easy to cut - modular form in the film scores of bernard herrmann

Journal of Film Music 5.1-2 (2012) 127-151 ISSN (print) 1087-7142doi:10.1558/jfm.v5i1-2.127 ISSN (online) 1758-860X

© Copyright the International Film Music Society, published by Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield, S3 8AF.

S ince most film music is written after the film has been edited, the music has to be tailored to fit the structure and duration of the scene

it accompanies. This process necessitates the use of a highly flexible musical fabric. One way to achieve such flexibility is to use short, self-contained musical modules that can be expanded through repetition or sequential transposition to accommodate whatever duration is required. “The result,” according to composer Leonard Rosenman, “is the overall picture of Hollywood music as a series of truncated little phrases.”1

The use of such “truncated little phrases” was already an integral feature of film scoring by the early sound era. Leonid Sabaneev notes in his 1935 manual Music for Films that “musical phrases should be short, because a long phrase must be completed without fail, and cannot be abbreviated.” He suggests the use

1 Irwin Bazelon, Knowing the Score: Notes on Film Music (New York: Arco Publishing, 1975), 186.

of sequences, since “their links may be repeated ad libitum, or conversely, may be cut short.” Sabaneev uses the term “extensile music” to describe musical structures built from such easily expandable or contractible units, and notes that in their skillful use “consists almost the whole art of composition for the cinema.”2

No composer proved more adept at this art than Bernard Herrmann, who relied on short modules that could be seamlessly adjusted to the flow of the filmic narrative. The modular form of his music made it possible to modify a cue even after it had been recorded. 3 As music editor Len Engel recalls,

2 Leonid Sabaneev, Music for Films (London: Sir Isaac Pitman &Sons, Ltd., 1935), 43-44.3 In accordance with Robert Morgan’s definition, I use the term “modular form” to denote a musical structure comprised of “fixed musical units repeated both at pitch and in transposition, with or without superficial alterations, and in different juxtapositions and combinations. The result…produces an unusual effect that is significantly collage-like in character and thus markedly different from traditional practice.” Robert Morgan, “Chopin’s Modular Forms,” in Variations on the Canon: Essays on Music from Bach to Boulez in Honor of Charles Rosen on his Eightieth Birthday, ed. Robert Curry, David

Easy to Cut: Modular Form in the Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann

TOM SCHNELLER702 N. Tioga Street, Ithaca, N.Y. [email protected]

Abstract: One of the defining characteristics of Bernard Herrmann’s film music is its modular construction: his cues are typically assembled from short blocks of musical material rather than extended melodic lines. While this feature of his style has been much discussed in general terms, there have been few attempts to identify specifically how these blocks are constructed and how they are chained together to yield coherent musical statements. Using examples from Psycho, Marnie, and other Herrmann scores, I will demonstrate that the phrase structure and melodic trajectory of much of Herrmann’s music is based on a small set of frequently recurring prototypes. This structural consistency contributes to making the “Herrmann sound” instantly recognizable.

Keywords: Herrmann; Sabaneev; modular form; extensile music; analysis; suspensions; Psycho

ARTICLE

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Herrmann was popular with editors because his music was “easy to cut.”4 In an oft-quoted remark that echoes Sabaneev’s distrust of “long phrases,” Herrmann observed: “[T]he reason I don’t like this tune business is that a tune has to have eight or sixteen bars, which limits you as a composer. Once you start, you’ve got to finish—eight or sixteen bars. Otherwise, the audience doesn’t know what the hell it’s all about. It’s putting handcuffs on yourself.” In place of “tunes,” Herrmann argued that “film music should be based on phrases no longer than a second or two.”5

While Herrmann’s preference for short modules and their advantage as a tool of film scoring have been described in general terms,6 so far few attempts have been made to investigate how individual modules are organized internally, how they are combined into larger units, and to what extent these larger units follow recurring patterns. Christopher Palmer has observed that Herrmann’s style was “quite circumscribed,” and notes that he “didn’t have that wide a vocabulary.”7As Palmer suggests, Herrmann’s music is based on a relatively small set of melodic and harmonic prototypes which appear again and again in various guises, much like the stock patterns that pervade the galant style of the eighteenth century. One such pattern—a particular type of eight-bar phrase—has been discussed by William Rosar in these pages,8 but others have yet to be identified.

