Bernard Herrmann (born Max Herman; June 29, 1911 – December 24, 1975) was a… Read Full Bio ↴Bernard Herrmann (born Max Herman; June 29, 1911 – December 24, 1975) was an American composer best known for his work in composing for motion pictures. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers.
An Academy Award-winner (for The Devil and Daniel Webster, 1941; later renamed All That Money Can Buy), Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo. He also composed scores for many other movies, including Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Cape Fear, and Taxi Driver. He worked extensively in radio drama (composing for Orson Welles), composed the scores for several fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen, and many TV programs, including Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone and Have Gun–Will Travel.
Herrmann, the son of a Jewish middle-class family of Russian origin, was born in New York City as Max Herman. His father, Abram Dardik, was from Ukraine and had changed the family name. 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. His father encouraged music activity, taking him to the opera, and encouraging him to learn the violin. After winning a composition prize at the age of thirteen, he decided to concentrate on music, and went to New York University where he studied with Percy Grainger and Philip James. He also studied at the Juilliard School and, at the age of twenty, formed his own orchestra, the New Chamber Orchestra of New York.
In 1934, he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) as a staff conductor. Within two years he was appointed music director of the Columbia Workshop, an experimental radio drama series for which Herrmann composed or arranged music (one notable program was The Fall of the City). Within nine years, he had become Chief Conductor to the CBS Symphony Orchestra. He was responsible for introducing more new works to US audience than any other conductor — he was a particular champion of Charles Ives' music, which was virtually unknown at that time. Herrmann's radio programs of concert music, which were broadcast under such titles as Invitation to Music and Exploring Music, were planned in an unconventional way and featured rarely heard music, old and new, which was not heard in public concert halls. Examples include broadcasts devoted to music of famous amateurs or of notable royal personages, such as the music of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Henry VIII, Charles I, Louis XIII and so on.
Herrmann's many US broadcast premieres during the 1940s included Myaskovsky's 22nd Symphony, Gian Francesco Malipiero's 3rd Symphony, Richard Arnell's 1st Symphony, Edmund Rubbra's 3rd Symphony and Ives' 3rd Symphony. He 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 Dictators of the Baton, David Ewen wrote that Herrmann was "one of the most invigorating influences in the radio music of the past decade". Also during the 1940s, Herrmann's own concert music was taken up and played by such celebrated maestri as Leopold Stokowski, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Thomas Beecham and Eugene Ormandy.
Between two movies made by Orson Welles (see below), he wrote the score for William Dieterle's The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), for which he won his only Oscar. In 1947, Herrmann scored the atmospheric music for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. In 1951 his score for The Day the Earth Stood Still featured the Theremin.
In 1934, Herrmann met a young CBS secretary and aspiring writer, Lucille Fletcher. Fletcher was impressed with Herrmann's work, and the two began a five-year courtship. Marriage was delayed by the objections of Fletcher's parents, who disliked the fact that Herrmann was a Jew and were put off by what they viewed as his abrasive personality. The couple finally married on October 2, 1939. They had two daughters: Dorothy (b. 1941) and Wendy (b. 1945). Fletcher was to become a noted radio scriptwriter, and she and Herrmann collaborated on several projects throughout their career. He 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. The couple divorced in 1948. The next year he married Lucille's cousin, Lucy (Kathy Lucille) Anderson. That marriage lasted 16 years, until 1964.
Herrmann's music is typified by frequent use of ostinati (short repeating patterns), 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, Herrmann committed himself to a creed of personal integrity at the price of unpopularity: the quintessential artist. His philosophy is summarized by a favorite Tolstoy quote: ‘Eagles fly alone and sparrows fly in flocks.' Thus, Herrmann would only compose music for films when he was allowed the artistic liberty to compose what he wished without the director getting in the way: the cause of the split with Hitchcock after over a decade of composing scores for the director's films.
His philosophy of orchestrating film was based on the assumption that the musicians were selected and hired for the recording session — that this music was not constrained to the musical forces of the concert hall. For example, his 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 his unused Torn Curtain score; and his use of the serpent in White Witch Doctor is possibly the first use of that instrument in a film score.
Herrmann said: "To orchestrate is like a thumbprint. I can't understand having someone else do it. It would be like someone putting color to your paintings."
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. To this end, he made several well-known recordings for Decca of arrangements of his own film music as well as music of other prominent composers.
Herrmann is still a prominent figure in the world of film music today, despite his death in 1975. As such, his career has been studied extensively by biographers and documentarians. His string-only score for Psycho, for example, set the standard when it became a new way to write music for thrillers (rather than big fully orchestrated pieces). In 1992 a documentary, Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann, was made about him. Also in 1992 a 2½-hour-long National Public Radio documentary was produced on his life — Bernard Herrmann: a Celebration of his Life and Music (Bruce A. Crawford). In 1991, Steven C. Smith wrote a Herrmann biography titled A Heart at Fire's Center, a quotation from a favorite Stephen Spender poem of Herrmann's.
