Patrick Bade
Bernard Herrmann: Citizen Kane to Taxi Driver

Patrick Bade - Bernard Herrmann: Bicycle to Taxi Driver

- Well, first of all, a very big thanks to Peter and Linda who sent me these photographs, which I thought I would share with you. I’m sure you’ll be pleased to see them, of the great Marilyn Horn on her 90th birthday, which was last month, January the 16th, and what a lovely, happy face she has. And there she’s with her daughter, and you can see a special song that was written for the occasion. Well, I’m talking tonight about film music and it’s a genre that, misguidedly, some people look down upon. Usually as far as music heard in the concert hall is concerned, if somebody says, oh, it sounds like film music. That’s not usually intended as, as a compliment, but I would say it’s a mistake to, to downgrade film music. It’s been one of the most important musical genres of the 20th and the 21st century. And at the highest level it is great music. And I think the very best films that use music well, you can say that they’ve taken over the role of opera. They as a total work of art in which music and images work together on the senses and the emotions of the, of the audience. So here are three of the film composers that I regard as amongst the very greatest. This Franz Waxman on the left hand side, Bernard Herman, who I’m talking about tonight. And Ennio Morricone. Those of you in Britain may have heard a series of programmes just two weeks ago on Radio three, celebrating the career of Ennio Morricone. Now, if I had to pick randomly one scene in the history of cinema in which the music and the images work symbiotically together to impact that, the nervous system of the audience, a good example would certainly be the notorious shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”. As you can see, the the scene shot by shot was meticulously planned.

This, this is the, the, the, the board, image board for the scene on the right hand side. And it was originally intended to be with in silent with no sound, but certainly in the cinema, much of the impact is these screeching violins, scored by Bernard Herman. I will never forget the, the shock of seeing that the first time. It was in a, in a Paris cinema, an almost empty cinema, there was only one couple plus me in the dark darkened space of the auditorium. And I, it was a very scary experience. So this is the young Bernard Herman and exceptionally among the great Hollywood composers of the Golden Age, He was born and trained in America. Most of the others, Erich Korngold, Franz Waxman, Max Steiner were European and European trained. So he was born in New York in 1911, and he was trained at NYU. And for, for a Brit, it’s kind of bizarre that his teacher was Percy Granger, familiar to us, of course, for his jaunty dunes like country gardens, a long way off the score for Psycho. During, in his career, he had two very, very important collaborations. First of all, with Orson Wells top left, and then with Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he worked on seven films. And so he, he started off his career as the chief conductor of the CBS orchestra, and he became involved in radio work and he worked initially with Orson Wells in his radio theatre, the Mercury Theatre. Here you see the CBS studio for Mercury Theatre, and Orson Wells made his name, you probably know, through a dramatisation of HG Wells’ “War of the Worlds”, which was so realistic that it caused panic across America.

People really thought that the martians were invading United States. And as you can see, there was a wave of mass hysteria. And Bernard Herman was involved in the music and the sound effects for that. And then he went on to work with Orson Wells on his first great film in 1941, “Citizen Kane”. This is a film that has been repeatedly voted the greatest film of all time by many film critics. And Orson Wells was the first to admit that the music played a very important role in the success of this movie, ‘cause it’s a movie which is only too relevant today. It’s about the abuse of media and, and the rise of a populist politician, all too uncomfortably familiar to us on both sides of the Atlantic. I’m going to play you the, the, the final moments that at least the score of the final moments of the, of the movie. As the movie opens, it actually opens with the death of Citizen Kane, based of course, on William Randolph Hurst. And as, as he dies, the word “Rosebud” is on his lips. And so Rosebud symbolises the enigma of man, what is this man about? All sorts of theories about what, what rosebud actually means, including some, quite some raunchy ones that no, no doubt somebody will come up with in the chat at the end. In the final moments of the film, his great house, his his palace is being cleared and possessions are being thrown into a furnace. And somebody carelessly throws this book with the title “Rosebud” into the furnace. And we see it consumed by the flames showing, meaning that of course, we will never really understand the enigma of this man.