In the following analysis, I will focus on a basic prototype of melodic design in Herrmann’s music: the stepwise resolution of dissonance, arranged in four-note segments. In keeping with Sabaneev’s concept of “extensile music,” extended passages can be generated from this rudimentary building block. Using Psycho as an example, I will also examine how the elastic fabric of Herrmann’s music facilitates the recycling of an entire cue in various dramatic contexts. My aim is to investigate how Herrmann was able to generate, from a few simple elements, a flexible and richly expressive musical syntax that could be molded to the film without losing its internal coherence.

Gable, and Robert L. Marshall (Rochester: N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2008), 186.4 Steven Smith, A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 179.5 Ted Gilling, “The Colour of Music: An Interview with Bernard Herrmann,” Sight and Sound (Winter 1971-1972), 37.6 See, for example, Fred Steiner, “Herrmann’s ‘Black-and-White Music’ for Hitchcock’s Psycho,” Film Music Notebook 1 (Fall 1974), 36; Graham Bruce, Bernard Herrmann: Film Music and Narrative (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1985), 35-36; and Royal Brown, Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 153-54.7 Christopher Palmer in Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann, DVD, directed by Joshua Waletzky (Sony, 1992).8 William Rosar, “Bernard Herrmann: The Beethoven of Film Music?,” The Journal of Film Music 1 (2003): 136-40.

A Common Prototype of Modular Design: Stepwise Resolution of Dissonance

A primary melodic nucleus of Herrmann’s music is the (usually descending) whole or half step. In its most rudimentary form, this nucleus can provide the basis for an entire motif, as in A Hatful of Rain (Example 1). Through repetition or transposition, the descending step is frequently expanded into a four-note melodic line that alternates between strong-beat dissonance and weak-beat resolution. The resulting pattern, which can be harmonized with either one or two chords, provides the structural prototype for many of Herrmann’s love themes (Example 2). There are several variants of this prototype. The second pair of pitches can repeat the first to create an upper neighbor; it can be inverted to form a lower neighbor; and it can be transposed to create a suspension, an accented passing tone, or an appoggiatura (Example 3). Each of these four-note patterns can itself be further expanded through repetition and transposition to form larger motivic segments. For example, the suspension pattern is often expanded into an eight-note figure through repetition of each two-note unit (Example 4). This particular variant of the suspension pattern is so common in Herrmann’s music that it became the object of derisive wisecracks among his colleagues. Composer Lyn Murray recalls that in March 1977, he and orchestrator Arthur Morton went to a screening of Obsession. While Herrmann’s main title thundered forth, Morton turned to Murray and said: “One gets tired of hearing ‘Jeepers Creepers’ without ever getting to ‘Where’d you get those peepers?’.”9

A quick survey of Herrmann themes and motifs from the 1950s through 1970s illustrates the prevalence of what we might call the Jeepers Creepers schema (Example 5).10 Note that Herrmann often embellishes the basic pattern, as in “The Couch” from Endless Night.

A closely related expansion of the basic four-note prototype is based on the descending tetrachord of the passing tone pattern. A statement of this tetrachord is often followed by its transposition down a wholestep, as in a sinister motif from Taxi Driver (Example 6). In The Bride Wore Black, Herrmann transmutes the descending tetrachord into a lush romantic theme

9 Lyn Murray, Musician: A Hollywood Journal (New Jersey: Lyle Stuart, 1987), 321.10 While the whistled tune from Twisted Nerve is not based on a suspension, its melodic pattern follows the Jeepers Creepers schema.

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© the International Film Music society 2013.

Example 1: A Hatful of Rain, Main Title (1957)

Example 2: Four-note prototype

Example 3: Variants of four-note prototype

Example 4: Expansion of suspension pattern



Example 5: Examples based on Jeepers Creepers schema

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that recalls the opening of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi (Example 7). On occasion, the tetrachord is expanded to a five-note pattern, as in Marnie and Endless Night (Example 8). In the love themes from Blue Denim and Marnie, the descending tetrachord is harmonized with two chords and embellished with a series of Wagnerian appoggiaturas (Example 9).

Many Herrmann themes are constructed entirely from various combinations of the basic four-note

building blocks. The love theme from Vertigo, for example, is based on modules of the appoggiatura and the passing tone type. As is typical for Herrmann, the first three modules are repeated, with slight variation (Example 10). In Fahrenheit 451, Herrmann applies the four-note prototype to the construction of an entire cue. Note that here, he substitutes ascending resolutions of one or both non-chord tones within each four-note module (Example 11).

