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  • Bernard Herrmann - Unconventional orchestrations

    Another thread was mentioning supposedly unconventional FX,   but the really unconventional genius with sound was Herrmann with his incredible orchestrations.  i am wondering if composers/enthusiasts can remember some of his wilder ones. 

    The ones I remember are -

    Jason and the Argonauts:  Brass, Woodwinds, Percussion only.  Simply dropping the strings created a brilliant "sheen" to the sound.

    Journey to the Center of the Earth:  Brass, WW, Perc, 9 harps, 5 organs and a Serpent.

    Alfred Hitchcock Hour: One of the scores he did  had a large bassoons-only ensemble.  He was constantly experimenting in his TV scores.

    Torn Curtain:   No strings, large Brass section including nine trombones, Percussion and 12 flutes only for the woodwinds. 

    Psycho (of course): strings only for - as he put it - a "black and white" sound.

    Twisted Nerve: small orchestra with whistler

    Sisters: analog synth with orchestra

    King of the Khyber Rifles: percussion only

    On Dangerous Ground:  Standard orchestra but with a recurring viola d'amor solo.  This score includes the "Death Hunt" cue which is one of the greatest single pieces of film music ever composed and uses a maniacal horn section playing insane "hunting" triplets throughout.


  • I seem to remember Beneath the 12 Mile Reef used loads of harps. I think it was 9 or 10.


  • Well, there is the obvious Theremin used in The Day The Earth Stood Still back in the early 50's but I always thought The Birds was one of Hermann's most innovative scores.  The film was a bit before my time but to this day I still can't figure out what instruments were employed for that score and I'm usually pretty good at 'Name That Instrument.'

    Actually, I think Jerry Goldsmith was quite the innovator when it came to unconventional scoring.  Of course, the trumpet with the delayeffect (echoplex) used in Patton immediately comes to mind.  He repeated this echoplex technique for the pizzicato strings in Alien which worked very well.  My favorite innovative Jerry Goldsmith score, however, was the use of the zamponas for Under Fire.  A beautiful score and rather minimalist for the most part. 


  • 'Under Fire' is one of my favourites also. I'm glad people on this forum like the Herrmannist William and others can quote on what are proper symphonically written scores, intellectual as well as effective music and elucidate them for the rest; maybe it will yield some fruit. I get so disheartened when so many people praise turgid, uninspired, uninformed, unlistenable 2-hour scores just because there was a clever tweak on a knob somewhere in the mix to make a flute sound like a cello; W O W ! ! . . .

    When I read the words 'Birds' and Goldsmith in the same post, it reminded me of Goldsmith's music for the film 'Swarm'. Listen to the title track and hear how skilfully he brings the angry bees into your ears and face. Another example of inspired unconventional scoring I found was Joe lo Duca's 'Evil Dead' soundtrack, employing a piano and a string quartet or trio. It is powerful stuff and a great lesson for people who think they need 1000 tracks to make an impact (even if 990 of them are AUXes). Quantity  - especially in cut'n paste infinite cloning scoring - is necessarily not quality. And talking about minimalistic scoring, my socks got knocked off when I saw 'Eyes Wide Shut', and I couldn't believe the composer thought of dressing those scenes with just single notes on a piano and it came out so effective (no intellectuality here but I believe it merits mentioning for its extremity); and then I found out that this wasn't a brilliant composer after all, but a brilliant director who licensed what was some obscure music, but that fit his film so well.... It would be a great lesson to score a Kubrick film, just to talk to him about scoring a scene and listen to his chosen temporary tracks.

    I know, too late...


  • You're getting it all wrong with The Birds. The Birds is really nothing to do with Bernard Herrmann, He was just given the job of 'sound consultant' on that film. Hitchcock lost out when he decided to follow fashion and NOT let Herrmann write the score that would have lifted The Birds greatly. Wasted opportunity. I saw The Birds when it was released in the cinema and was expecting lot more. The soundtrack to The Birds is crappy noise and certainly NOT in the same vein as say, Forbidden Planet - which I also saw at the cinema when it was released.


