 single "Eleanor Rigby".

In many of the key scenes, Hitchcock let Bernard Herrmann's score take centre stage, a score whose melodies, echoing the "Liebestod" from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, dramatically convey the main character's obsessive love for the image of a woman and underscores that Vertigo, like Tristan, is a story of love and death.

Bernard Herrmann is jogging the memory of those who know Tristan and the subconscious of those who don't.

However, according to Dan Auiler, author of Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic, Bernard Herrmann deeply regretted being unable to conduct his composition for Vertigo.

Bernard Herrmann stated that Hitchcock would invite him on to the production of a film and, depending on his decision about the length of the music, either expand or contract the scene.

In 1963, Bernard Herrmann began writing original music for the CBS-TV anthology series The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, which was in its eighth season.

Hitchcock served only as advisor on the show, which he hosted, but Bernard Herrmann was again working with former Mercury Theatre actor Norman Lloyd, co-producer of the series.

Bernard Herrmann scored 17 episodes, and like much of his work for CBS, the music frequently was reused for other programs.

Hitchcock's biographer Patrick McGilligan stated that Hitchcock was worried about becoming old-fashioned and felt that Bernard Herrmann's music had to change with the times as well.

Bernard Herrmann initially accepted the offer, but then decided to score the film according to his own ideas.

In 2009, Norma Bernard Herrmann began to auction her husband's personal collection on Bonhams.

Bernard Herrmann, who had a full schedule of films planned for 1976, including DePalma's Carrie, The Seven Per Cent Solution and Larry Cohen's God Told Me To, was reportedly happy to be in a position to ignore Hitchcock's reunion offer.

Immediately after finishing the recording of the Taxi Driver soundtrack on December 23,1975, Bernard Herrmann viewed the rough cut of what was to be his next film assignment, Larry Cohen's God Told Me To, and dined with Cohen.

Bernard Herrmann returned to his hotel, and died from an apparent heart attack in his sleep the next day.

Bernard Herrmann was interred in Beth David Cemetery at Elmont, New York.

Bernard Herrmann recorded all these compositions, and several others, for the Unicorn label during his last years in London.

Bernard Herrmann's music is typified by frequent use of ostinati, novel orchestration, and in his film scores, an ability to portray character traits not altogether obvious from other elements of the film.

Early in his life, Bernard Herrmann committed himself to a creed of personal integrity at the price of unpopularity: the quintessential artist.

Bernard Herrmann's philosophy is summarized by a favorite Tolstoy quote: 'Eagles fly alone and sparrows fly in flocks.

Bernard Herrmann subscribed to the belief that the best film music should be able to stand on its own legs when detached from the film for which it was originally written.

Bernard Herrmann was a sound consultant on The Birds, which made extensive use of an electronic instrument called the mixturtrautonium, performed by Oskar Sala on the film's soundtrack.

Bernard Herrmann 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.

Bernard Herrmann is still a prominent figure in the world of film music today, despite his death in 1975.

In 1992, the documentary Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann was made about him.

In 1991, Steven C Smith wrote a Herrmann biography titled A Heart at Fire's Center, a quote from a favorite Stephen Spender poem of Herrmann.

Bernard Herrmann's music continues to be used in films and recordings after his death.

Bernard Herrmann was an early and enthusiastic proponent of the music of Charles Ives.

Bernard Herrmann met Ives in the early 1930s, performed many of his works while conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra, and conducted Ives' Second Symphony with the London Symphony Orchestra on his first visit to London in 1956.

The notoriously prickly composer had been enraged by the recent appointment of the LSO's new chief conductor Andre Previn, who Bernard Herrmann detested, and deprecatingly referred to as "that jazz boy".

Bernard Herrmann was an ardent champion of the romantic-era composer Joachim Raff, whose music had fallen into near-oblivion by the 1960s.

In May 1970, Bernard Herrmann conducted the world premiere recording of Raff's Fifth Symphony Lenore for the Unicorn label, which he mainly financed himself.

In 1996, Sony Classical released The Film Scores, a recording of Bernard Herrmann's music performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Decca reissued on CD a series of Phase 4 Stereo recordings with Bernard Herrmann conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra, mostly in excerpts from his various film scores, including one devoted to music from several of the Hitchcock films.

The works of Bernard Herrmann are widely studied, imitated and performed to this very day.

Bernard Herrmann's work has left a profound influence on composers of film music that followed him, the most notable being John Williams, Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, Howard Shore, Lalo Schifrin, James Horner, Carter Burwell and others.

Stephen Sondheim found Bernard Herrmann to be a primary influence after seeing the film Hangover Square.

See Columbia Workshop for programs in which Bernard Herrmann participated but did not write original music.