So it, I’ll play you this, it, it starts off very darkly and ominously and, but ends in, I suppose, in a rather Hollywood fashion on a blazing major chord. Everybody knew that “Citizen Kane” was loose, actually not that loosely, really quite closely based on the life and career of William Randolph Hurst. Hurst had a long term mistress in the film star Marian Davis and in the movie, and he, he spent huge sums of money in promoting, promoting her career, finally, actually really sabotaging it by over promoting her and pushing her into the wrong kind of movies. She, as has been pointed out by many writers recently, she, she was not talentless, you know, certainly in the earlier parts of her career, she was extremely popular in the early '20s. Briefly, she was the most popular female film star in, in Hollywood. In the movie, she is an aspiring opera singer, completely without talent. And in fact, as is often the case in fiction and in movies, the character in the movie of Susan Alexander the Singer, is a fusion of two different people of Marian Davis. So you see on the left hand side and of a singer called Ganna Walska, who was very beautiful, but apparently really had no voice to speak of and had a series of, of absolute disasters on the operatic stage in a career that was promoted by wealthy lovers and husbands. So in the movie, Bernard Herman writes a, a, an aria for her that is, and in the movie, of course, we have an actress who, who really can’t sing it. It’s actually a very difficult aria, high lying notes needing a lot of stamina. And it’s completely beyond her. And it’s kind of a painful scene in the movie. But in the early 1970s, somebody had the bright idea of, hey, this is actually gorgeous music. If only we’ve had a whole opera like this. It’s a kind of a parody of, of French grand opera, but absolutely luscious and gorgeous. And somebody had the idea, well, let’s get a really good singer to see it, sing it and see what it sounds like.

So here is Kiri Te Kanawa in Fine Fatal, really at the height of beauty, of her voice. Singing the aria from this fake opera “Salammbo” in “Citizen Kane”. Thrilling stuff every bit as good as Massanet or Sasson. And I wish there was more of it. Now, I suppose “Psycho” is the film that most readily comes to mind when the name of Bernard Herman comes up. The film dates from 1960 and a slightly eccentric decision was made to, made to film it in black and white. By 1960, most prestigious films were made in colour, and Bernard Herman took a parallel decision to askew orchestral colour. So the score is just for strings, and immediately it sets up a tremendous sense of tension with driving motoric rhythms somewhat reminiscent, I would say, of Stravinsky. That’s the music you have in the opening titles. And it comes back again when, when Marian, the character played by Janet Lee is driving through the rain with the money that she’s impulsively stolen. But once the opening titles are through, we seem to be high up in a, in a building in Phoenix, Arizona, looking through binoculars across the city. And Bernard Herman manages to create a sense of extraordinary unease with the strings, the quiet strings accompanying this scene. And the camera sort of pans across the city, as I said, it’s as though we’re looking through binoculars, searching for something. Finally, we move in, in closeup towards this window, and we actually move through the window into a room where Janet Lee and her, her lover, have just had sex. And this is, I mean, this is a movie.

I mean, in this scene there is no nudity and there is no sex. But I’d really think it is one of the most erotic scenes in the whole history of the cinema. The whole atmosphere is actually laden with post coital tension and eroticism. And that is expressed in very harmonies of this scene. Certainly Wagner is a very, very important influence on Bernard Herman throughout his career. “Vertigo”, which came out in 1958, was actually not a huge success at the time. I think a lot of people disregarded it as too weird. But it has since become a cult movie, very, very highly rated by film critics. And James Stewart plays a policeman in San Francisco with a terrible fear of heights. Well, San Francisco probably not a very good place to be a policeman if you suffer from vertigo. And so the, again, the opening credits are really extraordinary, if ever you could translate that sensation of that, I suffer from it to a degree. And I’ve luckily only a few times in my life had real bad panic attacks due to, once on the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Oh my God, that was awful. I thought I’d never get off it. But so I do know what it feels like. And this, this is to me the most incredible sound equivalent of that sensation. Seems to be taking its time. Right now, that should be it, I hope. Now, as a thriller and a detective story, I can understand that some people at the time found “Vertigo” unconvincing and somewhat lame, but I think they missed the point because it’s not really a straightforward thriller at all. It’s much more a movie about an obsession, obsessive passion that James Stewart feels for the, the heroine of the story. And Bernard Herman has understood this very well.

And once again, he turns to Wagner, and in particular to Tristan, perhaps the greatest musical expression in history of obsessive passion. And the, the love music throughout “Vertigo” is a kind of a tease because you keep on thinking, oh, it’s going to just turn into the love duet of Tristan and Isuelt. And it almost does, but it doesn’t quite do so. Herman’s last movie with Hitchcock was work for him, was on the “Torn Curtain”, that’s 1966. It was the seventh movie he’d worked on for Hitchcock, but we’re in the middle of the '60s and it’s the time of Beatlemania. And Hitchcock was very worried about being considered passe, being left behind. He wanted something more trendy, more pop. And he said he didn’t want the same kind of massive scoring that Herman had produced for most of his previous movies, you know, with huge symphony orchestra. And said in, instead, he wanted something more like a, a pop score. So in fact, Bernard Herman didn’t use a conventional symphonic instrumentation, but it was hardly light and transparent and hardly pop. In fact, a really extraordinary combination of instruments that he came up with. 16 French horns, 11 flutes, nine trombones, two sets of timpani, eight cellos and eight double bases.