  • Well, the Birds had some analog electronic sounds that were pretty good.  I think Hitchcock was experimenting there - as he did throughout his career with many different elements - such a Rope with no cuts, this time a film with no music.  Somehow that did not bother me though perhaps as Paul said it could have been better.  But better than what? A classic world-famous film beloved by all audiences, historians and critics?  yeah, they could have done a little better than that!   What were they thinking?   But it is true that Hitchcock was concerned about the fashions of the day and at that time music was changing radically, what with Mancini, JD films, rock, etc.  And that was in fact what led to the disaster on Torn Curtain, which parted the greatest director from the greatest film composer. 

    Excellent observation on Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef -  that was an incredible, weird score. It also had several contrabassoons.   Not a very  good film but fantastic score.   Also, of course,  the  Day the Earth Stood Still   - that was another very unusual one.   It had brass ensemble, harps, electronic organ, theremin, and electric violin.   This was before any electronic instruments were used normally.  Oddly enough, the excellent score for The Thing by Dimitri Tiomkin came out at almost the same time and did some similar things but without any copying one way or the other. 


  •  Here are some specifics on a few of those scores that I mentioned -

    Journey to the Center of the Earth :  woodwinds, brass, large percussion ensemble, 9 harps and 5 organs including one pipe organ and 4 electronic.  

    Day the Earth Stood Still:  piano, harps, brass,  timpani, two theremins, electric violin, electric bass and electric guitar. 

    Fahrenheit 451:  strings, harps, percussion

    BTW I came across this quote from Herrmann on  one of his London Phase 4 recordings from the 70s -

    "I feel that music on the screen can seek out and intensify the inner thoughts of the characters.  It can invest a scene with terror, grandeur, gaiety, or misery.  It can propel narrative switftly forward, or slow it down.  It often lifts mere dialogue into the realm of poetry.  Finally, it is the communicating link between the screen and the audience, reaching out and enveloping all into one single experience."


  •  One other thing on this truly unconventional approach of Herrmann -   on the score of Torn Curtain he actually got fired from the film because of it.  Compare that to the faux unconventionality of today.  "Get fired?  No way!  I mean, I like unconventional but don't let's be silly..." 

    Well, on this film Hitchcock had been told by the executives to have a pop, exploitable, Mancini-influenced score.  And he told Herrmann about this.  So one day Hitchcock walked onto the scoring stage, and saw the orchestra Herrmann had assembled :  16 horns, 12 flutes doubling on piccolo, alto and bass flute, nine trombones, two tubas, two sets timpani,  eight cellos, eight basses.  Herrmann was fired immediately and never spoke to Hitchcock again.  This score has been recorded several times and is fantastically great, though it was never used and actually not completed. 


  • I've already explained about Torn Curtain many times.   He was fired by Hitchcock during the recording of the Torn Curtain score because Hitchcock was a sniveling wretch of a human being with no guts. Had he had any guts, he would have told the imbeciles from the studio to fuck off and mind their own business. The issue with Torn Curtain is not anything to do with the score. It's to do with the fact that the FILM does not understand what it it's meant to achieve. Is it a comedy? No. Is it a thriller? No. Is it a comedy thriller? No. Well then WTF is it?

    Not even Hitchcock knew that and neither did anyone else. Ergo, the film is a flimsy example of the genre that Hitchcock worked in and none of it was helped by the fact the the two main actors, Julie Andrews (yes she was paid MORE than Paul Newman) and Paul Newman and were both hopelessly miscast.  They took up almost all of the budget of the film btw.

    Audiences can't be expected to watch a fucking so-called thriller/comedy/bollocks when  the female lead could break into the Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious song at any given moment and take it seriously. And that, among other things, points to the Herrmann score. If you watch clips of the Herrmann score to Torn Curtain you immediately see that the film is way too lightweight to sustain a score like that based on my previous colourful comments. Herrmann didn't DO lightweight!!!!!!! The film had to collapse under that onslaught. So he was fired.

    So Hollywood producers suddenly think they've done their bollocks and get in a composer they think is more user friendly.  The score needs a song. The score needs to be COMMERCIAL because the film needs to be commercial. Hitchcock cannot understand, because his ego won't let him. That the failure of the film in the rushes stage have nothing to do with Herrmann. Hitchcock was a great director, but he was a fucking coward too. And it's also a fact that Torn Curtain and the subsequent fiasco with Herrmann also marked the demise of his career.  People when talking about films, always seem to forget about the time they were made in. Very important. At the same time I was watching Torn Curtain at the cinema (no videos or DVD's in those days) a film like Goldfinger was released and it's natural that studios in those days compared films on an impact for impact basis. Very much a hangover from the recently defunct studio system of course and the competitiveness of all of that. 