His music continues to be used in films and recordings after his death. "Georgie's Theme" from Herrmann's score for the 1968 film Twisted Nerve is whistled by one-eyed nurse Elle Driver in the hospital corridor scene in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003). The opening theme from Vertigo was used in the prologue to Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" video, and during a flashback sequence in the pilot episode of FX's American Horror Story, which also featured "Georgie's Theme" in later episodes as a recurring musical motif for the character of Tate. Vertigo's opening sequence was also copied for the opening sequence of the 1993 miniseries, "Tales Of The City", an adaptation of a series of books by Armistead Maupin. Fellow film composer Danny Elfman adapted Herrmann's music for Psycho for use in director Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake and borrowed from Herrmann's "Mountaintop/Sunrise" theme, from Journey to the Center of the Earth, for his main Batman theme. On its 1977 album Ra, American progressive rock group Utopia also adapted "Mountaintop/Sunrise," in a rock arrangement, as the introduction to the album's opening song, "Communion With The Sun." And most recently, Ludovic Bource used the love theme from Vertigo literally in the last reels of 2011's The Artist.
Herrmann's film music is well represented on disc. His friend, John Steven Lasher, has produced several albums featuring Urtext recordings, including Battle of Neretva, Citizen Kane, The Kentuckian, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Night Digger and Sisters, under various labels owned by Fifth Continent Australia Pty Ltd.
Herrmann was an early and enthusiastic proponent of the music of Charles Ives. He 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. Herrmann later made a recording of the work in 1972 and this reunion with the LSO, after more than a decade, was significant to him for several reasons - he had long hoped to record his own interpretation of the symphony, feeling that Leonard Bernstein's 1951 version was "overblown and inaccurate"; on a personal level, it also served to assuage Herrmann's long-held feeling that he had been snubbed by the orchestra after his first visit in 1956. The notoriously prickly composer had also been enraged by the recent appointment of the LSO's new chief conductor André Previn, who Herrmann detested, and deprecatingly referred to as "that jazz boy".[19]
Herrmann was also an ardent champion of the romantic-era composer Joachim Raff, whose music had fallen into near-oblivion by the 1960s. During the 1940s, Herrmann had played Raff's 3rd and 5th Symphonies in his CBS radio broadcasts. In May 1970, Herrmann conducted the world premiere recording of Raff's Fifth Symphony Lenore for the Unicorn label, which he mainly financed himself.[20] The recording did not attract much notice in its time, despite receiving excellent reviews, but is now considered a major turning-point in the rehabilitation of Raff as a composer.
In 1996, Sony Classical released a recording of Herrmann's music, The Film Scores, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen. This disc received the 1998 Cannes Classical Music Award for "Best 20th-Century Orchestral Recording." It was also nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Engineered Album, Classical." In 2004 Sony Classical re-released this superb recording at a budget price in its "Great Performances" series (SNYC 92767SK).
Decca reissued on CD a series of Phase 4 Stereo recordings with 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 (including Psycho, Marnie and Vertigo). In the liner notes of the Hitchcock Phase 4 album, Herrmann said that the suite from The Trouble with Harry was a "portrait of Hitch". Another album was devoted to his fantasy film scores — a few of them being the films of the special effects animator Ray Harryhausen, including music from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and The Three Worlds of Gulliver. His other Phase 4 Stereo LPs of the 1970s included Music from the Great Film Classics (suites and excerpts from Jane Eyre, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Citizen Kane and The Devil and Daniel Webster); and "The Fantasy World of Bernard Herrmann" (Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Fahrenheit 451.)
Fellow composers Richard Band, Graeme Revell, Christopher Young, Danny Elfman and Brian Tyler consider Herrmann to be a major inspiration. In 1985, Richard Band's opening theme to Re-Animator borrows heavily from Herrmann's opening score to Psycho. In 1990, Graeme Revell had adapted Herrmann's music from Psycho for its television sequel-prequel Psycho IV: The Beginning. Revell's early orchestral music during the early nineties, such as Child's Play 2 (which its music score being a reminiscent of Herrmann's scores to the 1973 film Sisters, due to the synthesizers incorporated in the chilling parts of the orchestral score) as well as the 1963 The Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll" (which inspired the Child's Play franchise), were very similar to Herrmann's work. Also, Revell's score for the video game Call of Duty 2 was very much a reminiscent of Herrmann's very rare WWII music scores such as The Naked and the Dead and Battle of Neretva. Young, who was a jazz drummer at first, listened to Herrmann's works which convinced him to be a film composer. Elfman has said he first became interested in film music upon seeing The Day the Earth Stood Still, and he paid homage to that score in his music for Mars Attacks! Tyler's score for Bill Paxton's film Frailty was greatly influenced by Herrmann's film music.
Sir George Martin, best known for producing and often adding orchestration to The Beatles music, cites Herrmann as an influence in his own work, particularly in Martin's scoring of the Beatles' song "Eleanor Rigby". Martin later expanded on this as an extended suite for McCartney's 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street, which features a very recognizable hommage to Herrmann's score for Psycho.
Avant-garde composer/saxophonist/producer John Zorn, in the biographical film A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky, cited Bernard Herrmann as one of his favorite composers and a major influence.
Elmer Bernstein adapted and arranged Herrmann's original score from J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear (1962), and used it for the 1991 Martin Scorsese remake. After Bernstein realized there was not enough music in the score from the original film, he added sections from Herrmann's unused score for Hitchcock's Torn Curtain, including the music composed for the murder of the character "Gromek". The score for Cape Fear evokes both the gathering clouds of the destructive hurricane and the murderous intent of killer Max Cady. Bernstein also recorded Herrmann's score for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which was released in 1975 on the Varese Sarabande label later reissued on CD in the 1990s.
Charles Gerhardt conducted a 1974 RCA recording entitled "The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann" with the National Philharmonic Orchestra. It featured Suites from Citizen Kane (with Kiri Te Kanawa singing Salammbo's Aria) and White Witch Doctor, along with music from On Dangerous Ground, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, and the Hangover Square Piano Concerto.
