How did the chilling music from the movie "Psycho" change cinema forever?

By: Thomas Hobbs/BBC
Translation: Telegrafi.com

The screaming violas almost emerge from a slaughterhouse. The sharp bass notes that slow down and imitate the uncertain heartbeat of a victim. If composer Bernard Herrmann's score were removed from the film Psycho [Psycho] - which turns 65 this month - by Alfred Hitchcock, it's fair to say that this 1960 horror film wouldn't have the same jarring effect on the viewer's nerves.

Particularly essential is the haunting music heard when the seductive blonde Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), shortly after checking into the Bates Motel, is attacked through a shower curtain by a shadowy killer who is later revealed to be the motel's owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), dressed as his dead mother. "That music is everything," says Rachel Zeffira, the film's composer and member of the art-folk duo Cat's Eyes. "It's the birds, it's the bees, and it's the voices in the back of your head."

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The project seemed doomed from the start, with the leaders Paramount(who had produced Hitchcock's previous five films) were not interested, would not allow him to shoot on their studios, and distributed the film without producing it themselves. But despite the small budget, Hitchcock proved otherwise - and this is partly thanks to Herrmann and his ability to elevate scenes to a whole new level through music.

"Psycho "It certainly wasn't a bad film before it had music, but it lacked tension," explains Steve C Smith, author of the new book Hitchcock and Herman: The Friendship and the Soundtracks That Changed Cinema [Hitchcock and Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores that Changed Cinema]. Herrmann electrified the film by writing music for a 50-piece orchestra, with only strings, which he described - in an interview with Sight and Sound - like a "return to ice water."

In the case of the most famous scene, this resulted in a high-pitched, psychologically disturbing chorus of screams that terrified viewers who no longer saw the shower as a safe place. “Before the shower scene, most of the musical phrases have a depressing quality and aren’t really loud,” says Smith. “But then, suddenly, in that scene, the silence is lifted from the arches and they scream in an animalistic way. It creates a clever connection to Norman Bates, the bird taxidermist.”

Herrmann forced the initially reluctant Hitchcock to watch the shower sequence with and without music. “Oh, yes, we should use it!” Hitchcock agreed. “But I thought you didn’t want my music here?” Herrmann replied sarcastically, before the director laughed: “Boy, that’s an indecent proposition.”

This is an anecdote that reflects their passionate partnership. Their creative collaboration consistently produced scores that make the viewer feel as if they are caught inside a character's murky inner dialogue - witnessing the most romantic dreams and the darkest nightmares (see the film Vertigo). Zeffira describes the music that plays whenever Norman Bates is on stage as “desperate and anxious,” which, she says, “makes you feel sorry for a murderer.” She adds that Herrmann always read the novel the film was based on before writing the music to better understand the emotional core — and so every note he composed had a meaning.

An avid reader as a child, Herrmann (or Benny, as his friends called him) spent much of his free time passionately debating whether literature or music was the higher form of art. In the end, music won out, and Herrmann was winning classical music competitions by the age of 13. He studied at New York University, with legendary composer Percy Grainger, and one of his first professional roles as a musician was on CBS radio.

There he worked with Orson Welles and gained his trust in the radio adaptation of The war of the worlds [War of the Worlds] in 1938 - a performance so realistic that some listeners thought it was a real alien invasion. He then became the natural choice to compose the music for Welles' masterpiece, Citizen Kane [Citizen Kane, 1941]. Working on hundreds of radio dramas, Herrmann learned to create compositions that evoked images and understood the power of long pauses - he used silence as another instrument to build tension.

Professionally, Herrmann was known for his fierce temperament and, as his daughter Dorothy said of him, The New York Times, he “couldn’t stand fools.” However, Steve Smith points out that Herrmann was not as short-tempered as his reputation suggests, and he often tried to help younger composers find work. “He was misunderstood,” says Smith. “Given his reputation for being unstable, people would be surprised at how gentle Bernard could be, especially with animals. He was distrustful of arrogant people, but gave unconditional love to his cats.”