That’s a pretty extraordinary combination of instruments. And when Hitchcock heard it, he, he said, no, he, that was not at all what he had in mind, and he rejected it. In fact, it had got to the point where everything had been recorded, all, you know, each little sequence had the music recorded to go with it. But all that was jettison and a new score was commissioned from somebody else. So the movie came out and it was a flop. And it’s generally considered to be the weakest of all the Hitchcock movies. And my feelings, this is very much down to the lack of Bernard Herman’s music. It really makes it clear how important his contribution was to the Hitchcock movies. I’m going to play you again. The title music tremendously powerful and ominous and terrifying, actually. A few months ago I was talking about this with a friend here in Paris who is the director of a chain of art cinemas in Paris. And he became very interested. And of course, you know, Hitchcock is so idolised, he’s such a God with the French . And so he, I persuaded him and he, he really liked the idea that they could do represent the movie. It should be perfectly possible with the Bernard Herman score replacing the one that it came out with. As I said, with modern technology, this shouldn’t be a problem at all.

And all the, the sequences, you know, down to the second have actually been recorded. So technically this is certainly possible and it’d be very exciting. And I think it’ll be big news in France. Certainly if it happens. The problems seem to be legal ones, getting the permission from various people to do it. But here is the, the Herman score for the opening of “Torn Curtain”. Bernard Herman was a distinguished classical musician, a much admired conductor who introduced many new works. He was particularly keen on Charles Ives and rather surprisingly as, as an American of Russian Jewish origin, he was very, very keen on British music composers like Vaughn Williams. And he did lots of premieres of British music, Benjamin Britain and so on in America. And he also had a separate career as a composer, completely apart from his film music. So my next recording is, it’s a curiosity really, and, and an extraordinary piece of history 'cause this is a, a live recording of the world premier of his cantata, “Moby Dick”. The premier was given at Carnegie Hall in 1938, conducted by the British Conductor John Rollins. And this is the final scene of Herman’s “Moby Dick”.

• [Performer] And I only can escape alone to .

• He also wrote an opera in 1951 on “Weathering Heights”. He was a great Anglo file that worked, worked quite a lot in Britain, loved English music, loved English literature, and went up to Yorkshire to to visit the, the moors countryside of Weathering Heights. And again, I’m going to play you the, the final scene of the opera conducted by Bernard Herman himself, where we hear the, the ghostly voice of the dead Kathy, calling to Heathcliff across the moors.

♪ Oh, Kathy come in ♪ ♪ Oh come in ♪ ♪ Oh Kathy do come ♪ ♪ Oh, oh once more ♪ ♪ Oh, my heart’s dying, hear me this time ♪ ♪ Oh Kathy, Kathy ♪ ♪ Come to me because I hate it ♪ ♪ Oh Kathy, at last ♪ ♪ Oh Kathy, my love ♪ ♪ Oh come in, oh come in ♪ ♪ Come in ♪ ♪ Kathy ♪ ♪ Oh come in ♪ ♪ Oh my heart’s not in ♪ ♪ Hear me this time ♪ ♪ Oh Kathy, come in ♪ ♪ Come in, come in ♪ ♪ Come with me ♪ ♪ Come with me ♪