During his last years in England, between 1966 and 1975, Herrmann made several LPs of other composers' music for assorted record labels. These included Phase 4 Stereo recordings of Gustav Holst's The Planets and Charles Ives's 2nd Symphony, as well as an album entitled "The Impressionists" (music by Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Fauré and Honegger) and another entitled "The Four Faces of Jazz" (works by Weill, Gershwin, Stravinsky and Milhaud). As well as recording his own film music in Phase 4 Stereo he made LPs of movie scores by others, such as "Great Shakespearean Films" (music by Shostakovich for Hamlet, Walton for Richard III and Rózsa for Julius Caesar), and "Great British Film Music" (movie scores by Lambert, Bax, Benjamin, Walton, Vaughan Williams, and Bliss).
For Unicorn Records, he recorded several of his own concert-hall works, including the cantata Moby Dick, his opera Wuthering Heights, his Symphony, and the suites Welles Raises Kane and The Devil and Daniel Webster.
Pristine Audio has released two CDs of Herrmann's radio broadcasts. One is devoted to a CBS programme from 1945 that features music by Handel, Vaughan Williams and Elgar; the other is devoted to works by Charles Ives, Robert Russell Bennett and Herrmann himself.
An Academy Award-winner (for The Devil and Daniel Webster, 1941; later renamed All That Money Can Buy), Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo. He also composed scores for many other movies, including Citizen Kane, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Cape Fear, and Taxi Driver. He worked extensively in radio drama (composing for Orson Welles), composed the scores for several fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen, and many TV programs, including Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone and Have Gun–Will Travel.
Herrmann, the son of a Jewish middle-class family of Russian origin, was born in New York City as Max Herman. His father, Abram Dardik, was from Ukraine and had changed the family name. 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. His father encouraged music activity, taking him to the opera, and encouraging him to learn the violin. After winning a composition prize at the age of thirteen, he decided to concentrate on music, and went to New York University where he studied with Percy Grainger and Philip James. He also studied at the Juilliard School and, at the age of twenty, formed his own orchestra, the New Chamber Orchestra of New York.
In 1934, he joined the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) as a staff conductor. Within two years he was appointed music director of the Columbia Workshop, an experimental radio drama series for which Herrmann composed or arranged music (one notable program was The Fall of the City). Within nine years, he had become Chief Conductor to the CBS Symphony Orchestra. He was responsible for introducing more new works to US audience than any other conductor — he was a particular champion of Charles Ives' music, which was virtually unknown at that time. Herrmann's radio programs of concert music, which were broadcast under such titles as Invitation to Music and Exploring Music, were planned in an unconventional way and featured rarely heard music, old and new, which was not heard in public concert halls. Examples include broadcasts devoted to music of famous amateurs or of notable royal personages, such as the music of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Henry VIII, Charles I, Louis XIII and so on.
Herrmann's many US broadcast premieres during the 1940s included Myaskovsky's 22nd Symphony, Gian Francesco Malipiero's 3rd Symphony, Richard Arnell's 1st Symphony, Edmund Rubbra's 3rd Symphony and Ives' 3rd Symphony. He 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 Dictators of the Baton, David Ewen wrote that Herrmann was "one of the most invigorating influences in the radio music of the past decade". Also during the 1940s, Herrmann's own concert music was taken up and played by such celebrated maestri as Leopold Stokowski, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Thomas Beecham and Eugene Ormandy.
Between two movies made by Orson Welles (see below), he wrote the score for William Dieterle's The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), for which he won his only Oscar. In 1947, Herrmann scored the atmospheric music for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. In 1951 his score for The Day the Earth Stood Still featured the Theremin.
In 1934, Herrmann met a young CBS secretary and aspiring writer, Lucille Fletcher. Fletcher was impressed with Herrmann's work, and the two began a five-year courtship. Marriage was delayed by the objections of Fletcher's parents, who disliked the fact that Herrmann was a Jew and were put off by what they viewed as his abrasive personality. The couple finally married on October 2, 1939. They had two daughters: Dorothy (b. 1941) and Wendy (b. 1945). Fletcher was to become a noted radio scriptwriter, and she and Herrmann collaborated on several projects throughout their career. He 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. The couple divorced in 1948. The next year he married Lucille's cousin, Lucy (Kathy Lucille) Anderson. That marriage lasted 16 years, until 1964.
Herrmann's music is typified by frequent use of ostinati (short repeating patterns), 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, Herrmann committed himself to a creed of personal integrity at the price of unpopularity: the quintessential artist. His philosophy is summarized by a favorite Tolstoy quote: ‘Eagles fly alone and sparrows fly in flocks.' Thus, Herrmann would only compose music for films when he was allowed the artistic liberty to compose what he wished without the director getting in the way: the cause of the split with Hitchcock after over a decade of composing scores for the director's films.
His philosophy of orchestrating film was based on the assumption that the musicians were selected and hired for the recording session — that this music was not constrained to the musical forces of the concert hall. For example, his 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 his unused Torn Curtain score; and his use of the serpent in White Witch Doctor is possibly the first use of that instrument in a film score.
Herrmann said: "To orchestrate is like a thumbprint. I can't understand having someone else do it. It would be like someone putting color to your paintings."
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. To this end, he made several well-known recordings for Decca of arrangements of his own film music as well as music of other prominent composers.