    Bernard Herrmann, on the other hand, hated Hollywood and thus moved to England for 6 months out of every year a little later on. While some of the films he scored were not memorable, you can usually find something in a Herrmann score. For instance, Fahrenheit blah blah blah is a crap film with  a great score. No one remembers the score because the film is crap. That's always the problem.  If you're going to make a crap film, for God sake at least get a good cinematographer in. Then you can at least watch well filmed crap.

    But in the end; literarily the end, Herrmann came good with a seminal score for Taxi Driver. I'd like to hear any of the current crop of wankers in Hollywood come up with a score like that. What a lot of people forget, particularly with something like Psycho and the now extremely famous scoring for that film is, Herrmann, as indeed most film scorers, is sitting looking at something with NO SOUND to start from. Can anyone come up with something as good as that today.

    NO!!!!!

    That's what makes Herrmann, although not necessarily loved by all, the greatest film scorer in his particular genre of all time.

    The difference between someone like Herrmann and todays scorer is basically computers. Most stuff today sounds like computer driven music and that is great if you're say, a Hans Zimmer fan, no musical knowledge, no education of any kind, can't play a musical instrument, can't get a girlfriend, like video games and are probably 12 and a poof.

    Good evening.


  • Excellent points there old boy, yes, quite.  Deuced if I don't agree with all that rot.  Jolly good telling off those wankers into the bargain.   Pass the port would you old man?  Care for a cigar? 

    -----------------

    You are right Hitchcock was a coward.  Of course he was - that is why he was able to film fear so well.  Also Torn Curtain was truly a poor film, and made worse by Paul Newman in his arrogant pretty-boy mode before he became a good actor later on (like in The Verdict in which he was great).   But early in his career he just walked through parts looking handsome and pouty.   Also Juli Andrews? Huh?  That is almost as bad a casting as Doris Day in  Man Who Knew Too Much which was a better film though not very good either.   I like the old 30s version much more.    The only good scene in Torn Curtain is the killing of Gromek.  


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    @PaulR said:

    The difference between someone like Herrmann and todays scorer is basically computers. Most stuff today sounds like computer driven music and that is great if you're say, a Hans Zimmer fan, no musical knowledge, no education of any kind, can't play a musical instrument, can't get a girlfriend, like video games and are probably 12 and a poof.

    To paraphrase Isaac Goldberg I'll substitute the word 'song' for 'film music':

    "The film music of today is machine-made, machine-played, machine-heard"...

    And that was said 80 years ago.. This man was thankfully spared the comatose soundtracks of the 21st century, and the machines that make, play, and extoll them. I'd just like to say thanks for the very interesting lore gentlemen, keep it coming...

    P.S.: I'd like to add that Herrmann was substituted by John Addison for 'Torn Curtain' after they realized what kind of movie they wanted to make - regardless of the actual results. Addison, although no Herrmann, was an excellent composer for whimsical, dark comedy, and slapstick. If I remember he did some wonderful scores for 'Start the Revolution Without Me' (Gene Wilder at his best if you like that sort of thing), 'Sleuth' (the Olivier one), 'Murder by Death' (fun cult film), etc.


  • Yes,  John Addison was good but should not have had to compete with Herrmann.  I did see Start the Revolution Without Me.  "Crazy?  Crazy!!??  You think I'm crazy?  Do you want to see crazy?  I'll show you crazy..."   

    Sleuth was good because of those actors.  Sir Larry and Michael Caine going at it.  Who cares what they go at? 


  • I'm a big fan. Perhaps I need some more seroquel but I thought the score to Inception was quite Herrmann influenced. Just the orchestration and the use of timbres was totally Herrmann's style. Of course I saw the movie once but I did take some notes and i'm pretty confident despite the champagne haze we were all suffering from.

  • Yeah - all scores are influenced. Either by Herrmann or Holst or Elgar or VW or Copland or rock bands. That is a bad thing generally. Why? Because filmscore music by it's nature is always influenced due to external pressures such as temp tracks and whims. Goldsmith borrowed from Elmer Bernstein and visa versa and you can hear it sometimes. Wagner is also a good one to borrow from.

