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The Official Bernard Herrmann Thread


Sharkissimo

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Love the opening with its minimal brass against vibraphone, followed by harp harmonics, and it goes from there. It's almost hypnotic and tranquil before it becomes an epic action/adventure piece.

Making a suite from a film score is slowly becoming a lost art-form... but then again, I could be entirely wrong.

Oh, and my university library has a copy of the Moby Dick Cantata. Can't wait to read it and listen to it at the same time. ^_^

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I was in the audience for this and it was truly spellbinding - a highlight of one of the best concerts I have ever attended. The suite from Psycho that preceded it in the concert was superb too.

I love this Ivesian piece from The Devil and Daniel Webster. The scene it scored was dropped from the final film, if I recall correctly.

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Whazzap with all the Youtube mayhem in these threads? What happened to good, old-fashioned CON-VER-SAT-ION (said in a Doug Heffernan accent)?

Anyways, I used to dislike Herrmann vehemently back in my teens and early 20s. Something about the intensity of the chord progressions (a chord crescendoes, then halts abrubtly, then starts again in a different key -- over and over again). But like Alex North, I've come to appreciate his style and music over the years, and also discovered sides of him that are more emotional and accesible.

Recently got the OBSESSION rerecording, for example. I would have hated this 20 years ago. Now, I find it excellent. Weird how taste develops.

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Whazzap with all the Youtube mayhem in these threads? What happened to good, old-fashioned CON-VER-SAT-ION (said in a Doug Heffernan accent)?

There's nothing here to prevent any conversation--it might spark up at any moment! It's just also nice to share one's favourites with others, introduce people to music they might not have heard before, and provide a general audio collection on a composer that one can return to.

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Never been much of a "Youtube listener" myself and prefer forums to be forums (i.e. about interaction and conversation). Except when one needs to illustrate a point by linking to a clip on the 'tube. That's fine. So yet another area where I differ from this crowd, I guess.

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You knew about all these scores, Thor? Personally I wasn't familiar with King of the Khyber Rifles and that the opera from Citizen Kane was actually perfomed (brilliantly also) outside the film, and both were bloody brilliant!

Maybe you knew, but the fact remains this is a fantastic introduction to Herrmann, and being in a John Williams forum, that is no small thing, considering how much of a influence he was on our Johnny.

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Recently got the OBSESSION rerecording, for example. I would have hated this 20 years ago. Now, I find it excellent. Weird how taste develops.

Is the Tadlow out already?

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You knew about all these scores, Thor? Personally I wasn't familiar with King of the Khyber Rifles and that the opera from Citizen Kane was actually perfomed (brilliantly also) outside the film, and both were bloody brilliant!

Maybe you knew, but the fact remains this is a fantastic introduction to Herrmann, and being in a John Williams forum, that is no small thing, considering how much of a influence he was on our Johnny.

I knew about most of the titles linked above, except KHYBER RIFLES and the PSYCHO concert piece.

About 10-15 years ago, I had a massive dive into Herrmann's oeuvre to discover as much as I could. I didn't like his music very much at the time, but people kept telling me what I was missing and that not EVERYTHING was that intense and slightly minimalistic suspense sound. So I had to give it a chance. A great introduction for me back then was the 1988 radio program "A Celebration of His Life and Music" by Bruce Crawford and Bob Coates. If you haven't heard it yet, I recommend that you do. Displays Herrmann's range of styles, and some interesting interview bits as well. The whole thing -- two and a half hours worth -- can be heard here:

http://www.bernardherrmann.org/articles/present-celebration-broadcast/

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Wow. This is the kind of thing this thread should be about.

Just listening to the opening of "The Hitcher" reminds me of what I love about Herrmann. His ability the conjure the scope of an entire drama within a single chord or vertical sonority, and to do so elegantly and economically. That's a very rare skill. One must recognise Herrmann's language is primarily vertical, not linear, like Williams, North and Goldsmith. It was his great strength but also his biggest weakness, as seen when the harmonic motion become more circumscribed in later scores (i.e. half diminished 7ths in contrary motion harp arpeggios, planing major thirds over pedal points etc.).

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  • 1 year later...
  • 4 months later...

Suck on this!

 

Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver will be screened at the Royal Festival Hall on 6th January next year with the score played live to picture by the BBC Concert Orchestra under the baton of the dependable Robert Ziegler.  The film will be introduced by Benny's widow, Norma Herrmann.

 

http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whatson/martin-scorceses-taxi-driver-99348?dt=2017-01-06

 

I wonder what Herrmann would have made of this glut of live-to-picture performances of his scores?  I reckon he would have stormed off in a rage, screaming that it was a terrible idea, but would then have snuck in secretly to enjoy the performance from the back row.  It is wonderful that London-based Herrmann fans will have the opportunity to see four of his greatest scores performed live within the space of a few months - North by Northwest, Taxi Driver, Psycho and Vertigo.

 

Now who do I speak to about doing Mysterious Island and Journey to the Center of the Earth?

