That is what I would love to know!
Share your best Herrmann track with us!
Judy’s favourite:
Temptation (Psycho) 1960
It has it all: suspense, doubt, hope. It pulls you into the screen, into the mind of Marion and you know it is not going to end well for Miss Marion.
Absolute greatness!
Though the giant chicken fight (can’t remember title) from the "Mysterious Island" runs a close second.
Its difficult to pick an actual track as all of his music was quite unique … he was the master !!
Proof that Herrmann can make even elevator music sound sprightly.
But one track I always find fascinating is the theme from Twisted Nerve. I’m positive I had never heard the track before, never heard of the film, but when I saw Kill Bill, I could recognise the tune as something Herrmann would have written from very early in the scene (well before those distinctive chords or heightened climax were reached).
Andante Cantabile (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caZC_2YCGTk)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQbboUwRdns
This is an absolute stunning musical piece that starts slow and melancholic, then gets some momentum when the dream starts, and relentlessly goes on and on until it reaches the climax of the nightmare at about 2:30. You have to watch the video to see how brilliantly the visuals were done with the special effects. Combined with the music this is a cinematically perfect movie scene. You can almost feel the agony and desperation that Scottie is experiencing in his dream. Herrmann was the congenial partner to Hitch, he always understood what he was trying to express with his visualizations, and delivered what was needed.
Nightmare from "Vertigo"
Main Title From "North By Northwest"
Main Title and Radar from "The Day the Earth Stood Still"
I think that no one compares to him.
I love his music!
It’s so difficult to choose just one track.
Since my favourite film is "Vertigo",
I would have to pick one from this score.
"Prelude And Rooftop" or "Carlotta’s Portrait" or "Scene D’Amour".
My answer would be a repertoire work: "FOR THE FALLEN".
What an heartbreaking piece of music !!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1g5H0kZvqU 🙂
This is great and lovely indeed, Mr. Bernstein did a great job on this score! Thank you Mieszko, I am listening to it now. Wasn’t this Mr. Herrmann’s favourite score?
Thank you for sharing this with us 🙂
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The Main Titles from THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958). The music evokes anticipation of the wonders awaiting us in Ray Harryhausen’s classic magical fantasy.
I love the up-tempo at the beginning and then evolving into loveliness and magical tunes. Just like you say, the wonders awaiting us in this film.
Great share, thanks Steve!
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All of the wonder that is "Vertigo" and most of the tracks in "The Day The Earth Stood Still."
Of course Vertigo :), thank you. I am gonna have a listen to TDTESS this weekend. I loved the movie when I saw it the first time last year. Yes I know I am ashamed of it myself 🙂
Absolute greatness in music.
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"Airport" from "Obsession". The CODA is absolutely amazing with the timpanis sounds so forte!!!
This finale is a true Herrmann masterpiece a MUST HAVE. Building up the tension with repeating notes and then changing into an unknown musical climax. Mr. Herrmann felt something was missing during production and said: "It needs a choir", and yes that was what – imo – turned this score and especially this track into a masterpiece! Great choice (had to listen to it right away :))
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The Prelude from Fahrenheit 451
Beautiful score and track. Very popular with Herrmann fans. Not really one of my favourites, but I checked it on my iTunes list: it had quite a lot of plays though! Thanks for your input SheriffJoe
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Vertigo – an amazing score to an amazing film
Its difficult to pick an actual track as all of his music was quite unique … he was the master !! Yes he was and what a great score!
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Bernard Herrmann is my favourite composer.
I think that no one compares to him.
I love his music!
It’s so difficult to choose just one track.
Since my favourite film is "Vertigo",
I would have to pick one from this score.
"Prelude And Rooftop" or "Carlotta’s Portrait" or "Scene D’Amour".
Could agree with you more. I play tracks of this fab score everyday. Whether it is on my iPod, Mac or phone. I really have to listen to this score everyday….. can’t help it. Thanks Petros for sharing this.
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"It’s a Most Unusual Day" from "North by Northwest.
Proof that Herrmann can make even elevator music sound sprightly.
Well, this is something that wouldn’t have come to my mind as a favourite, but it is Herrmann having fun I think. Thanks Creedmoor, I’m listening to it now.
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Elegy from Beneath the 12 Mile Reef.