Herrmann is still a prominent figure in the world of film music today, despite his death in 1975. As such, his career has been studied extensively by biographers and documentarians. His string-only score for Psycho, for example, set the standard when it became a new way to write music for thrillers (rather than big fully orchestrated pieces). In 1992 a documentary, Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann, was made about him. Also in 1992 a 2½-hour-long National Public Radio documentary was produced on his life — Bernard Herrmann: a Celebration of his Life and Music (Bruce A. Crawford). In 1991, Steven C. Smith wrote a Herrmann biography titled A Heart at Fire's Center, a quotation from a favorite Stephen Spender poem of Herrmann's.
His music continues to be used in films and recordings after his death. "Georgie's Theme" from Herrmann's score for the 1968 film Twisted Nerve is whistled by one-eyed nurse Elle Driver in the hospital corridor scene in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume 1 (2003). The opening theme from Vertigo was used in the prologue to Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" video, and during a flashback sequence in the pilot episode of FX's American Horror Story, which also featured "Georgie's Theme" in later episodes as a recurring musical motif for the character of Tate. Vertigo's opening sequence was also copied for the opening sequence of the 1993 miniseries, "Tales Of The City", an adaptation of a series of books by Armistead Maupin. Fellow film composer Danny Elfman adapted Herrmann's music for Psycho for use in director Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake and borrowed from Herrmann's "Mountaintop/Sunrise" theme, from Journey to the Center of the Earth, for his main Batman theme. On its 1977 album Ra, American progressive rock group Utopia also adapted "Mountaintop/Sunrise," in a rock arrangement, as the introduction to the album's opening song, "Communion With The Sun." And most recently, Ludovic Bource used the love theme from Vertigo literally in the last reels of 2011's The Artist.
Herrmann's film music is well represented on disc. His friend, John Steven Lasher, has produced several albums featuring Urtext recordings, including Battle of Neretva, Citizen Kane, The Kentuckian, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Night Digger and Sisters, under various labels owned by Fifth Continent Australia Pty Ltd.
Herrmann was an early and enthusiastic proponent of the music of Charles Ives. He 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. Herrmann later made a recording of the work in 1972 and this reunion with the LSO, after more than a decade, was significant to him for several reasons - he had long hoped to record his own interpretation of the symphony, feeling that Leonard Bernstein's 1951 version was "overblown and inaccurate"; on a personal level, it also served to assuage Herrmann's long-held feeling that he had been snubbed by the orchestra after his first visit in 1956. The notoriously prickly composer had also been enraged by the recent appointment of the LSO's new chief conductor André Previn, who Herrmann detested, and deprecatingly referred to as "that jazz boy".[19]
Herrmann was also an ardent champion of the romantic-era composer Joachim Raff, whose music had fallen into near-oblivion by the 1960s. During the 1940s, Herrmann had played Raff's 3rd and 5th Symphonies in his CBS radio broadcasts. In May 1970, Herrmann conducted the world premiere recording of Raff's Fifth Symphony Lenore for the Unicorn label, which he mainly financed himself.[20] The recording did not attract much notice in its time, despite receiving excellent reviews, but is now considered a major turning-point in the rehabilitation of Raff as a composer.
In 1996, Sony Classical released a recording of Herrmann's music, The Film Scores, performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of Esa-Pekka Salonen. This disc received the 1998 Cannes Classical Music Award for "Best 20th-Century Orchestral Recording." It was also nominated for the 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Engineered Album, Classical." In 2004 Sony Classical re-released this superb recording at a budget price in its "Great Performances" series (SNYC 92767SK).
Decca reissued on CD a series of Phase 4 Stereo recordings with 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 (including Psycho, Marnie and Vertigo). In the liner notes of the Hitchcock Phase 4 album, Herrmann said that the suite from The Trouble with Harry was a "portrait of Hitch". Another album was devoted to his fantasy film scores — a few of them being the films of the special effects animator Ray Harryhausen, including music from The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and The Three Worlds of Gulliver. His other Phase 4 Stereo LPs of the 1970s included Music from the Great Film Classics (suites and excerpts from Jane Eyre, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Citizen Kane and The Devil and Daniel Webster); and "The Fantasy World of Bernard Herrmann" (Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Fahrenheit 451.)
Fellow composers Richard Band, Graeme Revell, Christopher Young, Danny Elfman and Brian Tyler consider Herrmann to be a major inspiration. In 1985, Richard Band's opening theme to Re-Animator borrows heavily from Herrmann's opening score to Psycho. In 1990, Graeme Revell had adapted Herrmann's music from Psycho for its television sequel-prequel Psycho IV: The Beginning. Revell's early orchestral music during the early nineties, such as Child's Play 2 (which its music score being a reminiscent of Herrmann's scores to the 1973 film Sisters, due to the synthesizers incorporated in the chilling parts of the orchestral score) as well as the 1963 The Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll" (which inspired the Child's Play franchise), were very similar to Herrmann's work. Also, Revell's score for the video game Call of Duty 2 was very much a reminiscent of Herrmann's very rare WWII music scores such as The Naked and the Dead and Battle of Neretva. Young, who was a jazz drummer at first, listened to Herrmann's works which convinced him to be a film composer. Elfman has said he first became interested in film music upon seeing The Day the Earth Stood Still, and he paid homage to that score in his music for Mars Attacks! Tyler's score for Bill Paxton's film Frailty was greatly influenced by Herrmann's film music.
Sir George Martin, best known for producing and often adding orchestration to The Beatles music, cites Herrmann as an influence in his own work, particularly in Martin's scoring of the Beatles' song "Eleanor Rigby". Martin later expanded on this as an extended suite for McCartney's 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street, which features a very recognizable hommage to Herrmann's score for Psycho.
