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  1. Home
  2. Orchestration & Composition
  3. Your Music
  4. Bernard Herrmann
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    Mathis and Fred - Thanks for your very thoughtful statements, and I agree with what you're saying. The idea that working even on a simple little piece helps your mind to continue running in musical channels is a really good point. Like a technical exercise, which is always valuable. Also, the most successful composers deal with this kind of problem on a regular basis. Maybe they can pick and choose a little bit, but often they cannot tell what is going to come of it and I'm sure are sometimes disappointed - at the very least - when seeing what their music is now attached to for all time.

    Probably my difference in opinion comes from the fact I am more involved in the film itself as well as the music, so I can't separate them the way you very rightly do as professionals.
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    Back to Herrmann anyone?

    Evan Evans
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    Oh, I feel a bit like having hijacked Williams question to you, Evan. Actually I´m honestly curious to your answer.
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    @evanevans said:

    Back to Herrmann anyone?

    Evan Evans


    Sorry. Just following the dialogue where it leads...kind of like a real conversation. It's why I've never liked the term "thread hijacking". One idea naturally leads to another, and starting a new thread for each can get pretty laborious, I think.

    But if most think we should stay exactly on topic, I certainly respect that. And I'll be a good boy from now on.

    But something tells me Hermann would have liked the idea of a discussion of his work leading to a conversation about how we deal with the issue of compromise. After all, he was eternally frustrated with the thought that he wasn't taken seriously enough, simply because he chose to work in film.

    But that still exists today...and truly IS a conversation for another thread.

    Fred Story
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    Oh I agree too guys, I just wanted to stick a reminder that there are other things to talk about as well. So we're not waaay off topic.

    Evan Evans

    Mathis,

    Answer to waht question?
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    @William said:

    I'd like to hear more of your music Evan, but can't download these things - too big for my primitive connection. Please sell me CDs of everything you've done! I want to hear it.

    I am trying to calm myself with some friendly discussion here after getting near-homicidal as a result of a certain nose-in-the-air musician on the other forum.

    There is one thing I am thinking Evan about your goal, and I don't mean to sound negative but it is the result of my own work. I have similar goals to yours. However, I have been so repelled by the current state of commercial film that I have deliberately not pursued scoring jobs. You as a professional must take jobs and be practical. That is what disturbed me about the attack on you criticizing your previous work on low budget stuff. The person who did that does not understand that a composer is not and cannot be responsible for the quality of the films he works on, only his own music. And you obviously hold that up excellently.

    But this is exactly my problem. As a composer I find film music impossible to do professionally because I cannot stand to have my music on a piece of crap movie. It is as if the music has been "polluted" or "tainted" by association. That is if you write something serious and sincere. Sure, if you write garbage to go with garbage, that's fine but you don't and most of the people here don't either.

    We admire Herrmann greatly, but he is unique in film history not only for his talent, but for the films he got to work on. His first firm was 'Citizen Kane"! The film called by most people the greatest movie ever made. That was his first! And arguably he went upwards from there, with Welles, Hitchcock, Harryhausen to name three.

    You can't do this today, no matter how good you are, in commercial cinema. Because it has been taken over by the suits and MBAs and demographic analysts. They have ruined the art form as it exists in mainstream cinema.

    As a result I believe that a serious film composer must do one of two things: (1) Work only on artistically sound independent films or (2) Make his own films. Otherwise, he risks prostituting himself and his talent.

    I was thinking of this specifically in relation to your Hunting Humans score. When I first listened to the music, I had no idea of what the film was about. In my mind your music conjured up images of dark, brooding, powerful drama, rising to tragic or even mythic levels.

    I then read the plot synopsis and was shocked, because it sounds so banal and crappy. I don't like the idea of your music having to be associated with this kind of thing any more than I want mine to be. I think composers must not compromise, in direct relation to the amount of talent they have. That means you should not, ever, as long as it is within your knowledge or ability not to.
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    How can anyone write nine scores for Alfred Hitchcock and not even get nominated, I mean NOMINATED for an Oscar?