    You can't take a piss on a music forum without someone trying to sound like John Williams. But what's even more ridiculous than that is they try and sound like John Williams did 35 YEARS AGO! 

    Not many of them try and sound like Herrmann. Why? Because they can't. It's too minimalist and way too difficult to get that kind of composition to stick in your head with the extremes in orchestration.. Herrmann was minimalist. He would take a line and repeat it over and over again to great effect. For example - Cape Fear. People will argue but you listen to attempts in film of a Herrmann style. It never sounds convincing. And actually, neither does a Williams copy either. The issue is about originality. Listen to Alan Silvestri try Herrmann in What Lies Beneath. A fun film that tries, again, to do Hitchcock.

    And yet when Silvestri did his own thing in Predator, it sounded extremely good and worked brilliantly with a film of that style. Very percussive which suits someone like Silvestri. Plus a lot of these writers work with orchestrators. Herrmann didn't. How can you get original orchestrations like Herrmann when someone else is doing the orchestrations. The whole thing, to be an original sound should probably be orchestrated by the original writer. No one is interested in crap like time constraints ect. That's all bollocks and excuses.

    The difference probably today is Herrmann, Williams, Bernstein, Goldsmith etc were influenced mainly by classical composers and jazz writers. Today, filmscore writers are influenced by filmscore writers. That's bad news if you're into original. Hans Zimmer for example has very successfully used his rock and pop background to wow uneducated children into believing that the films they watch actually have any artistic value.

    Back to the topic though and I would say that the only interesting thing about Torn Curtain and the issues surrounding it, was that it marked the demise of Hitchcock and a spell in the doldrums for Herrmann, who was subsequently rediscovered by a new wave of directors at the time.


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    @PaulR said:

    The difference probably today is Herrmann, Williams, Bernstein, Goldsmith etc were influenced mainly by classical composers and jazz writers. Today, filmscore writers are influenced by filmscore writers.

     

    That is the truest, most obvious, and saddest case of affairs... The result of expected degeneration concomitant with the perpetual cloning of the latest generation clone.

    The main reasons that soundtracks sound the way they do today is because they are composed by glorified DJs, and music graduates who stand as the hallmarks of the state of affairs (and standards) in conservatories today, even places like Juilliard... It's the reason why Mr. T. Morris got so upset with Paul in the other thread. He - justifiedly - thinks that since he works professional contracts, since he got an Emmy and who knows how many congratulatory and adulatory(!) e-mails by milliards of lesser DJs who wish they were him, that he is hot stuff compositionally... I would really like it if orchestrators went on strike like the writers did, and then these non entities would have to do everything themselves. I would really love to see those emperors draped in the fabric of their own talent exclusively...

     

    I haven't seen 'Inception' yet, but from all the other soundtracks I know, to compare You-Know-Who with Herrmann is like comparing Herrmann with Beethoven. That 'Inception' music must really be a new chapter for that composer to make such comparisons viable.

     

    And people would you wake up already??!! Music is not just about timbres; I keep hearing all about "interesting timbres" in soundtracks, let me tell you three things: a) that's probably because "interesting timbres" is all that's left to talk about (says a lot about the composers' works), b) timbre is only one, and secondary at that, aspect of music (don't throw spectral crap at me please). Film scorers today have no clue what melody, harmony, counterpoint, structure, drama, and orchestration are. Oh, but they "know" timbre... They can tweak virtual knobs... Isn't Mozart swirling inside his communal grave because he was born too early for virtual knobs... Think of what he would have accomplished in the auspicious realm of timbre... c) Artistic timbre manipulation has been the heart and soul of electronic (especially academic electronic) music for the last few decades. It is there that you will experience real awe of what is possible in timbre by really  talented people; not in pathetic, amateur twaddlers that merely scrape the dusty surface of soil from which others have mined gems long ago.

     

    The most powerful computer, and the most compensatory A.I. compositionally/orchestrationally suggestive software available today, cannot hide these "professionals'" ignorance, giftlessness, and ineptitude. Go home guys, wait a few years, I'm sure the technological minds that contributed so much to humanity by making the atom bomb, tomatoes with frog D.N.A. in them, and Hollywoodwinds, will one day surprise you by perfecting what will be called Virtual Composer. You, the mega-talents, the creators, will only be required to press a few buttons to compose some other programmers' piece, but one to which you'll hold the copyright, and that's what counts right? You'll get paid, and ignorami around the globe will be paying commentorial pilgrimage to your YouTube channell-temples of crass.