Avant-garde composer/saxophonist/producer John Zorn, in the biographical film A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky, cited Bernard Herrmann as one of his favorite composers and a major influence.
Elmer Bernstein adapted and arranged Herrmann's original score from J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear (1962), and used it for the 1991 Martin Scorsese remake. After Bernstein realized there was not enough music in the score from the original film, he added sections from Herrmann's unused score for Hitchcock's Torn Curtain, including the music composed for the murder of the character "Gromek". The score for Cape Fear evokes both the gathering clouds of the destructive hurricane and the murderous intent of killer Max Cady. Bernstein also recorded Herrmann's score for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which was released in 1975 on the Varese Sarabande label later reissued on CD in the 1990s.
Charles Gerhardt conducted a 1974 RCA recording entitled "The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann" with the National Philharmonic Orchestra. It featured Suites from Citizen Kane (with Kiri Te Kanawa singing Salammbo's Aria) and White Witch Doctor, along with music from On Dangerous Ground, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, and the Hangover Square Piano Concerto.
During his last years in England, between 1966 and 1975, Herrmann made several LPs of other composers' music for assorted record labels. These included Phase 4 Stereo recordings of Gustav Holst's The Planets and Charles Ives's 2nd Symphony, as well as an album entitled "The Impressionists" (music by Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Fauré and Honegger) and another entitled "The Four Faces of Jazz" (works by Weill, Gershwin, Stravinsky and Milhaud). As well as recording his own film music in Phase 4 Stereo he made LPs of movie scores by others, such as "Great Shakespearean Films" (music by Shostakovich for Hamlet, Walton for Richard III and Rózsa for Julius Caesar), and "Great British Film Music" (movie scores by Lambert, Bax, Benjamin, Walton, Vaughan Williams, and Bliss).
For Unicorn Records, he recorded several of his own concert-hall works, including the cantata Moby Dick, his opera Wuthering Heights, his Symphony, and the suites Welles Raises Kane and The Devil and Daniel Webster.
Pristine Audio has released two CDs of Herrmann's radio broadcasts. One is devoted to a CBS programme from 1945 that features music by Handel, Vaughan Williams and Elgar; the other is devoted to works by Charles Ives, Robert Russell Bennett and Herrmann himself.
The Storm
Bernard Herrmann Lyrics
We have lyrics for 'The Storm' by these artists:
270bis Il nemico s'appresta... Nel cielo spira un'aria mefitica e …
A Canorous Quintet Misty shadows grips the heart Souls reunite in order of cha…
A Death By The Seaside She walked alone Under the rain Lost in concrete Soaking wet…
A Thousand Voices The world that you see is not as it should…
AB / NRML If I was gone Would the world be a better place Bring…
About Leaving The wind blows through the fields, the forest, its trees... …
Abraham Sarache I woke up this morning Hearing noises I've never heard befor…
Action Camp Treasure the charm (Hunt me down) That you have wished…
After Earth I have seen perdition Felt I was sent on a mission Still…
Alien Pic-Nic Looks like I been winning I was losing for a minute All…
Alter The wind moves the ocean The waves move towards our shore Sh…
Amarok There is a calm before the storm Stillness on fake illusive…
Amber Maya Here come the clouds, from all around Can feel it rolling…
Antiqcool Under the radar keeping a low Profile seeds all ready to…
April What you don't say will kill your heart If you keep…
Archie Sagers Standing in the rain you said There's a cloud hanging over…
Armand Amar / Sara-Marielle Gaup and Isabel Sörling And when the blaze in your soul is blinding, The mirage…
Arthemis There's a mount between the silent trees From the fortress y…
Atlas Pain Set sail! The seas in nineteenth century Made by tales and …
Aurora Borealis Fell the wind blow across the moon lit sky Sense it…
Baron Bane He stands up. Speaks of heartfelt trust. Pain of loss remain…
Bee Gees Can you hear me Are you near me Can you see me See…
Bertie Blackman And I feel like a lazy day I said to a…
Big Country I came from the hills with a tear in my…
Billy Mack Collector There was an ocean where there hadn't been before Must've be…
BJ Wilbanks When that storm, starts rolling in When that storm, starts r…
Blackmore's Night A timeless and forgotten place, The moon and sun in endless…
Blood Groove & Kikis Azize man khoob goosh bede Roozhaaye sakhti aamade Talkhi o …
Bloodmind.de Silently dawn comes in with the rain, and I feel…
Bloody Alchemy The clouds are covering the sky Darkness is spreading everyw…
Bo and the Locomotive I won't be back for a while now Baby girl baby…
Boy & Bear Cause my friend, how do you roll? Where do you come…
Boy & Bear (Indie/Folk) Cause my friend, how do you roll? Where do you come…
Breakdown of Sanity Close to the ground, I follow my tears My eyes,…
Brother Moon Yesterday you told me ‘Bout the blue blue sky I could tell…
c.x.t. Up and down these streets alone again Sleepless nights have …
Caamora Holly & Leo: The river flows, it's calm again And w…