Example 6: Descending tetrachord in Taxi Driver

Example 7: Descending tetrachord in The Bride Wore Black and Gianni Schicchi



Example 8: Expansion of tetrachord to five-note pattern

Example 9: Love themes from Blue Denim and Marnie

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Example 10: Vertigo, “Scène d’amour” (1958)

Example 11: Fahrenheit 451, “The Bedroom” (1966)



Through continuous transposition, a single module can be expanded indefinitely—a useful way of covering ground between hit points. This resulted in often long-winded descending sequences of the sort David Raksin liked to poke fun at:

One of my students asked me after viewing Vertigo whether I could identify a fragment played on an organ as Kim Novak walks through a church. I answered that I could not, but that I knew the name of the church: Our Lady of Perpetual Sequences.11

Many of these long sequences are in fact ornamented chains of suspensions, which brings us back to the Jeepers Creepers schema. “The Couch”

11 David Raksin, “David Raksin Remembers his Colleagues,” http://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_herrmann.htm.

from Endless Night is a variant of this schema in which the descending stepwise resolution of dissonance within each measure is embellished with a lower neighbor (Example 12). In Vertigo, Herrmann uses the same pattern, but instead of repeating the module, he spins it out into a chain of 7-6 suspensions (Example 13).

As these examples demonstrate, many passages in Herrmann can be classified according to their location on a continuum of stepwise descent that alternates dissonance with resolution. At one extreme of this continuum is the simple repetition, without transposition, of a single descending major or minor second, as in A Hatful of Rain. At the other extreme are extended chains of suspensions, as in Vertigo. Between these points of static repetition on the one hand and prolonged descent on the other are the various

Example 12: Endless Night, “The Couch” (1972)

Example 13: Vertigo, “The Beach” (1958)

http://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_herrmann.htm


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possible elaborations of the four-note prototype, as illustrated in Example 14.

This process of deriving larger structures from small, self-replicating cells of motivic material exemplifies Sabaneev’s concept of “elastic or extensile music”—that is, music that can be “readily expanded or abbreviated.”12 But Herrmann’s choice of the stepwise resolution of dissonance as a primary melodic nucleus is not merely a convenient and flexible technique. It also has an immediate emotional impact. The appoggiatura, the suspension, the accented passing tone signify heightened expressivity in tonal music. By distilling these archetypes of affect into concise modules that can be woven together to form a continuous, emotionally charged musical fabric, Herrmann taps into deep-rooted cultural associations of anguish and romantic longing.

Flexible Structure of Thematic Material

The elasticity of Herrmann’s modular form is also evident in his ability to compress or expand the same

12 Sabaneev, Music for Films, 43.

basic thematic material without losing its recognizable identity. The main theme from Marnie provides a good example of this technique. The theme is developed from a single intervallic cell—the descending step, as usual—that is methodically expanded through repetition and transposition. In the first half of the first measure, Herrmann states the two-note cell; in the second half, he expands it into a four-note group through repetition (Example 15). By adding a contrasting section in measure 2, a microscopic bar form emerges (Example 16). This bar form constitutes the first module of the theme. The second module is created by transposing the first module down a wholestep. The stepwise descent of the two-note cell is thus mirrored on a higher structural level by the transpositional relationship of the two modules (Example 17). Herrmann completes the theme by adding a contrasting section, which creates a large nested bar form comprised of three miniature a a b sections (Example 18).

As I have described in a recent article,13 Herrmann reserves statements of the theme for particularly significant moments in the film. In scenes that, for

13 Tom Schneller, “Unconscious Anchors: Bernard Herrmann’s Music for Marnie,” Popular Music History 5, no. 1 (2010): 55-104.

Example 14: Prototypes of stepwise descent



durational or dramatic purposes, are not suited to complete thematic statements, he uses a set of shorter motivic variants that range in length from four bars to two notes. These motivic variants serve as metonymic signifiers of the “Marnie” theme. They are derived from the first module of the theme through a systematic process of compression in which the b segment of the module is progressively shortened. As shown in Example 19, the first two motivic variants tighten segment b from five to three notes. To generate the third and fourth motivic variants, Herrmann splits the module into its two component parts.

Motivic variant 3 isolates segment a (and thereby distills the theme to the intervallic cell from which it was generated); motivic variant 4 isolates segment b. The relationship between the theme and its motivic variants is reminiscent of a Russian doll, which contains within it progressively smaller versions of itself.