  • the worst trend and I suppose it is more to do with younger people or I suppose my generation not understanding film music and what it really is but when someone says they make film score music but they are just making music that sounds like Zimmer. ARgg. Until music is locked to picture, it isn't a score. Film music is not a genre. And then those that critic the score based on the cd sort of ignoring the whole point. No point in trying to argue. I read a few critics regarding the Harry Potter score and although I had no seen the movie, the guy did no reference the movie once. He just commented on the CD audio. Since i'm gripping, my other pet peeve is the new generation and I suppose i'm part of it but how they have completely phased out wood winds going for that block chord tutti brass and string sound that is just too cliche. You know who is a rather better composer who does the Zimmer ish style movies is John Powell. He can be very diverse and he tries to avoid cliches when he can. And then there is Brian Tyler mostly for that silly cut he used to have and Rabin. Well I could name a bunch that really make the movie for me a no go. ANyways, enough bitching!! HAve a nice weekend!

  • "In the last resort film music should be judged solely as music - that is to say, by the ear alone, and the question of its value depends on whether it can stand up to this test".  Arthur Bliss

    And he was exposed to great soundtracks. Can you imagine his comments today?..

    I also spoke deploringly about the latest Potter, but didn't make references to the film for I thought most people would go see it (you didn't make specific references to 'Inception' for the same reasons I take it), and also because I feel by now people here would know exactly the narrative, characters and scenes involved after seven instalments. However, I did see the film and commented from a complete viewpoint. And admittedly it isn't just Zimmer. If all these people involved in scoring movies today could write better, they would. They just can't. I just hope it is a phase - like House music, that will become a distant memory sooner than later. My problem is that I actually believe things will get a lot worse.


  • I find that most scores just lack thought. Even if he/she isn't the most gifted composer, understanding the movie and why music should be there and what it is doing not so much a priority. I mean ya, they think about it in superficial terms like , oh that character is bad, play bad character music. But just thinking about the movie first hand really dissecting all the nuances and then tailoring the music so that the music fits like a glove. I don't think you have to take the traditional approach of having a theme for everything , in fact I would say that obvious motives unless extremely well done rather distracting and sort of insulting and obvious. That is what I think would be nice. I often feel like you could swap soundtracks for many films and most people would not notice as it isn't really essential or part of the movie. You have a movie and this sentimental music that is played on top of it. An analogy would be the great lieders and how they were joined to poems for a piece that cannot be seperated as without one or the other, you have nothing,

  • It's exactly because of your analogy with lieder that I don't think you could swap the soundtracks for many films (except for recent films which all have more or less the same buzz for soundtrack). Sure, most people wouldn't notice, but on a deeper level of understanding a lot would be lost. It is the same with the lieder. I don't care what is sung in Diechterliebe or Schwanengesang for I don't speak German. I love the songs but you could switch the poems around and if they fit the music I couldn't care less. However, I don't think I share the same understanding of them with German-speaking people (even though I have read the translations - I enjoyed the songs even before I'd done that anyway). So, most people would not notice if the soundtracks of 'Born Free' and 'Lawrence of Arabia' for example were swapped and would enjoy the films as before. I on the other hand...


  • I don't think I conveyed my argument properly. What I am saying is that sound tracks have become less tied to the movie similar in a way I suppose you could compare a pop song with a lieder. The chords work with the pop song but there isn't much tying the words and the chords. This is what I mean when I say you could swap soundtracks and do a particular style rather convincingly because most cues are cliches that are done in every movie, I"m not saying all film scores but many of them feel quite under thought. I would say that being out of school for 2 years, I have so much to learn but when I watch a movie and lets say the drama is getting more and more subdued where the film is using camera angles giving the impression of a feeling of descent and a sense of closure, you have the composer ending the cue with a blaring half cadence in the horns. The thing I can think is that the composer just liked the sound of it and didn't put much thought other than that. I don't want to blame the composers outright as I don't know the details and I often feel that perhaps it is a time issue and quality suffers not to mention that hollywood styled movies tend to not care so much about the concept of unity and coherence which I suppose is a reflection of the American mainstream in general. I really do miss seeing a good film and a good soundtrack.