I think that is the best track from the album, good choice, thank you for this.
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Finale from Fahrenheit 451
Beautiful indeed, but it always brings Stranger In Paradise to my mind (Dabba from "Kismet" by Andre Previn). Very nice though 🙂 thanks Parney
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Nocturne (Ghost & Mrs. Muir), Ballad Of Springfield Mountain (The Devil And Daniel Webster), The Road And Finale (Fahrenheit 451)… there are too many of them just to pick one 🙂
Well it15, Nocturne is sooo beautiful it must have been one of Mr. Herrmann’s own favourite tracks. Ballad is a good choice and so is The Road And Finale. I love the harps in combination with the cello’s. What a great combo!
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Tough one, but I’d have to say it’s between "The Wild Ride" from North by Northwest, "The Rainstorm" from Psycho or "Scottie’s Nightmare" from Vertigo.
Thanks davywiz2. The Wild Ride is a track I played many times during cooking dinner. Yes I put on the Blu-Ray of North By Northwest and put it on loud, great. The Rainstorm makes you feel cold and makes you wanna leave the road to find a cosy and warm cabin in a motel, oepsie!
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Meditation (The magnificent Ambersons) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4IYSMi19nE)
Andante Cantabile (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caZC_2YCGTk)
Thank you bullz698. Two great, great tracks indeed. Didn’t really knew Meditation. I think it is the End Title as I know it from the Tony Bremner album, isn’t it. How beautiful this is.
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That’s a tough one, Herrmann is brilliant in almost everything he has composed. If I had to choose just one track, I would certainly go to "Vertigo" (his best score) and pick "The Nightmare":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQbboUwRdns
This is an absolute stunning musical piece that starts slow and melancholic, then gets some momentum when the dream starts, and relentlessly goes on and on until it reaches the climax of the nightmare at about 2:30. You have to watch the video to see how brilliantly the visuals were done with the special effects. Combined with the music this is a cinematically perfect movie scene. You can almost feel the agony and desperation that Scottie is experiencing in his dream. Herrmann was the congenial partner to Hitch, he always understood what he was trying to express with his visualizations, and delivered what was needed.
Great choice soundtrekker. And thank you for views on it. The youtube video gives an excellent impression of Scottie’s sadness and struggles
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Main Title from "The Kentuckian"
Nightmare from "Vertigo"
Main Title From "North By Northwest"
Main Title and Radar from "The Day the Earth Stood Still"
The Kentuckian is a beautiful choice indeed. Thank you zelig46 for your contribution
too difficult to choose with a man like Herrmann.
too difficult to choose with a man like Herrmann.
Yes, I feel the same – it’s like choosing which of your 5 kids you’re gonna take with you to Disneyland, if you have just two tickets (and you love all your kids the same way). It’s heart-breaking to leave 4 at home!
Proof that Herrmann can make even elevator music sound sprightly.
but this is not a herrmann composition! it�s an old standard by the great jimmy mchugh!!!!! i think from 1948.
keep boppin�
marcel
keep boppin�
marcel
Which is proof that Herrmann didn’t care much for elevator music, after all!
So my favourite track, the prelude from Vertigo.
But if I have to choose I think I’d choose any of his compositions with wind instrument, specially melancolic themes with oboe, clarinet, bassoon, etc…
🙂
But these are perennials:
North by Northwest Main Title
Prelude/Rooftop from Vertigo – dammit, all of Vertigo
Dammit, all of The Ghost and Mrs Muir, too…
Twisted Nerve
Walking Distance from The Twilight Zone might be one of the most sublime pieces of music I’ve ever heard…
Prelude / Radar from The Day The Earth Stood Still
Taxi Driver Main Title
Prelude from Psycho… but, again, picking one track from Psycho is next to impossible.
I’ll finish this and remember others, I’m sure.
Herrmann understood the possibilities of the orchestra as cinematic color like no-one before him. His music still unfolds new layers over time, whenever I listen to it. He really was a genius, both of film music and as a man who comprehended the moving image as narrative.
Anyway lovely that all of you share your thoughts and emotions on favourite Herrmann tracks. For me it is enlighting, thanks and keep it coming!