Surprisingly, he also wrote some very fine chamber music, in particular, a very beautiful clarinet quintet. Well, as soon as you say clarinet quintet, you think of two composers, Mozart, the late 18th century and Brahms in the late 19th century. I think Brahms rather than Mozart, is really his model for the gentle and or tone of this piece. Now, Bernard Herman died of a heart attack just aged 65 in 1976. And the very last thing he was working on was the score for Martin Scorsese’s film “Taxi Driver” and the, was it Scorsese and the whole team, they were so devastated by Herman’s death and he’d finished the score, but the movie itself was not yet finished and only appeared after his death and was dedicated to the composer and Scorsese, recognising what’s a very important contribution Herman had made. And it’s a masterful, it’s a marvellous, marvellous score from first moment, very economical. It can, you’ll you’ll hear in the opening just this very tiny melodic cell really of two chords, two ominous chords, repeated and alternating with this wonderfully sleazy, bluesy, jazzy urban music. This partial to Max Steiner, wonderful, fantastic score, of course for King Kong. That was certainly an making score 'cause it preceded Korngold and Waxman. Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Korngold. Korngold, to my mind, Korngold is one of my favourite composers. I absolutely love his music, but I see Korngold as primarily a composer of the Opera House and the concert hall. Not such an original, an innovative film composer as either Waxman or Bernard Herman. Gets me full of goosebumps. Every time I hear that shower scene, especially the first few bars, funny, you know, I have a DVD of Psycho and over the years I’ve many times watched the opening scenes of it, but I always actually stop before I get to the show. I really can’t stand it.

Q&A and Comments:

Did he do, he didn’t do he did sound effects. Yes. He worked on the birds. He helped to create the spooky bird sound effects.

Rosebud was the toboggan on which Kane with sliding in th… That’s one interpretation. There’s a much ruder one, which I won’t go into now. And he also did great scores for Ray Harry Hausen. Yeah, I think we will, we’ll certainly, no, it, the, the book, the, the, the word is on the front of a, like a folder or a book that is thrown into the furnace. Yeah, I wasn’t saying that it, it was a book. It’s just that the, the word rosebud is on the book that is burnt at the end.

Yes, she was absolutely right. The, the, the, it isn’t a sled, not about where we could get… There endless discussions of what Rosebud means. And I think we don’t need to get into them really. There’s a much less innocent in interpretation. Aria very like, yes I suppose so. Brilliant scoring for Psycho. And yet it’s so simple, isn’t it? With just strings.

Q: Was there a reason I didn’t mention John Williams?

A: Maybe ignorance, maybe. I don’t actually particularly love his music. I think I’m more for the old movies. That is probably that really. He did a number of great scores between Cain and Psycho, including the Devil and Daniel Webster. They, the Earth was still Jason and the Argonauts, North by Northwest. Many, many other wonderful scores.

Thank you so much, Rita. I don’t think it was me, Kathleen, I don’t think, but I can definitely hear a similarity with . It must have been somebody else. I believe “Vertigo” is the wrong title for this movie. It should been called “Acrophobia, A Fear of Heights”.

That’s true, true lightheadedness or dizziness may occur, but the stimulus “Vertigo” is acrophobia. Thank you. I presume you’re a doctor.

The poster said that John Addison did the music to torn Kurt and That’s right. He was the replacement composer. Shastakovich. Yes. I possibly, you know, he’s, I think he’s really quite distinctive. He’s his own man, but he’s certainly eclectic. He’s listening to lots of other people and learning from them. Yes. Well, it has been performed a couple of times. It’s not entered the standard repertory.

Yes. Hitchcock, huge influence on Francois. My little group that I was with at lunch today, their great cinephiles. And they, they talk about Hitchcock in the most reverential terms.

Thank you, Ron. I actually don’t know who did that painting, who went with the Weathering Heights. I actually just took it off the cover of a book of, of a, of a publication of Weathering Heights.

Thank you, Rita. Another musical Burn at Home was conductor of Northern Dance Orchestra working at UK at the same time, at one time, causing some confusion. He was extremely versatile. Yes, yes he is. But there are, I, he certainly is very versatile. Even things I’ve played to you, of course are are very, very varied, but I think he’s got quite a distinctive musical character.

Thank you, Anita. What is, it’s the cover of something. It looks like a book which has rosebud on it. That’s burned. I don’t want to get into that. I can see the Rosebud thing could go on forever and ever. Legacy. Yes. Hitchcock’s legacy is now considered here as problematic. And it, and not just because the late films are not successful. They’re problematic for other reasons, particularly, you know, his extreme sexism, his abuse of his female stars, and so on and so on.

Thank you, Shirley. Yes, “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir”, that was one of his most successful. That’s seems to be everything. Thank you.

Sadly, I have to say goodbye for the time being as I’m not booked to do any more lectures for lockdown. So I’d like to, before I disappear into the sunset, so to speak, I’m going to hope that maybe eventually we’ll get back together. But I’d just like to thank you for being such a wonderful audience over the last three years. I’ve absolutely loved it. I particularly enjoyed these little back and forth in the chats and I’ve also greatly enjoyed all the, the emails that you sent me with queries and comments. And so if you like, please feel free to continue with those. So goodbye everybody.