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  • 1 month later...

Has anyone been to see Matthew Bourne's new production of The Red Shoes at Sadler's Wells?  Apparently the music is arrangements of Bernard Herrmann's early scores, including The Ghost and Mrs Muir.  While Brian Easdale wrote a great score for the 1948 film starring Moira Shearer, this live stage show has been getting very positive reviews over here.

 

The production will tour the UK next year so I thought I would highlight this if any Herrmann fans are interested.

 

 

Tour dates

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 18/12/2016 at 1:51 PM, Omen II said:

Has anyone been to see Matthew Bourne's new production of The Red Shoes at Sadler's Wells?  Apparently the music is arrangements of Bernard Herrmann's early scores, including The Ghost and Mrs Muir.  While Brian Easdale wrote a great score for the 1948 film starring Moira Shearer, this live stage show has been getting very positive reviews over here.

 

The production will tour the UK next year so I thought I would highlight this if any Herrmann fans are interested.

 

 

Tour dates

 

Yes, I'd like to see this, and its coming to a theatre near me, soon.

Why no Easdale, though? Its a brilliant score, and worthy of its Oscar.

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On 02/01/2017 at 4:38 PM, Richard said:

 

Yes, I'd like to see this, and its coming to a theatre near me, soon.

Why no Easdale, though? Its a brilliant score, and worthy of its Oscar.

 

I will be going to see this when it is on in Wimbledon later this year.

 

Yesterday I went to see the first ever performance of Taxi Driver with the score played live to picture by the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.  Before the film started Norma Herrmann gave a fascinating talk on stage about her late husband, how they met and how he came to score Scorsese's film.  She confessed that she had never actually seen the film herself so the screening would be the first time she would see it.  She recounted how she had first met Herrmann in a taxi and how he had started off by criticising her for being too thin, before asking her out to lunch the next day!  There was also a brief video introduction from Scorsese himself just before the film started.

 

The film was shown without an interval and it was amazing to see and hear first hand the unusual orchestral forces that Herrmann used.  Everything seemed to be in pairs - two contrabassoons, two contrabass clarinets (yay!), two harps, two tubas, two sets of timpani and at times four percussionists brushing hi-hats.  The saxophonist was phenomenal and rightly got the biggest round of applause when conductor Robert Ziegler singled him out at the end.  As there was no programme, I do not know who it was; does anyone know?  [EDIT: It was Phil Todd]  It was lovely to hear the crescendo of applause when the title card tribute to Bernard Herrmann appeared at the very end of the film too.

 

This is the third live to picture screening of a Herrmann score I have been to within the last few months and all of them have been brilliant.  Do all go if you ever get the chance to see one of his scores live!

 

C1fv-hCXcAE0AH2.jpg:large

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  • 3 months later...

I went to see The Red Shoes at the New Wimbledon Theatre yesterday and it was brilliant.  The score used arrangements from several Herrmann scores, including Citizen Kane (which provided a number of very danceable selections), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Hangover Square, Fahrenheit 451 and even some music from his Currier and Ives suite.  The actual ballet sequence (for which Brian Easdale wrote such memorable music) was scored mostly with music from Fahrenheit 451 and very effective it was too.

 

I cannot dance to save my life but I love watching people who can do it so well.  Choo-choo!

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

This afternoon I completed the full set of Alfred Hitchcock's 'big three' films given the live to picture treatment, with a fabulous performance of Vertigo by the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.  The orchestral forces were more conventional than Benny used in many of his scores, although there were still two harps, three flutes and two bass clarinets to remind us that this was a Bernard Herrmann score.

 

The orchestra was led by the young Australian conductor Jessica Cottis and an excellent job she did too.  I had only seen the film once before on TV and that was many years ago, so it was good to revisit it on the big screen now that I am old enough to know what was going on.  The big setpieces such as The Nightmare and Scène d'Amour were especially magnificent, the music rightly given due prominence.

 

I am hoping that orchestras will explore other Bernard Herrmann scores when considering live to picture concerts; wouldn't one of his fantasy scores such as Mysterious Island, Jason and the Argonauts or Journey to the Center of the Earth be brilliant?  They didn't install an organ in the Royal Festival Hall for nothing, you know!

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  • 6 months later...
On 25/06/2017 at 7:24 PM, Omen II said:

This afternoon I completed the full set of Alfred Hitchcock's 'big three' films given the live to picture treatment, with a fabulous performance of Vertigo by the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.

 

The other two being...NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and PSYCHO, I assume?

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4 hours ago, Richard said:

 

The other two being...NORTH BY NORTHWEST, and PSYCHO, I assume?

 

First I saw Marnie - Live In Concert played by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra at the Northcott Theatre in Exeter, performed in period costume under candlelight and with a fantastic firework finale.  More recently I had the privilege of watching The Trouble With Harry (In Concert) interpreted by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the assured direction of the ghost of Herbert von Karajan.  They did a suite from It's Alive as an encore which brought the house down, that house being the Bath Halls in Scunthorpe.  It will live long in my memory!