I really love Roger’s theme and this slowed-down, violent-sounding rendition of it is just fantastic.
keep boppin�
marcel
But "Scene d’Amour" from Vertigo, "Main Titles" from North by Northwest, and "Airport" from Obsession all come to mind, along with the main theme from Taxi Driver, and the "Prelude" from Fahrenheit 451.
Miss Susie in "The Kentuckian"
Love Music in "Vertigo"
The Death Hunt in "On Dangerous Ground"
Here the main theme:
What you given here so many times are truly remarkable. This question about Herrmann’s favorite track is an essential thing for us… for you… and for me.
When I’ve asked for Herrmann’s composed soundtracks from this moving community, I’ve stupidly explaned explained that at 14 (I’m 60!) there were two artists who told me my life. One was Herrmann’s in his films… and the first I heard I’ll explain is a track that’s not just my favorite but a vitality in my life as a person and a writer.
That’s "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir"… and its theme resonated with something else I saw (and heard of course) on that same weekend. It was Ken Russell’s early film (one of three biographies he created with his best producer ever for BBC), "Song of Summer: Frederick Delius". It was as moving and revealing a film as "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir"… in its characters, their fates and each of its music.
Over time from that I explored every one of Herrmann’s films I could find… and living near to New York City there were before cables and DVDs great film theaters which concentrated on older and even forgotten movies. To those I went. And at home I would go to libraries to have and listen to Herrmann’s soundtracks and, yes, Delius’ music. For me I thought and felt these men were soulful son and father.
And some decades later when I was a playwright et al… I was just very remarkably going to collaborate with David Shire in a (get this) Berlin musical and while we hadn’t met we talked on the phone about many things. And I mentioned Herrmann and Delius to him… His response was compassioned. "Delius was his only artistic father!"
Yes. He was DEVOTED to Delius and in so many ways solely inspired by him.
So I kept exploring like a kid in many ways… listening to them both more than frequently. And finding again and again that Herrmann was a truly great original artist who had not an imitation of Delius but something like similar genetics in creativity, emotions, personalities and… some excesses. (Well, more than some with Delius.)
Herrmann was devoted to bring Delius music to his country… of course, when he was the classic music conductor and director of Columbia Radio… and his truly wonderful inspiration to Herbert Stothart about bringing Delius’ music created in his Florida farm (and his deep love of black Americans which made him an even greater creator) to one of the truly best M-G-M films we know, "The Yearling".
Now… when Herrmann was composing his great "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" score he was with his first wife, the remarkable writer Lucille Fletcher their opera. Many people in opera had loved this; still, Herrmann was more than perhaps too insistent on never letting any opera even slightly cut the score and libretto here and there or just anywhere including the Metropolitan Opera which truly wanted to produce it.
And in it — again without imitations — it is not just the influence of Delius’ deeply moving and for some of us inspiring operas. Herrmann betters Delius’ marvelous inspirations with every moment of "Wuthering Heights".
So what is essential there?
It’s the absolute theme from "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir"! And people would tell him, "I love that score! It’s so wonderful in your opera!" And, well, he deny that it was in the soul of the two of them. But it is… magnificently.
So… Bernard Herrmann did record a very good version of his "Wuthering Heights" with the sadly gone Unicorn-Kanchana label. And one of our truly wonderful neighbors (like you and everyone here) turner6 shares us here! Thread 179964
I’ve been listening to it since the early 1980’s. And a blessing has occurred in France — an even greater recording of it with even more insightful conducting and performances of Herrmann’s "Wuthering Heights" (with that theme).
Here it is… complete on youtube. I will try to post the links but after three cancers and more (dis-courtesy of doctors) it’s hard. (I used to do those until my foolish — that’s a courteous expression — transplant and its never admitted damages.)
keep boppin�
marcel
Saludos
Vertigo is one of my favourite films …and scores of all time
Has anyone else read the rather wonderful biography of Herrmann, A Heart at Fire’s Center by Steven C. Smith? It’s researched in great detail but not overly academic and I found it to be very readable. Gives great insight into the man, his passions, flaws, disappointments, dedication and brilliance.
Has anyone else read the rather wonderful biography of Herrmann, A Heart at Fire’s Center by Steven C. Smith? It’s researched in great detail but not overly academic and I found it to be very readable. Gives great insight into the man, his passions, flaws, disappointments, dedication and brilliance.