cammeo I'm a prisoner of Memories and used to be's Hard…
Carl Kennedy Vs M.Y.N.C. Project Ft Roachford Ride 穏やかな海が 爆音でうずまく 炎が上がる 黒煙の空で 死神がほほえむ 大地が割れる 叫びまとう人々の中を かきわけ俺は…
Cemeteries There is no reasoning Behind the actions and the words…
Cesium 137 Pain is the measure By which I stand How far can you…
Cheryl Wheeler Trouble on the rise from the middle of a stormy…
Chris de Burgh Silently dawn comes in with the rain, and I feel…
circle&wind Nothing will be left of this once blooming world. Capitalism…
Claude Challe / Jean-Marc Challe A storm is coming to wash away everything I knew the thunder…
Clover I call the storms Knocks at the door My fortunes told The fu…
Criminal L.A.W. I found a way through the storm Feel like I been…
Crimson Sun Lost control of myself It was just too much to take Like…
Cunnie Williams I'm not gonna let this world change me Not going let…
D.MONGELOS Yeah Dreams to Reality Look, I build a tower wit my power…
Danny P I′m in the storm, help I'm in the storm, help Crawling I′m …
Darzamat the storm, that the flames of black art have started the…
Dave East As I stroll down memory lane All I envision is pain Uh H,…
Dave Hosking The Storm Cause my friend, how do you roll? Where do you…
Deep Done been through it all, man Blood, sweat and tears, niggas…
Des Silently dawn comes in with the rain, and I feel…
DIMMI Got to get love In the time of the man Oh, cos…
DIMMI & Goldfish When the truth is found To be lies And all…
DIMMI Goldfish Got to get love In the time of the man Oh, cos…
Disaster K.F.W. I found a way through the storm Feel like I been…
DMX I'm sayin' though yo, I been hearin' shit about this…
Dom & Roland Storm och böljor tystna ren Himla-hvalfvets matta sken Mer o…
Dori Freeman He says he's home and you believe him Words on the…
Doves Weather the storm, Came out the outher side, The place your …
Dr. Bear Storms never last, do they, babe? Bad times all pass with…
Drake & Josh I'm writing stories through my lyrics Lonely sailor with a b…
Drum & Piano Project Your life is moving on a down downwards spiral And you…
DVS 7.0 Dominate the storm the rudder in your hands Searching throug…
Dylan Fraser Blinded eyes, undefined Losing vision in the night The light…
Dylan-S & Foozak & Awen 'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood When blackn…
Eclipse This is an emergency this is an emergency just like a breaki…
Elder Jack Ward When the weight Is on my shoulders I tell the Lord these…
Elenowen Saddle up, baby, a storm is on The horizon The war in…
Elin Ruth You dog so deep, but you found nothing You took a…
Elion Melody Girl, I’m so afraid Can you feel the rain? There’s no escape…
Elysee The day it rain and poured all over When dreams were…
Eml Such a beautiful night tonight The storm is raging on I hear…
Fallbrawl something is in my head and it screams "I am the…
Fighting The Villain Ohhh! don′t let it slip away You'll wonder what it could′ve…
FITUMI This is a fight To the death Hurricane Nothing Left Itu0027s…
Flesh And The Devil Who else smiled right before they died? Lightning strikes an…
Fliptrix I'm standing on the shore line Staring out at awe with…
Flying Colors There was a time When my life was easy Stretched out in…
Front Line Assembly I'm losing fast God speed along It won't last I come undone …
Garth Brooks She sits among the pieces of broken glass and photographs Re…
Glen Hansard Naked from the fee From the decade of the bees On a…
Goldfish & DIMMI Got to get love In the time of the man Oh, cos…
Good Dear Good Gravity disappears When you don't really know where you're s…
Goodluck You left the lights on the room so I could…
Greenrose Faire I am here waiting, waiting for the storm I am here…
Gregory Isaacs & Sly & Robbie Done been through it all, man Blood, sweat and tears, niggas…
Hante Deafening thunder is rolling outside By the window I look at…
Harry Seaton Say you're fine but You're a mess inside I know you and I…
Hawthorne Heights I set a fire in my own house To watch it…
Hazen Rescue me And save me from the storm I don't wanna give…
Helix You say you got troubles babe Weighing heavy on your mind We…
Heylu Living in fear Where is the hope? In a world so cold Hide…
Hi-5 All this scratching is making me lit! Ek saal, no tracks Ban…
High Places The storm carved out a ditch Which we filled with seeds…
Hoffmaestro & Chraa Here I'm standing on the cliffs alone Shivering waiting for …
Holy Dragons Your ship that drifts across the ocean. Your sails are broke…
Hunters Yeah Oh now She rolled in from the west in a summer…
Ian Matthew La la la la la la la la la la La…
Interitus Dei You say you got troubles babe Weighing heavy on your mind We…
Iskwe The Storms coming down on the day Broken limbs and tears…
Ixper I'm living in the present, never in the past You give…
J-witt Yeah Some lights 彼方に光るは降り注ぐ陽差しか はたまた 乱れ打つ稲妻か さあ 吉凶まるごと bring…
J. Kennedy I wanna set into the calm Where the skies are blue Are…
J. Morgan Yeah Some lights 彼方に光るは降り注ぐ陽差しか はたまた 乱れ打つ稲妻か さあ 吉凶まるごと bring…
J.J.Louis When our kisses fly like oak leaves Caught in a…
Jah Sun Working on a nine to five Hustlin every day Before the money…
Jake Walden Here in our dark, We're not the only ones Chasing the stor…
James Hall & Worship & Praise As I step into the water There is a storm in…