Modular Form in the Psycho Prelude

We have seen Herrmann’s skill in expanding a single structural nucleus to generate large melodic units or,

Example 15: Marnie, main theme, intervallic cell

Example 17: Marnie, main theme, modules 1 and 2

Example 16: Marnie, main theme, module 1

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conversely, in compressing a large melodic unit into smaller segments. In the final section of this article, I will address the issue of modular form on a larger structural level in which the basic unit of expansion or compression is the cue itself, rather than its component parts. One of the practical advantages of modular form is that it allows the composer to easily adjust the same music to different narrative contexts within a film—a great time saver on a tight schedule. Psycho is a case in point. Like a tailor who adjusts a ready-made suit to various body sizes, Herrmann used the main title music as a structural template that could be adapted to fit later scenes simply by deleting or repeating modules where necessary.

To illustrate how this musical custom-fitting is done, let me briefly review the structure of the Psycho prelude. As Fred Steiner outlined in his analysis, the prelude is built from four motivic blocks and an ostinato figure. Module A consists of five slashing

statements of a B$-minor chord with added major seventh (Example 20). The last chord of module A dovetails with the beginning of a churning half-step ostinato, which is joined two measures later by module B, a triplet figure in bar form (Example 21). After three statements of B, the dotted rhythm of module C interrupts the obsessive eighth-note motion of the ostinato (Example 22). The last, and most extended, element is module D, a twelve-measure melody in three phrases accompanied by a variant of the ostinato (Example 23).

The four motivic blocks rotate through a kind of nightmare rondo: A B C A B D C A B C A B D A B C B D A B. Each block moves to either one or two of the other blocks: A moves to B, B moves to C or D, C moves to A or B, D moves to A or C. Figure 1 summarizes the pattern of juxtapositions.

Example 18: Marnie, main theme



Example 19: Marnie, main theme, motivic variants

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Example 20: Psycho, module A

Example 21: Psycho, ostinato and module B

Example 22: Psycho, module C



Figure 1: Juxtaposition of modules in Psycho, “Prelude”

In spite of the relentless rhythmic momentum, this claustrophobic, circular formal design stifles all attempts at progress. The prelude is a maze without exits: the end of every musical corridor is blocked by the slashing chords of the opening, which, as Royal Brown writes, is “not only a point of departure, but a point of return as well.”14

14 Brown, Overtones and Undertones, 161. The structure of the prelude recalls Norman Bates’s remarks to Marion shortly before he stabs her to death: “I

There are three reworkings of the prelude in the first half of the film. Each marks a stage in Marion’s voyage: her departure from Phoenix (“The Flight”), the scene in which she is followed by the policeman (“Patrol Car”), and the drive through the storm that precipitates her arrival at the motel (“The Rainstorm”). In each case, the music enters as Marion starts to drive; in each case it accompanies an alternating pattern of close-ups and POV shots of Marion within a tightly enclosed filmic space that is almost entirely restricted to the interior of her car. Music and image intersect to create a simultaneous sensation of forward momentum and entrapment that vividly conveys Marion’s inner turmoil.

To fit the music of the prelude to each of these scenes, Herrmann did not bother to recompose or develop the material—he simply copied the prelude. Then, he adjusted the order of modules to the timings and dramatic requirements of each scene by crossing out a few measures here and there, repeating sections, or adding brief transitions. Example 24 shows page 1 of the manuscript score of “The Rainstorm” (which is also page 1 of the prelude). Module C has been deleted. Where the cues diverge, Herrmann crossed out the measure numbers of the prelude and renumbered the score.

think we’re all in our private traps, clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. We scratch and claw, but only at the air, only at each other and for all of it, we never budge an inch.”

Example 23: Psycho, module D

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Example 24: Psycho, “The Rainstorm” (manuscript score)



Figure 2 is a detailed formal chart of the prelude that makes it easy to compare exactly how Herrmann adjusted the structure of the prelude to fit each of the three cues (to see exactly how this chart maps onto the music, refer to Appendix 1).

The first cue in which “Prelude” is reworked is “Flight,” which underscores Marion’s departure. This brief sequence consists of seven shots that cover several hours—from afternoon to night. Having stolen the money, Marion is about to drive out of town.