    Anyone know which score Herrmann was booked to do before he died after Taxi Driver?
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    @PaulR said:

    Anyone know which score Herrmann was booked to do before he died after Taxi Driver?


    Can't say Paul.

    But I will say that it can't be coincidental that two of the greatest artists from the last century share not only the same name but the same initials of first AND last names:



    Benny Hermann

    Benny Hill

    Awesome names and awesome talent.

    Dave Connor
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    @dpcon said:

    Benny HillDave Connor


    OK....OK

    I'm just going to say this. Steve Martin made a film called Dead Men don't Wear Plaid in which, whenever anyone says the magic two words 'cleaning woman', Martin's character flies into a psychotic rage. You know the film?

    You and Bill should, and in fact, do know, that the two magic words 'Benny F@^%* Hill' have the same effect on moi. Thats three words!

    You're both naughty little boys, and you can both leave an apple on my desk on your way out! Billy! See me in my study after school for detention!

    [8o|]



    Carrie [H]


    Prof Paul R (retired)
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    You see Dave, I told you.
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    Oscars? You should never have mentioned Oscars...

    All I can say about the Oscars is this - for the first time in the history of cinema the imbeciles who vote for them were unable to avoid doing it right. Why? Because giving any other director than Peter Jackson and picture besides Lord of the Rings the awards would have been ridiculous. One has the sensation that they wanted so badly to give the awards to something like "Beautiful Mind" as they did before - a film that could have been a play, or a book, or anything other than a movie because it was nothing but dialogue. But they just couldn't avoid giving the awards to a masterpiece of directing, cinematography, acting, editing, sound effects, animation, music, costuming, production design, sculpting, painting, model-making, etc., etc., etc. And they wanted to give it to somebody else- anybody else! - so bad! After all, it is FANTASY. We don't give awards to... FANTASY. Oh well, I guess we have to. But only this one time! It won't happen again...

    This is not the usual for the Oscars - for example, does everyone reading this know that "French Connection" is a better film than Kubrick's "2001" ? Or that "Out of Africa" is better than Kurosawa's "Ran?" You didn't realize that, did you? Oh, well you should pay more attention to the Oscars! Or that Alfred Hitchcock never won an Oscar until the belated "Life Achievement" or whatever the hell they call it when they are trying to cover up for their tastelessness and stupidity? Or that Orson Welles was essentially hounded out of Hollywood (along with Charlie Chaplin)? Or that Buster Keaton was turned into an alcoholic by MGM? or that ...

    Never mind. The list goes on. The art of cinema means nothing in Hollywood. The commerce of cinema means everything.

    And Bernard Herrmann? Are you kidding? Recognize genius when it first comes into being? (Insert Dwight Frye as Renfield laugh here.) That's very amusing...
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    [quote=William]Oscars? You should never have mentioned Oscars quote]

    Good points. But there must have been a reason other than the fact that Herrmann didn't necessarily get on with people, for example.

    I would like to cross-reference the Hitchcock/Herrmann scores with the actual scores that won the awards in the respective years and we can make a judgement call (just for fun).

    I would agree that the system lumps film and scores all into the same melting pot. It would be intellectually more interesting to seperate the different genres. i.e. French Connection, 2001, Throne of Blood etc.
    But that wouldn't be quite so entertaining on Oscar night.

    Incidentally, lads. Does the word Oscar have the same effect on you as Benny Hill does on most of the UK? [:D]
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    Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King deserved every award it got. It has raised the bar in cinema.

    Sometimes the right people get the oscar. After about 9 years of chaos in the Score, Score/Musical, Score/Comedy, Score/Animated, etc. caategory, when John Corigliano won for the RED VIOLIN, I was finally at peace again.

    And this year was also a beautiful year for Oscar. Everyone who deserved to get nominated did, and outside of some close calls, the awards were given to those who deserved it.

    On the flip side, there's HANS ZIMMER for THE LION KING, and all the awards for TITANIC. Pleeeeease.