 

No, you're right Richard.

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  • 1 year later...

Quartet are planning on releasing their recording of Endless Night in February/March. After their excellent The Bride Wore Black disc last year colour me excited. Here's comments from FSM board:

 

Quote

 

Endless Night was recorded on September 9-11, with Fernando as conductor, of course, but it will not be released until February/ March 2020. Fernando is really busy right now and he cannot supervise the mixes until the end of this year.

 

Karol

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm just here to link the Legacy Interviews. Very insightful. I can't wait until one day even more interviews like that will be made about Williams.

 

I especially adore the interviews with Norma Herrmann. Such a charming, enthusiastic personality.

 

An interesting highlight is that when she mentioned people with whom Herrmann would never fight, Williams was the first one that was on her mind. She identified that Herrmann would usually like or dislike people based on their views about or activities concerning music.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I attended the live-to-projection concert of "Psycho" by the New York Philharmonic and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.  At both concerts, over the footage where the idenity of 'mother' is revealed at the cellar, there was different music instead of the reprisal of the shower-murder music that was used in the final film-edit.  The main melody for this alternate music is based on this portion of Herrmann's Sinfonietta for String Orchestra (1936 rev. 1975) at the 16:37 mark...

 

 

The tempo of this melody is much faster at the concert.  I wondering if this music for that scene was what Herrmann originally wrote, but Hitchcock nixed it and replaced it.

 

I checked Steven C. Smith's 1991 biography on Herrmann, "A Heart at Fire's Center," and there's no mention of any other music cues outside of the ones that occur between the opening credits and the shower-murder scene.  If Smith, at the time of completing the book, had any evidence that there was an alternate cue for that sequence, the book would have mentioned it because of the irony of it...Hitchcock abandoning a portion of music from the cellar scene and replaces it with music he used in the shower-murder scene--a scene that he didn't want scored in the first place.

 

If any Herrmann experts can chime-in, that would be great.

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  • 7 months later...

Omni Music Publishing just released a complete full score for North By Northwest, the first time any complete (written) score by Herrmann has been published. I’m excited to pick this one up!

 

https://omnimusicpublishing.com/product/bernard-herrmanns-north-by-northwest-full-orchestral-score/

 

image.jpeg

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On 11/17/2019 at 9:07 AM, SyncMan said:

I attended the live-to-projection concert of "Psycho" by the New York Philharmonic and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.  At both concerts, over the footage where the idenity of 'mother' is revealed at the cellar, there was different music instead of the reprisal of the shower-murder music that was used in the final film-edit.  The main melody for this alternate music is based on this portion of Herrmann's Sinfonietta for String Orchestra (1936 rev. 1975) at the 16:37 mark...

 

 

The tempo of this melody is much faster at the concert.  I wondering if this music for that scene was what Herrmann originally wrote, but Hitchcock nixed it and replaced it.

 

I checked Steven C. Smith's 1991 biography on Herrmann, "A Heart at Fire's Center," and there's no mention of any other music cues outside of the ones that occur between the opening credits and the shower-murder scene.  If Smith, at the time of completing the book, had any evidence that there was an alternate cue for that sequence, the book would have mentioned it because of the irony of it...Hitchcock abandoning a portion of music from the cellar scene and replaces it with music he used in the shower-murder scene--a scene that he didn't want scored in the first place.

 

If any Herrmann experts can chime-in, that would be great.

Herrmann wrote different music but Hitch tracked in the other.cue.

The Elfman restore for the PSYCHO remake has the original, unused cue.

His recording is amazing and definitive!

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  • 2 months later...

There's an interesting Herrmann release coming from Naxos next month (October).

 

8.559883.gif

https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559883

 

It's a reconstructed, re-recorded version of a 1944 radio drama in which Herrmann wrote music to underscore recitations of Walt Whitman poems.  I remember @Yavar Moradi and co. covering a similar radio composition by Jerry Goldsmith from the 50s, you'll probably be interested in this Yavar.

 

You can hear a very brief sample of it in this video teasing Naxos' October releases

 

1:12 - 1:25

 

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1 hour ago, Disco Stu said:

There's an interesting Herrmann release coming from Naxos next month (October).

 

8.559883.gif

https://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559883

 

It's a reconstructed, re-recorded version of a 1944 radio drama in which Herrmann wrote music to underscore recitations of Walt Whitman poems.  I remember @Yavar Moradi and co. covering a similar radio composition by Jerry Goldsmith from the 50s, you'll probably be interested in this Yavar.

 

You can hear a very brief sample of it in this video teasing Naxos' October releases

 

1:12 - 1:25

 

 

I stumbled over this release a few months ago and look forward to listening to it.

On 7/2/2020 at 5:54 AM, bruce marshall said:

The Elfman restore for the PSYCHO remake has the original, unused cue.

His recording is amazing and definitive!

 

The original recording is the definitive.

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