Herrmann was an early and enthusiastic proponent of the music of
Charles Ives. He met Ives in the early 1930s, performed many of his works while conductor of the
CBS Symphony Orchestra, and conducted Ives'
Second Symphony with the
London Symphony Orchestra on his first visit to London in 1956. Herrmann later made a recording of the work in 1972 and this reunion with the LSO, after more than a decade, was significant to him for several reasons – he had long hoped to record his own interpretation of the symphony, feeling that
Leonard Bernstein's 1951 version was "overblown and inaccurate"; on a personal level, it also served to assuage Herrmann's long-held feeling that he had been snubbed by the orchestra after his first visit in 1956. The notoriously prickly composer had also been enraged by the recent appointment of the LSO's new chief conductor
André Previn, who Herrmann detested, and deprecatingly referred to as "that jazz boy". Herrmann was also an ardent champion of the romantic-era composer
Joachim Raff, whose music had fallen into near-oblivion by the 1960s. During the 1940s, Herrmann had played Raff's 3rd and 5th Symphonies in his CBS radio broadcasts. In May 1970, Herrmann conducted the world premiere recording of Raff's Fifth Symphony
Lenore for the Unicorn label, which he mainly financed himself. The recording did not attract much notice in its time, despite receiving excellent reviews, but is now considered a major turning-point in the rehabilitation of Raff as a composer. Herrmann's film music is well represented on disc. His friend, John Steven Lasher, has produced several albums featuring
Urtext recordings, including
Battle of Neretva, Citizen Kane, The Kentuckian, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Night Digger and
Sisters, under various labels owned by Fifth Continent Australia Pty Ltd. In 1996,
Sony Classical released
The Film Scores, a recording of Herrmann's music performed by the
Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of
Esa-Pekka Salonen. This disc received the 1998 Cannes Classical Music Award for Best 20th-Century Orchestral Recording. It was also nominated for the 1998
Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album, Classical.
Decca reissued on CD a series of
Phase 4 Stereo recordings with Herrmann conducting the
London Philharmonic Orchestra, mostly in excerpts from his various film scores, including one devoted to music from several of the Hitchcock films (including
Psycho,
Marnie and
Vertigo). In the liner notes of the Hitchcock Phase 4 album, Herrmann said that the suite from
The Trouble with Harry was a "portrait of Hitch". Another album was devoted to his fantasy film scores – a few of them being the films of the special effects animator Ray Harryhausen, including music from
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad and
The Three Worlds of Gulliver. His other Phase 4 Stereo LPs of the 1970s included
Music from the Great Film Classics (suites and excerpts from
Jane Eyre,
The Snows of Kilimanjaro,
Citizen Kane and
The Devil and Daniel Webster); and "The Fantasy World of Bernard Herrmann" (
Journey to the Center of the Earth,
The Day the Earth Stood Still, and
Fahrenheit 451.)
Charles Gerhardt conducted a 1974 RCA recording titled
The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann with the
National Philharmonic Orchestra. It featured suites from
Citizen Kane (with
Kiri Te Kanawa singing Salammbo's Aria) and
White Witch Doctor, along with music from
On Dangerous Ground,
Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, and the
Hangover Square piano concerto. During his last years in England, between 1966 and 1975, Herrmann made several LPs of other composers' music for assorted record labels. These included Phase 4 Stereo recordings of Gustav Holst's
The Planets and Charles Ives's 2nd Symphony, as well as an album titled "The Impressionists" (music by Satie, Debussy, Ravel, Fauré and Honegger) and another titled "The Four Faces of Jazz" (works by Weill, Gershwin, Stravinsky and Milhaud). As well as recording his own film music in Phase 4 Stereo, he made LPs of movie scores by others, such as
Great Shakespearean Films (music by Shostakovich for
Hamlet, Walton for
Richard III and Rózsa for
Julius Caesar), and
Great British Film Music (movie scores by Lambert, Bax, Benjamin, Walton, Vaughan Williams, and Bliss). For Unicorn Records, he recorded several of his own concert-hall works, including the cantata
Moby Dick, his opera
Wuthering Heights, his symphony, and the suites
Welles Raises Kane and
The Devil and Daniel Webster.
Pristine Audio released two CDs of Herrmann's radio broadcasts. One is devoted to a CBS program from 1945 that features music by Handel, Vaughan Williams and Elgar; the other features works by Charles Ives, Robert Russell Bennett and Herrmann.
Influence and legacy His work has left a profound influence on composers of film music that followed him, the most notable being
John Williams,
Elmer Bernstein,
Jerry Goldsmith,
Howard Shore,
Lalo Schifrin,
James Horner,
Carter Burwell and others.
Nino Rota quoted the power motif from
Kane in his score for
The Godfather Part II.
Danny Elfman counts Herrmann as his biggest influence, and has said hearing Herrmann's score to
The Day the Earth Stood Still when he was a child was the first time he realized the powerful contribution a composer makes to the movies.
Pastiche of Herrmann's music can be heard in Elfman's score for ''
Pee-Wee's Big Adventure,'' specifically in the cues "Stolen Bike" and "Clown Dream", which reference Herrmann's "The Murder" from
Psycho and "The Duel With the Skeleton" from
7th Voyage of Sinbad respectively. The prelude for Elfman's main
Batman theme references Herrmann's "Mountain Top / Sunrise" from
Journey to the Center of the Earth, and the
Joker character's "fate motif" heard throughout the score is inspired by Herrmann's
Vertigo. More integral homage can be heard in Elfman's later scores for
Mars Attacks! and
Hitchcock, the latter based on Hitchcock's creation of
Psycho, as well as the "Blue Strings" movement of Elfman's first concert work,
Serenada Schizophrana. He has influenced composers beyond film.
Stephen Sondheim had an "epiphany" seeing
Hangover Square, and describes his
Sweeney Todd score as an homage to Herrmann. Sir
George Martin, best known for producing and often adding orchestration to
the Beatles music, cites Herrmann as an influence. The
Psycho score inspired his staccato string arrangement of the Beatles's "
Eleanor Rigby". Martin later expanded on this as an extended suite for McCartney's 1984 film
Give My Regards to Broad Street, which features a very recognizable homage to Herrmann's score for
Psycho.
Elvis Costello paid homage to Herrmann's Hitchcock scores with "
Watching the Detectives". Avant-garde composer/saxophonist/producer
John Zorn, in the biographical film
A Bookshelf on Top of the Sky, cited Bernard Herrmann as one of his favorite composers and a major influence. Elmer Bernstein recorded Herrmann's score for
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, released in 1975 on the Varèse Sarabande label and later reissued on CD in the 1990s. Herrmann's career has been studied extensively by biographers and documentarians. In 1988, Bruce Crawford produced the
National Public Radio documentary
Bernard Herrmann: A Celebration of His Life and Music. In 1992, Joshua Waletzky made
Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann, which was nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. In 1991, Steven C. Smith wrote ''A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann''. The title is derived from one of Herrmann favorite's favorite
Stephen Spender poems.
David Thomson calls him the greatest film composer, writing: "Herrmann knew how lovely the dark should be, and he was at his best in rites of dismay, dark dreams, introspection, and the gloomy romance of loneliness. No one else would have dared or known to make the score for
Taxi Driver such a lament for impossible love... Yet the score for
Taxi Driver is universally cinematic: it speaks to sitting in the dark, full of dread and desire, watching." ==Accolades==