Hi Grubbuts I just mailed you but mixed up suggestions, sorry for that. 🙂 I know the book, but honestly I have forgotten al about it. I will order it tonight. Thanks for reminding me.
And do you know Dan Auiler’s book: ‘Vertigo’ The making of a classic? That is a must have I can tell you. A lovely read. I bought a second hand copy for 6 dollars only on the Net.
Saludos
de nada
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The main title to Mysterious Island, of course https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBdtfxl2yUc ….. once you hear the first few bars you just KNOW you’re going to see some Harryhausen stop-motion monsters !!!!!
Good choice, thank you and check your mailbox 🙂
I’d also like to add The Marker from Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef. This was ingrained in me from many, many years of watching Lost in Space!
Great choice, thank you. God’s Lonely Man is certainly a great track, thank you for your contribution. I will have a listen later.
And do you know Dan Auiler’s book: ‘Vertigo’ The making of a classic? That is a must have I can tell you. A lovely read. I bought a second hand copy for 6 dollars only on the Net.
I do have this somewhere. Look at that cover! A masterpiece about the making of a masterpiece. My copy is not in very good condition, but it’s well loved.
Much as I love Day the Earth Stood Still and many Hitchcock soundtracks (why has no one mentioned the shower from Psycho, the most copied film music ever?), my single favourite has to be God’s Lonely Man, from Taxi Driver. Sitting in the theatre back in – what? – the 70s?, completely unprepared for such a film, it was the music that put it right over the top, made watching it almost unbearably tense. Hitch said that Psycho was nothing without Herrmann’s score. Without Herrmann, I don’t know what Taxi Driver would have been. Not half the movie that it was, that’s for sure. Don’t remember much of the movie itself at all, after all these years. But oh boy that music still makes me sweat.
I didn’t mention the shower sequence music simply because it freaks me out, but I completely agree with your assessment – it’s one of the most imitated pieces of film music of all time. Have you ever watched Psycho with the sound turned down? It doesn’t really work, it’s kind of lifeless. Then, with Herrmann’s score added, suddenly everything becomes this tense, driven set of sequences. All done with a string section – there’s nothing else on that score. All to save money, apparently!
On Hitch & Bernard – another great book that i can heartily recommend is Hitchcock’s Music, by Jack Sullivan, which examines the relationships between the director and all his composers in great detail. Obviously, a good part of the book is about Herrmann and his significant contributions to Hitchcock’s movies. It’s no accident that many of Hitchcock’s greats are all scored by Herrmann.
I concur with your observations absolutely, except for the motivation for choosing a string orchestra only. I don’t think it was for budgetary reasons only (that may have been a welcome side-effect). I rather believe it was a conscious artistic choice on Herrmann’s part. The string orchestra mirrors the black and white quality of the movie and enhances the bleak atmosphere of Hitchcock’s visualization of Robert Bloch’s story.
You’re right – actually, I may be misremembering that, or conflating two separate remembrances. Herrmann wanted to write a "black-and-white" score to complement the "black and whiteness" of the movie, which at that time Hitchcock was thinking of chucking out as a TV movie. It was hearing Herrman’s score that persuaded him otherwise. So yes, maybe Herrmann chose to restrict himself to strings only. What he did do is ignore Hitchcock’s directive that the shower scene contain no music at all. Herrmann was incredibly stubborn and thought he always knew what was right (and he usually did). So he wrote the scene with music against Hitchcock’s direct wishes – and it knocked everyone out of their seats. Hitchcock said the music accounted for "a third of the film’s power" or something similar. Personally, I’d say it’s a good half, if not more.
Thank you for your replies boys and insights on Psycho.
Thanks for the book on Hitch and Herrmann: it is on my wish list 🙂
But then again, how do you not love "Vertigo"?
* Trouble with Harry – Autumn, The Captain, Autumn Afternoon, The Country Road, Tea Time, Harvest Eve
* Psycho – The City, Peephole, all the cues that play during the "clean up" sequence after the shower scene, The Shadow, First Floor, The Bedroom
* Vertigo – Catalogue, Beach, Nightmare, Letter, Scene d’Amour, Finale
* Taxi Driver – Main Title, A Strange Customer, $20 Bill, every reprise of the Betsy theme.