Bernard Herrmann

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Bernard Herrmann (June 29, 1911 – December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his pioneering film scores that revolutionized suspense and psychological cinema, including iconic works for directors Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, and Martin Scorsese.

Born in New York City to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents Abraham Herrmann and Ida Gorenstein, Herrmann displayed musical talent from a young age, beginning violin studies at five and winning a composition prize at 13 while attending De Witt Clinton High School. He briefly studied at New York University under Philip James and Percy Grainger before transferring to the Juilliard School, where he worked with Bernard Wagenaar and Albert Stoessel, though he left in 1932 without graduating. By age 20, he had founded the New Chamber Orchestra of New York, marking his early conducting ambitions.

Herrmann's professional career began in radio, joining CBS in 1934 as a staff conductor and composer, where he rose to chief conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra and created innovative scores for programs like the Columbia Workshop and Orson Welles' infamous 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds. His transition to film scoring started in 1941 with Welles' Citizen Kane, for which he composed a groundbreaking score blending realism and modernism, establishing him as a key figure in Hollywood's Golden Age. Over the next three decades, he scored nearly 50 films, earning acclaim for his distinctive orchestration—often emphasizing low strings, brass, and unconventional instruments like the theremin in The Day the Earth Stood Still —and his ability to heighten emotional tension without overpowering narrative.

Among his most celebrated collaborations was with Alfred Hitchcock, spanning seven films from 1955's The Trouble with Harry to 1964's Marnie, with Psycho (1960) standing out for its shrieking string prelude that has become synonymous with horror cinema. Herrmann also composed non-film works, including the cantata Moby-Dick (1940), the opera Wuthering Heights (1950, premiered posthumously in 1985), and late orchestral pieces like Taxi Driver: A Night-Piece for Orchestra (1975), his final score completed just before his death. His innovations influenced generations of composers, though his career was marked by conflicts, including a fallout with Hitchcock over Torn Curtain (1966), leading to a temporary retirement.

Herrmann received the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941), along with honors like the Henry Hadley Citation and George Foster Peabody Citation for his radio contributions. Married three times—with his first union to writer Lucille Fletcher producing two children—he died suddenly of a heart attack in North Hollywood at age 64, shortly after finishing Taxi Driver for Scorsese, cementing his legacy as one of the 20th century's most influential film composers.

In brief

Bernard Herrmann (born Maximillian Herman; June 29, 1911 – December 24, 1975) was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in film scoring. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers of all time. Alex Ross writes that "Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930s and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary." As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers.

As a young man, Herrmann was the chief conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra, which led him to become the composer for Orson Welles's radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air. This led him to write his first film score, for Welles's directorial debut Citizen Kane (1941). That year, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Devil and Daniel Webster.