    And finally, for clarity on Herrmann he was nominated at least 3 times as far as I recall, and won at least one oscar at teh beginning of his career. Although he gave the oscar to his daughter to play with as a toy, and wrote a letter to teh academy saying he refused to accept it for the Academy's lack of recognition of film music.

    And as far as Taxi Driver, there were two films IT'S ALIVE and IT'S ALIVE 2, that Herrmann was slated for. I believe he did the first one before Taxi Driver but it wasn't released until after his death. And the sequel was comprised of edited cues from the first one. LUCKY DIRECTOR!

    Evan Evans
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    Thats right Evan, he did win one early on and did get nominated for others. But he never got nominated for any Hitchcock scores (9). His favourite filmscore was The Ghost and Mrs Muir.

    I wish he could have scored Carrie. That would have been fascinating to see his treatment of what turned out to be a very good film within that particular genre.
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    So my ranting was in error on Herrmann's Oscar. Somehow I never once heard that mentioned. Maybe because his later scores which did not get Oscars so overshadowed this earlier one. What was it for?

    I did hear the It's Alive score when that film came out. The music of course is great, much better than the film. Though the film is not all bad. It is a low budget but fairly imaginative grotesquerie by Larry Cohen. You have to like rude, low budget horror films to like it though. (The birth of that baby did NOT go smoothly.) But I read some quotes by Herrmann in which he was not happy to be working on it.

    The worst film he scored that I've seen, though it was a good production by a prominent director (de Palma) is "Obsession." It is like "Vertigo" with every mistake possible, instead of none as in the original.

    But it is the single most remarkable example that I know of film music transcending the film. Every note of this score is pure inspiration and beauty of the most haunting and intense kind, not heard since "Vertigo."

    Since Evan steadfastly refuses to answer me, I will posit an answer myself to writing for bad films - the composer must somehow find a source of inspiration that comes from somewhere else, or from only tiny parts of the film he is scoring combined with something else. As here, in "Obsession." Herrmann was obviously harking back somewhat to "Vertigo" though he was clearly affected by at least the locations in Italy and the American South which played a prominent part in "Obsession." That, combined with his superlative technical skill, allowed him to create music that was as good as it could be for the film but also, in his interior artistic isolation, to create a beautiful piece of music in itself.
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    I keep mentioning "Mrs Muir" as my favorite BH score and find out it's also Raksin's and the composer's favorite.

    I also started a thread on the great Eric Korngold.

    And - recognized the Fab Four as superior to all these bozos put together.

    Such taste.

    I AM THE MOST POWERFUL _SOMETHING OR OTHER_ ON THE VSL FORUM!

    ...couldn't resist

    D Patrick Connor

    William: yes I see. The boy goes absolutely mad at the mention of that other BH
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    @William said:

    So my ranting was in error on Herrmann's Oscar. Somehow I never once heard that mentioned. Maybe because his later scores which did not get Oscars so overshadowed this earlier one. What was it for?


    All That Money Can Buy or sometimes known as The Devil and Daniel Webster. About 1941/42 I think.

    Benson & Hedges, I think I need one.

    Trivia: In which film did Herrmann appear in conducting at the Albert Hall?
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    Der Mann der zuviel wusste (Remake)
    (Jimmy Stewart, Doris Day)

    I think the original title is:
    "The man who knew too much"

    best
    Herb
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    I believe that Herb had a time zone advantage in answering that question.

    What we need now is a "Name That Tune" quiz.

    Paul, your information almost supports my ranting even with the factual error. I have heard Devil and Daniel Webster. It is one of the most minor efforts of Herrmann, though of course that means it is better than 99% of all other composers. But it is strange that is the one to win, not Psycho, not Vertigo, not Ghost and Mrs. Muir, etc.
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    @William said:

    Since Evan steadfastly refuses to answer me,
    Huh? Please ask me again. Did I miss something? I am not refusing to answer anything?

    Evan Evans