Figure 2: Psycho, “Prelude,” structural diagram

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At a traffic light, her boss, Mr. Lowery, happens to cross the street and recognizes her. The music enters with the slashing chords of module A on the reaction shot of Marion, who realizes that she’s in even more trouble now (shot 1). The beginning of the ostinato is precisely synchronized with the cut back to her POV of Mr. Lowery, who looks at her quizzically (shot 2). Figure 3 shows the first two shots and which modules each lines up with. Motivic segments B1 through B4 accompany the long CU on Marion as she starts

driving, nervously looking over her shoulder (shot 3). The dissolve to the exterior of the car (shot 4) is punctuated by a staccato variant of [b] in the violas (Figure 4). This transitional shot leads to the final part of the sequence: the first phrase of D marks a dissolve to a CU of Marion driving, bleary-eyed, at night (shot 5). The last shot of the sequence fades out on a CU of Marion as she nods off at the wheel to the last phrase of module D (Figure 5).

Figure 4: Psycho, “Flight,” shots 3-4




As indicated in Figure 6, Herrmann reused the first 48 measures of the prelude for “Flight.” To tailor the music to the specific rhythm of the scene, he eliminated modules C1 and A2 by crossing them out in the score. As a result, we hear four successive, uninterrupted statements of module B, which keeps the consistent eighth-note pulse of the ostinato going under shot 3 (the long CU of Marion) and shot 4 (the exterior of the car). Tightening the music by six bars allowed Herrmann to reach module D in time for a specific hit point: the temporal shift from day to night, which is the main narrative event that happens after Marion starts driving.

The same process is applied in “Patrol Car,” which begins as Marion drives away from the policeman. As Figure 7 indicates, the cue uses the first 62 measures of the prelude, eliminating only C3, before

concluding with a pizzicato statement of A.15 Note that, in contrast to “Flight,” Herrmann retains almost all statements of A and C. This gives the music a more jagged profile, in keeping with the higher tension of the scene, and allows Herrmann to punctuate Marion’s discovery that the cop car is following her with the harsh, dotted ninth chords of C1 (a CU of Marion glancing in her rearview mirror is followed by a POV shot of the cop car in the mirror; the appearance of C1 is precisely timed with the cut to the reaction shot of Marion).

15 Herrmann originally intended for “Patrol Car” to come to a close as the police car overtakes Marion, but in the film, the music continues through the dissolve to the next scene and only ends when Marion pulls into the car dealership. The extension (which may have been added by the editor after the recording session), is accomplished simply through repeating the first part of the cue (segments A1 through D1).


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Figure 6: Psycho, “Flight”

Figure 7: Psycho, “Patrol Car” (as written)*In the film, only the ostinato is heard in mm. 5-8; the first violins, which have b, are marked “tacet.”



At 218 measures, “The Rainstorm” is the longest and most elaborate version of the prelude used in the film (see Figure 8). It accompanies the final drive that will lead Marion to the Bates Motel. Tortured by guilt, she imagines the voices of Lowery, Mr. Cassidy, and Caroline as they discover that the money has been stolen.16 Like the carousel of voices circling through her mind, the music is hypnotically repetitive: Herrmann eliminates most statements of A and C, which reduces the motivic content of the

16 “I always think that film music expresses what the actor can’t show or tell,” Herrmann commented on his music in the storm scene. “For example, when Janet Leigh is driving her car in Psycho, all we see is a pleasant young girl driving in the rain with the windscreen wipers going back and forth. From what you see, she might have been going to the supermarket or visiting a friend, but it’s the music that tells you that she has embarked on a very dangerous, horrifying experience.” (Gilling, “The Colour of Music,” 37.)

cue to alternations of B and D. There is some newly composed material: an extended developmental passage based on sequential transpositions of the second measure of module B, and a four-measure transition that leads back to a modified restatement of the first half. As in “Flight” and “Patrol Car,” Herrmann reworked the structure of the prelude to accentuate particular points within the scene, most spectacularly in the final statement of D, in which the whiplash rhythm of the windshield wipers is exactly coordinated with the frenetic eighth-notes of the ostinato.

That Herrmann was able to adapt the prelude to three different dramatic situations of widely varying duration without creating an incoherent jumble has

Figure 8: Psycho, “The Rainstorm” (ms. 1-96)

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Figure 8: Psycho, “The Rainstorm” (ms. 1-96)



to do with the particular design of the four modules. These modules fall into two categories: those that rely on the steady eighth-note pulse provided by the ostinato and are primarily melodic (B and D), and those that suspend the steady pulse and are entirely harmonic (A and C). Modules B and D serve to provide continuous forward motion, while A and C interrupt or punctuate. In scenes that require continuous forward motion without harsh differentiations, C and A are generally eliminated (“Flight” and “The Rainstorm”). In those that require particular moments to be punctuated, they are retained (as in “Patrol Car”). The ostinato is the glue that binds the whole structure together, whatever the particular configuration of segments may be (Example 25).

