If you have ever jumped out of your seat during a Hitchcock film, there is a good chance Bernard Herrmann was the one holding the knife. Not literally of course, but with his music.

Herrmann was not just another film composer in Hollywood, he was the guy who made violins scream in Psycho, who gave Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane its mysterious thrum, and who later helped Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver feel like a fever dream of neon and loneliness. He was prickly, stubborn, endlessly inventive, and perhaps one of the most influential musical storytellers to ever walk into a studio.

Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann recording The War of the Worlds in 1938

The Outsider Who Never Tried to Fit In

Herrmann did not come out of the Hollywood system. Born in New York in 1911, he grew up with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue. He trained as a conductor and composer, rubbing shoulders with modernists like Charles Ives and Aaron Copland, but his real home was radio. In the 1930s he joined CBS, writing incidental music for broadcasts and eventually running the CBS Symphony Orchestra. That job gave him free rein to experiment, and experiment he did, often with unusual orchestrations and dramatic textures.

This radio background is important because it shaped the way he thought about music and storytelling. Unlike many of his peers who leaned heavily on European traditions, Herrmann treated music like a tool to underline emotion in real time. He was direct, economical, and sometimes downright brutal.

Citizen Kane and a New Kind of Film Score

Herrmann’s big break came in 1941 when Orson Welles asked him to score Citizen Kane. Imagine being a young composer and your very first film project ends up being Citizen Kane. No pressure. Herrmann delivered something fresh: brooding motifs, unusual instrumentation, and a willingness to break away from lush romanticism. His score gave the film weight without drowning it in sentimentality. The opera pastiche sequence alone showed how versatile he could be, writing convincing parody alongside deadly serious cues.

That score immediately set him apart. Hollywood was still in love with Max Steiner’s grand style, but Herrmann was not interested in imitating Wagner. He wanted to find new colours, and in doing so he cracked open the door for film music to become its own art form.

Hitch and Herrmann

If Herrmann is cursed to be remembered for one thing, it is his collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock. The two were perfect for each other, at least for a while. Hitchcock liked precision and control, Herrmann liked to get under the skin of a scene. Together they gave the world some of the most unforgettable marriages of sound and image in cinema.

Think about Vertigo. Herrmann’s score is hypnotic, spiraling, endlessly circling around the same emotional obsession as James Stewart’s character. It is not background music, it is the film’s bloodstream. Then there is North by Northwest, which opens with that propulsive, rhythmic overture. You feel like you are already running for your life before Cary Grant even gets mistaken for a spy.

And of course, Psycho. Herrmann pushed Hitchcock to shoot the shower scene without music, then turned around and delivered those shrieking violins anyway. Hitchcock admitted later that the scene would not have worked without them. It is funny how the cheapest film in their partnership ended up with the most expensive afterlife.

The partnership did not end happily. On Torn Curtain in 1966, Hitchcock wanted something more commercial, something that would sell records in the age of pop soundtracks. Herrmann delivered a stark, brassy, almost violent score. Hitchcock rejected it, and that was that. Two egos collided, and cinema lost one of its great pairings.

A Stubborn Innovator

Herrmann was not an easy man to work with. Stories abound of him berating studio executives, fighting with producers, and storming out of sessions. Yet beneath the gruff exterior was a composer who deeply believed in the emotional honesty of music. He hated anything that felt like compromise. If a director wanted syrupy strings where Herrmann felt cold brass was needed, he was not afraid to say no.

That stubborn streak meant he sometimes lost jobs, but it also meant his best work remained uncompromised. He was never content to just wallpaper a movie. He wanted his music to matter.

Later Years and Taxi Driver

After leaving Hollywood in frustration, Herrmann found work in Britain. He wrote the eerie score for François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451, explored Gothic moods in The Day the Earth Stood Still, and even dabbled in television, scoring episodes of The Twilight Zone. By the mid 1970s his career seemed to be winding down, until Martin Scorsese came knocking.

Taxi Driver turned out to be Herrmann’s final project. The score is a strange, intoxicating mix of smoky jazz and grinding dissonance. It captures Travis Bickle’s warped view of New York with unsettling precision. Herrmann died the night after recording the final cues in 1975, making the film a haunting swan song. Scorsese later said he was devastated, as he had hoped to collaborate more.

Why Herrmann Still Matters

What makes Herrmann endure is not just his technical skill, but his philosophy. He believed film music should not be a second-rate imitation of concert music. It should be its own beast, tailored to the medium, raw when necessary, delicate when called for. Listen to any of his scores and you will hear the courage of a composer who never phoned it in.

Modern film composers from John Williams to Danny Elfman to Hans Zimmer owe him a debt. Williams has admitted Herrmann was a major influence, especially in the way he used leitmotifs and orchestral color. Elfman, with his love of eerie textures, feels like a direct descendant. And you can bet every horror score that uses strings to make you squirm has Psycho lurking in its DNA.

Herrmann might not have been the easiest man to share a room with, but the music he left behind still vibrates through cinema. If you want to understand how powerful a score can be, you start with Herrmann.

Essential Works Playlist

A quick primer for diving into Herrmann’s world:

  • Citizen Kane (1941) – A revolutionary debut full of daring textures.
  • Vertigo (1958) – Romantic and obsessive, a swirling musical labyrinth.
  • North by Northwest (1959) – Propulsive, adventurous, pure Hitchcockian thrill.
  • Psycho (1960) – The most famous string shriek in cinema.
  • Fahrenheit 451 (1966) – Moody, melancholic, and experimental.
  • Taxi Driver (1976) – Herrmann’s haunting final statement, equal parts jazz and nightmare.

Expand your composer knowlage: Read last months Composer Spotlight: Max Richter