Bernard Herrmann’s parents were Russian immigrants. His father fostered the interest of his two sons in the arts, taking them to concerts and opera, and giving them each a musical instrument to play when still young. Bernard soon developed an early appetite for iconoclastic literature, and studied music voraciously both in scores and on gramophone records. At an early age he discovered Berlioz’s Treatise on Orchestration, which he later said decided the course of his career. He started his formal music training in 1927 at high school, where one of his class-mates was the future composer Jerome Moross; and through his first teacher Gustav Heine he learnt the basic skills of composition while simultaneously discovering music by idiosyncratic composers such as Charles Ives and Carl Ruggles. Herrmann enrolled at New York University in 1929 at the start of the Depression, studying composition with Philip James and conducting with Albert Stoessel.

When Stoessel left to take up a post at the Juilliard School in 1930 Herrmann followed him, joining the Young Composers Group whose members included Aaron Copland, Wallingford Riegger, Robert Russell Bennett and Vivian Fine. During the autumn of 1932 Herrmann returned briefly to New York University, attending lectures on composition and orchestration given by Percy Grainger, whose vast knowledge of music, eccentric style, and unorthodox syllabus stimulated his lifelong interest in neglected scores by forgotten composers, and confirmed Herrmann’s own preference for musical unorthodoxy. The following year, 1933, he formed the New Chamber Orchestra, composed of unemployed musicians, and conducted music by himself and composers such as Bax, Bennett, Milhaud and Ives. He was hired by CBS’s music director Johnny Green as his assistant in 1934 and programmed and conducted much unusual music for the period.

Between 1936 and 1940 Herrmann composed a large amount of incidental music for numerous radio shows, including two drama series directed by Orson Welles: The Mercury Theatre of the Air and The Campbell Playhouse. Herrmann developed an economical musical style, highly effective in suggesting both mood and psychology: Welles later stated that Herrmann was ‘fifty per cent responsible’ for the success of Citizen Kane, considered to be one of the finest American films ever made. Although his next film score, for Welles’s second production for the RKO Studio, The Magnificent Ambersons, was severely cut, Herrmann continued to compose for films, while also conducting the CBS Symphony Orchestra until its disbandment in 1951. Among his many fine film scores of this period are those for Jane Eyre (1943), Hangover Square (1945), The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

The subsequent decade, from 1951 to 1961, was to be Herrmann’s most creative and financially successful period. As well as scoring mainstream films such as On Dangerous Ground, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Kentuckian and Prince of Players, Herrmann collaborated with significant success with the director Alfred Hitchcock. Beginning with The Trouble with Harry (1955), Herrmann went on to write the music for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), in which he appeared conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). The jarring music that Herrmann wrote for the horrific shower sequence in this film originated in his 1935 concert work Sinfonietta for String Orchestra. Following further work together on The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), Herrmann’s extremely productive relationship with Hitchcock eventually collapsed when the director refused to accept Herrmann’s highly original score for the film Torn Curtain (1966).

Having moved to England, a country with which he had long felt a strong affinity, Herrmann developed a successful career as a recording conductor, making several memorable albums for Decca’s Phase 4 Series and for the small Unicorn label, as well as continuing to write film music for directors Francois Truffaut, Brian de Palma, Larry Cohen and Martin Scorsese. Herrmann died in his sleep following the final day of recording the music for Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver, whose subjects, urban violence and psychological collapse, brought out the best in him and resulted in one of his most memorable scores.

Herrmann’s discography included works written by himself (the opera Wuthering Heights and the cantata Moby Dick as well as several of his film scores) and a typically eclectic selection of lesser-known works, including Raff’s Symphony No. 5, Cyril Scott’s Piano Concertos Nos 1 and 2, Ives’s Symphony No. 2, music from Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper, and Satie’s Les Aventures de Mercure, La Belle excentrique and Jack in the Box. Herrmann also recorded film music by such composers as Bax, Vaughan Williams, Lambert and Bliss whose work in this field was largely forgotten at the time of recording.

© Naxos Rights International Ltd. — David Patmore (A–Z of Conductors, Naxos 8.558087–90).