As William Wrobel has documented,17 Herrmann had a habit of reusing the same music in different scores, so the recycling of the Psycho prelude is simply an intra-opus application of a characteristic compositional strategy. This habit of self-borrowing is closely related to his reliance on stock patterns such as the Jeepers Creepers schema. The result is a markedly consistent style, notwithstanding the eclecticism of Herrmann’s idiom, which, as William Rosar points

17 William Wrobel, “Self-Borrowing in the Music of Bernard Herrmann,” The Journal of Film Music 1 (2003): 249-71.

out, often borrows “the choicest bits” from composers such as Wagner, Debussy, Holst and others.18

Herrmann’s reliance on self-borrowing and stock patterns is, of course, standard procedure among film composers. It is to some degree a necessary and unavoidable function of working conditions that demand prolific output in a short amount of time. Those who deride film composers for recycling the same gestures over and over again ignore not only the context in which film music is written, but also the historical precedent of Baroque and classical music. Compositional idioms adapt to the external circumstances that govern the act of creation, and conditions that require composers to churn out enormous amounts of music in a short time will of necessity spawn musical styles based on repetition and the extensive use of musical schemata. In this sense, there is a parallel between the technique of film composers racing against a deadline and that of composers in the eighteenth century, who struggled to fulfill the often insatiable musical demands of aristocratic and ecclesiastical patrons. Robert Gjerdingen’s argument that the structural features of the galant style made the extraordinary facility of Haydn or Mozart possible can be applied, with equal

18 Rosar, “Bernard Herrmann,” 141.

Example 25: Psycho prelude: structural function of modules

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accuracy, to the modus operandi of many Hollywood composers. As Gjerdingen writes,

The speed and confidence with which many of the best 18th-century composers wrote multivoice works has long been a subject of marvel for modern musicians. Though the skill and invention of those composers remains impressive however one might try to explain their abilities, there are obvious advantages that a stockpile of “interchangeable parts” would give to the rapid, secure crafting of complex compositions. Anyone who knew [the shared conventions] could draw upon a number of stock melodies, basses, and harmonizations—everything would fit together.19

19 Robert Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 51.

A comprehensive analysis of Herrmann’s “stockpile of interchangeable parts” remains to be undertaken. In addition to a thorough investigation of various patterns of movement by step, such an inventory of frequently recurring protoypes would have to include a number of characteristic ostinato figures, the use of parallel thirds, particular chord progressions, and the central importance of bar form as a means of structuring motivic and thematic material. Such a study would not only help to illuminate the distinctive idiom of an important twentieth-century composer, but would also provide a rich model of a film-specific musical syntax.



Appendix Psycho, “Prelude” ms. 1-40 (compare with Figure 2)

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References

Bazelon, Irwin. 1975. Knowing the score: notes on film music. New York: Arco Publishing.

Brown, Royal. 1994. Overtones and undertones: reading film music. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Bruce, Graham. 1985. Bernard Herrmann: film music and narrative. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.

Curry, Robert, David Gable, and Robert L. Marshall, ed. 2008. Variations on the canon: essays on music from Bach to Boulez in honor of Charles Rosen on his eightieth birthday. Rochester: N.Y.: University of Rochester Press.

Gilling, Ted. 1971-1972. The colour of music: an interview with Bernard Herrmann. Sight and Sound (Winter): 36-39.

Gjerdingen, Robert. 2007. Music in the Galant style. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Murray, Lyn. 1987. Musician: a Hollywood journal. New Jersey: Lyle Stuart.

Raksin, David. David Raksin remembers his colleagues. http://www.americancomposers.org/raksin_herrmann.htm

Rosar, William. 2003. Bernard Herrmann: the Beethoven of film music? The Journal of Film Music 1: 121-51.

Sabaneev, Leonid. 1935. Music for films. London: Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd.

Schneller, Tom. 2010. Unconscious anchors: Bernard Herrmann’s music for Marnie. Popular Music History 5, no. 1: 55-104.

Smith, Steven. 1991. A heart at fire’s center: the life and music of Bernard Herrmann. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Steiner, Fred. 1974. Herrmann’s “black-and-white music” for Hitchcock’s Psycho. Film Music Notebook 1 (Fall).

Waletzky, Joshua. 1992. Music for the movies: Bernard Herrmann, DVD, Sony.

Wrobel, William. 2003. Self-borrowing in the music of Bernard Herrmann. The Journal of Film Music 1: 249-71.



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