James Hall & Worship & Praise; Philip Glass Verse: After the rain the sun will shine, no more cloudy day…
James Hall & Worship And Praise As I step into the water There is a storm in…
James Hall Worship & Praise Verse: After the rain the sun will shine, No more cloudy day…
Jay-Z My life has taken me beyond the planets and the…
Jerry Ropero Living a dream places that i've seen t's nothing without y…
Jerry Ropero Featuring Cozi Living a dream Places that I've seen It's nothing without yo…
Jim Reeves That kiss you gave me this morning was just the…
Jody Reynolds Flashin′ of the lightnin' lit the sky Thunder crashed like a…
Josh An eye for an eye A tooth for a tooth There's method…
Joyful Sorrow Nothing take me Ever from your side Nothing will…
Judge I FEEL THE HATE, IT KEEPS COMING DOWN COMING DOWN LIKE…
JustZeke When I was down to last them niggas was wishing…
K-MRK Probably knew that we were going our separate ways From the…
Kanye West We began after the storm inside lay the land (yeah ah)…
Kanye West Kid Cudi & XXXTENTACION Okay, i'm turnt At the party, fuck 'round, pussy boy And you…
Kanye West Kid Cudi XXXTENTACION Ty Dolla $ign Ant Clemons Francis and the Lights I am looking back Instead of looking forward! I am clamped …
Kanye West Ty Dolla $ign We began after the storm inside lay the land (yeah ah)…
Kaori Kawamura 君が住んでた河沿いの町では 5月の花が咲いてます 今の町は どんなですか いつも歩いた国道に一本 桜があるのを知りました…
Karnataka Token running by his side Tales tall and smiles under whispe…
Kat Leon Lock the doors, I'll break 'em down Give me a torch,…
kikis Azize man khoob goosh bede Roozhaaye sakhti aamade Talkhi o …
King Diamond 18 was yesterday today she was A woman in every single…
L. power You can't prove that Imma horrible driver You can only assum…
Lakeman Seth Make us ready boys all with wonder born, We`ll guide…
Lara Landon Come to my door, you know I'll let you in Ask…
Leah There are few things that'll change you like loss …
Legend Soft and warm, a quiet storm Quiet as when flowers talk…
Lenny Kravitz My life has taken me beyond the planets and the…
Lightshifters I felt the beast It tore me from within I was too…
Lily & The Parlour Tricks Ohhh Ooooh The fear of living is natural Humans can be so e…
Lions & Tygers The house collapsed The picture frames stayed still Listen…
Luca Bertoni Aiming for the moon you will land among the stars once you …
Lucy Simon MAJOR HOLMES: Close the shutters And lock the doors, ALBERT…
Luntara Awaiting terror Deadly silence Mounting pressure Awful hesit…
Man I've been runnin' down a dark road, a dark road I've…
Michael Schenker Group Kiss it all to the wind It's never goodbye my friend I'll…
Michigan Rattlers I met you outside a convenient store You were dragging your…
Mikael Karlsson Carly Simon Playing Possum After The Storm (carly simon) …
Minora I set my body in motion Way out of here I try…
Minus the Bear The storm comes down To the valley south of town It's gonna…
Mr. Death Look I'm ready Let's do it Yeah Yeah Yeah Uhhh Okay Come aro…
N-Telekia I found a way through the storm Feel like I been…
Nemesea they clipped my wings tied the strings took control now tim…
No Signal I Heard Theres some stuff in the forecast tonight I heard It…
Nolan Neal Chasing Down the Storm John Cirillo (ASCAP) IPI# 334682653 S…
Normandie You are too cold from the snow You're so lost, still…
Northbound & Down When the wind turns And the horizon becomes a black curtain …
Ocean of Plague Just at the rock bottom Suffering burnout Marked from the fi…
Of Man and Machine And the air was full Of various storms and saints Parading i…
Of Mice & Men I never said, I'd be coming back for you. I never…
Of Mice & Men (USA) As she walks out of the liquor store The sky gets…
Of Mice Men I never said, I'd be coming back for you. I never…
Of Nations (chorus) It's over now It's over now I feel like I can ma…
P-Nuckle Whoa! Coolest king in the jungle I be runnin' plays, fool pr…
Pantheist I feel the storm as it's coming near It's raging mad,…
Patrick Watson Found himself onto the road The dust up to his nose Put…
Pepe Deluxé Listen, listen, roll of thunder, hear it rumble. Listen…
Pirates Of The Mississippi I'm feeling Our wounded souls end up crying It's been gettin…
Poco Look at all the raindrops fall from the sky tonight Just…
PolyCat 頼りなく並んだ影がね 陽炎に揺らされて 幻のように 消えてった 君の柔らかなcandy body 街を歩けば みんな 振…
Power-Haus Well I've been thinking 'bout the way you felt When you…
Power-Haus Christian Reindl & Lloren Go, Power Rangers Go, Ninja Storm Let's go They call the st…
Pribiz The rain falls down along with my tears And it will…
Primus With salivating psyches The Seven start to swarm Anticipatin…
Prototyperaptor The wind is breaking early The waters are rising too A new…
Racetrack Babies The Storm When you come home tonight Please don't bring in …
Raven-Symoné I am a believer I carry the weight Don't need no permission …
Reality Slap Been trapped for so long Always knew there was something wr…
Richard Robbins And Orchestra (You like the echo in here?) Waiting in your line You've go…
Ring Thundering hordes Darkening storms Of destruction Hear the …
Rob Dickinson Calm never fails It merely shines Goodbye to lonliness An…
Roxton Fone Alright here it comes It's inevitable, might as well make it…
Sarah & Octopus In the morning I smile In the night I cry Sometimes I…
Septris Since I left you for war I accumulate scars Yet I still…
