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I ran across excerpts from an article written by Lucille Fletcher about Bernard Herrmann. It appeared in a 1936"Screen and Radio Weekly". I thought I'd transcribe the first couple of pages -- it is truly wonderful -- full of insight into what made Herrmann the great artist that he was. I typed this up very very quickly -- any egregious typos are mine alone.
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From “Screen and Radio Weekly” (1936) -- article by Lucille Fletcher:
“Bill Robson needed an iceberg. A melting, slithering iceberg that would slip down into the ocean with a sad, wet sigh. He needed it for his Columbia Workshop programme.
Another sound effect. ‘That’s what anybody would think. But Bill didn’t call the CBS Sound Effects Department for that iceberg. He reached for his phone and dialed a little office on the sixteenth floor of the CBS Building.
“Hey Benny” he called. “Is Benny Herrmann there? Oh – Benny? Will you write me out an iceberg please?”
That’s what Bill Robson did. And so have dozens of other radio producers who have needed similar queer things in a hurry. For Bernard Herrmann has raised musical sound effects to the status of a fine art. He is a composing wizard who can wave a fountain pen and turn six notes and two chords into a mountain slide or a fog, in no time at all.
Herrmann’s “musical capsules” have graced such famous programs as the Orson Welles Playhouse, the Columbia Workshop, Men Against Death, the Four Corners Theater and The March of Time.
Very few of Herrmann’s cues are longer than 30 seconds. Yet he composes each one as carefully as though it were a symphony. Script in hand, he sits down at his office piano and puts himself into the mood. Sometimes the cue must paint a background – give the effect of rain, or fog or a tropical jungle. Sometimes it must be psychological – that is, express love, or horror or insanity. More often, it must go far beyond those realms and express what no man has ever heard. In the last type of cue Herrmann especially shines.
For example – who in world has ever heard the sound of a man turning into a sycamore tree? Yet that was one of Herrmann’s assignments on the Workshop not long ago. It didn’t floor him in the least. He thought for a few moments – and figured that on the whole turning into a tree might be rather a pleasant experience.
“I scored the cues for strings, harps, celeste and flute – all delicate instruments – and composed a theme which was wistful, but not too sad,” he says. “After all, the man turning into a tree was a postman, and his feet were tired. He was glad to be at peace.”
Another difficult hit was the sound of a Revolutionary army playing Yankee Doodle inside a bottle. This appeared in a script by Stephen Vincent Benet performed on the Workshop last year. Herrmann solved it by taking a standard orchestration of Yankee Doodle and reorchestrating it for very soft strings, woodwinds and celeste, so that it sounded almost like a music box. On the air he had the whole orchestra placed in a separate studio, and the sound piped through an electrical filter to make the music sound thin, tiny and far away. The result was perfect.
Even a time-clock didn’t bother him. He had to compose a music representation of this device last year when Pare Lorentz presented the industrial drama, Ecce Homo. Lorentz – who was a guest producer – hadn’t heard about Herrmann, and at first he planned to use a real sound effect time-clock as background for the show. His friends talked him out of it.
“Get Herrmann to write you a time-clock,” they told him. “It’ll make the show.” It did. Herrmann has never been inside a factory in his life, but he whipped up a cue cut of a French horn, a couple of Chinese wood blocks and a piano; and it was better than the real thing.
Herrmann, of course, doesn’t dream up every cue he writes. On many he does real research, goes down to the Library and burrows through dusty books to find the authentic flavour of a period or country. Give him a script laid in Bali, for example, and he will give you a perfect imitation of a Balinese orchestra, complete with gamelans and quarter tones. Lay your story during the time of Henry VIII, and Herrmann will turn out musical backgrounds that have all the modal sadness, the strange harmonies of Tudor England. Some time ago the Workshop did an Irish fantasy by John Synge, The Well of the Saints. Herrmann composed a lilting Irish score. Two days after the broadcast, he received a letter from a lady named Feeney.
“Your name doesn’t sound Irish,” it read, “but I’d swear you had a leprechaun somewhere in your background.”
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On the air he had the whole orchestra placed in a separate studio, and the sound piped through an electrical filter to make the music sound thin, tiny and far away. The result was perfect.
That's one of the most clever things about Herrmann. He had ideas for his music that went far beyond just writing down notes.
Thanks for sharing!
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Indeed she was!
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I'll finish entering the rest of the article when I have a chance tonight -- I thought it was fascinating to get a personal portrait of the early Herrmann when he was only 26. I stopped at what seemed a natural break -- more to come.
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I just finished this.
It was nice. Thanks for posting it, JM!
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