Brandon Brown, a South Carolina filmmaker working on a documentary about Herrmann's life, believes the impact of the horrors of the times in which Herrmann grew up is often overlooked. Although he was born in New York in 1911, his family were Russian Jews who had fled Eastern Europe for a better life. They likely left behind many friends in Ukraine, who were later either expelled or massacred by the occupying Nazi armies.

“I think in his radio and film work, especially during World War II, you can clearly feel the emotional consequences of what was happening,” says Brown, citing the music Herrmann wrote for the supernatural drama. The Ghost and Mrs. Mew [The Ghost and Mrs. Muir] in 1947. In the part Spring sea [The Spring Sea], a light flute harmony represents the invigorating song of the morning birds. However, the bright sounds are intertwined with a deep sadness, through pensive bows that more closely resemble the cries of a mother.

"Herrmann considered it The Ghost and Mrs. Muir as his best work,” says Brown. “And it’s easy to see why. It’s a work that’s both beautiful and dark. It captures the feel of the world of the 40s—a time when even a sunny day seemed haunted by ghosts. That dark atmosphere would remain with him into his later years. Psycho. "

By 1960, Herrmann was a giant in the film industry; he and Hitchcock had already collaborated on five major films (The Trouble with Harry, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo and North by Northwest), building a perfect creative chemistry. However, Smith believes that Psycho was the project where Herrmann reinvigorated a tired director. “Hitchcock was afraid he had made a mistake by shooting such violent material—something many people advised him not to do,” explains Smith. “But Herrmann helped Hitchcock fall in love with the project again. Herrmann later said that he wrote the score for the orchestra with only strings, to create a ‘black and white sound’—to match the black and white look of the film.”

Besides helping him Psycho Although it became a huge success for Hitchcock (earning $32 million on a budget of just $800), Herrmann saw his music leave a deep and unexpected mark on popular culture. Producer George Martin based the sensitive string orchestration on the song. Eleanor Rigby of the Beatles (1966), on the music of Psychos"George wanted to bring a sense of drama to that orchestration," Paul McCartney once explained to the BBC.

The film's central theme was later used by dozens of other artists. One of the most energetic examples is rapper Busta Rhymes' song, Gimme Some More (1998). According to contemporary hip-hop producer and composer Michael Vincent Waller, the score of Psychos is very popular with rap artists. “Herrmann knew how to create nihilistic little phrases and became a master of repetition. In many ways, the way he conducted film music resembled the way rap producers cut and paste beats.”

Waller emphasizes that Psycho changed not only the horror genre, but the entire way of storytelling in cinematography. “The music of Psychos is a reference whenever tension is required - and it's clear that John Williams was inspired by this film for the eerie bass notes in jaws [Jaws]. Whenever you hear scary violins in a horror movie, or feel like the music has become a character in its own right, it leads you to Psychos. "

The creative relationship between Hitchcock and Herrmann ended with the film The torn curtain [Torn Curtain, 1966]. Hitchcock was furious when Herrmann flatly refused to reduce the score to a simpler pop version, insisting on a large orchestra with 12 flutes, 16 horns, nine trombones, two tubas, eight cellos, eight double basses, and two timpani groups. Herrmann was fired, but this did not stop his career. He continued to compose until his death from a heart attack in 1975, remaining an innovative force in film music.

In particular, his recent collaboration with the young Martin Scorsese on the film Taxi driver [Taxi Driver, 1976] definitively sealed his musical legacy. He worked closely with saxophonist Ronnie Lang to create jazz sounds so smoky and vibrant that you could imagine smog rising from Manhattan's sewers.

Scorsese's film also contains a symbolic moment of return to Psycho: at the end of Taxi drivers, Herrmann quotes the three-note theme of Psychos, Crazy house [The Madhouse]. “He told his wife, Norma, that he did this to tell the audience that Travis Bickle was going to commit violence again,” Smith explains.

Among all of Herrmann's extraordinary works, the score of Psychos and the piercing interpretations of the circles remain the highlights. It is one of the only scores that Herrmann re-recorded himself - a mark of this pride - and remains a perfect example of how music can elevate a film to another level. As Herrmann himself said with a biting tongue in one of his recent interviews: “A composer writes music for a film and gives it life. Like a man who goes to the doctor and says: 'I am dying,' and the doctor cures him.” /Telegraph/