Seth Lakeman Make us ready boys all with wonder born, We`ll guide…
Shadow Fighting to control my mind But tragedy is all I find The…
Shakra Nights in the dark alleys Where she goes down Don′t wanna be…
She-Wolf 15 miles and I'll be home I been a long time…
Skarlett Riot We've got a lot to learn from our mistakes Why are…
Snowgoons No need to speak my name defined with you Not in…
Soan I thought she was a hurricane she said I' m a…
Son Volt Been in this storm so long Been in this storm so…
Sound-Raster I call the storms Knocks at the door My fortunes told The fu…
Sturgill Simpson Please don't think me a lazy man Because I've been sitting…
Stxkz Every night that goes between I feel a little less As you…
Sundub Walking on air Float just a little bit off the ground…
Tanya Donelly Look, I can't watch you Sleep-walking through this Should we…
Tedeschi Trucks Band [?] All talk all day Down the west highway Liar burning in m…
Tha Gatherin The storm born years ago, nine All alone and trapped in…
The 66 You see ‘em coming from afar Five wounds of jesus, five…
The Airborne Toxic Event Before I took in, I tried to think of something…
The Arcadian Wild Making a living has a way of killing men The lungs…
The Blackout I always go back to this room, I'll always love the…
The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea Who else smiled right before they died? Lightning strikes an…
The Dogs We're just surviving storms, lighting lanterns FROM STERN TO…
The Dreadnoughts Safe under covers tonight, faces happy and bright There by t…
The Furys Yeah, it's Fury Here we go again Some more bodies gotta drop…
The Game feat. Nas Yo this Nas niggas whuttup? QB Album coming, niggas ill Will…
The Gang I fra sola står opp over fjell Til den legger…
The Gentle Storm "Dear diary, In this most recent letter from my Joseph…
The Ghost Don’t wait on me Coming around doesn’t mean that I might…
The Hardest Season Have you ever felt the weight of failure on your…
The Hunt The Storm is over now, but I can't see trough Is…
The Hunters Yeah Oh now She rolled in from the west in a summer…
The Judges I FEEL THE HATE, IT KEEPS COMING DOWN COMING DOWN LIKE…
The Kindled I stand alone before a storm Of clouded minds and their…
The One And The Many Somewhere If I get there I might see you again Changes Causi…
The Procussions hey.....the war is on outside this ain't a soundclash turn i…
The Real Gelido Come il mio petto quando parli Sentilo Il cuore ralle…
The Retrosic You are so godless You are so faithless Now You will witness…
The Rolling Stones (Jagger/Richards) (Hey, Can't you have this in mono?) …
The Room A great day dies, been so lazy It was a long…
The Secret Garden - Original London Cast Someone is crying, just now I heard them Someone in this…
The Ship When first we set our sails to find the port…
The Storm Stars and skies fail to tell the truth About this world…
The Stormrider You are so godless You are so faithless Now You will witness…
The Tedeschi Trucks Band [?] All talk all day Down the west highway Liar burning in m…
The Tide Like a chess game The strategy you play So long and thoughtf…
The Tiger Lillies The storm waits to eat you and me Don't you know…
The Unity We see inside our eyes. A moon that's growing wide. And this…
The Vi-Tones Varför är vi så rädda att visa oss svaga inför…
The Y Realizing defeats imminence I refuse to let power go Concoct…
TheFatRat Za’u oe fru iknimaya Nìftxavang ting mikyun, ting nari Tompa…
TheFatRat feat. Maisy Kay Za'u oe fru iknimaya nìftxavang ting mikyun, ting nari Tompa…
TheFatRat; Maisy Kay Za’u oe fru iknimaya Nìftxavang ting mikyun, ting nari Tompa…
Tohu Bohu Nothing will grow on this dry land Been this way for…
Travis Tritt Baby you and I been goin crazy Tangled up in turmoil…
Tree63 In over my head, I was washed overboard Adrift on the…
Trivium Out from the darkness my future is here A frigid cold…
Tucan Morgan The sun is gone and the sky is grey Clouds come…
Ty Dolla $ign Ant Clemons Kid Cudi & XXXTENTACION Okay, i'm turnt At the party, fuck 'round, pussy boy And you…
Tyler Rifley Well I have felt everything you feel And I can tell…
Unicorn Hole "Sorry kids, but Mr Tough Guy's out" The white robe says…
V.A. MM Beware the Cat All this scratching is making me lit! Ek saal, no tracks Ban…
Velvet & Stone I'm like a whirlwind my future wraps Around the whole town…
Vian Izak feat. Eliza Ramgren Don't leave love there's a storm above. Don't leave love. C…
Victim I see the shadows grow under your eyes do you hear…
Voice The world that you see is not as it should…
Was-a-Bee Feel the calm Feel the warmth It clears up the sky Clears ou…
Watson Patrick Found himself onto the road The dust up to his nose Put…
Wayne Jackson No extra time, no perfect rhymes, N trace remains. No scie…
Witchery Stand back and behold the wrath The eye of the storm…
Wodensthrone The air was fire and water A raging inviolable torrent The i…
www.qifshamuziken.de Silently dawn comes in with the rain, and I feel…
XXXTENTACION & Kanye West We began after the storm inside lay the land (yeah ah)…
Zach Zeller I′ve graced these hands and have tasted these lips before On…
Zed-X Im the type to tell you the truth I wouldn't lie…
We have lyrics for these tracks by Bernard Herrmann:
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
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