Composer Bernard Herrmann never lived in Trenton but his music highlighted two small moments when Trenton entered cultural history.
The first was in 1938 when the 27-year-old New York-born composer provided the music for the infamous Mercury Theater on the Air’s “World of the Worlds” broadcast. He was the real Ramon Raquello whose tango orchestra provided the interludes that bridged reports of the Martian landing at Grovers Mill — just outside Princeton Junction — and the announcement by Brigadier General Montgomery Smith of the state militia in Trenton. The show is one of the most famous in broadcast history.
A few years later Herrmann followed his radio boss, Orson Welles, to Hollywood to score the groundbreaking “Citizen Kane.” In it he provided a newsreel soundtrack that showed the titular character getting hitched to his love-nest girlfriend in Trenton’s “town hall.” The film has been considered one of the greatest films in history.
Herrmann scores will have another Trenton connection when the New Jersey Capital City Philharmonic presents “Cinematic Masters,” on Saturday, May 14, at the Trenton War Memorial.
While Herrmann is only one of several famous film composers on a program — the others are Miklos Rosza, Eric Korngold, and William Walton — he is arguably one of the most influential of the 20th century. The philharmonic’s inclusion of his music for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 psychological mystery “Vertigo” supports the claim.
The influential British magazine Sight and Sound’s survey of more than 800 film critics named “Vertigo” as “the greatest film of all time,” replacing the former leader for 50 years: “Citizen Kane.”
Herrmann’s involvement immediately demonstrates his effectiveness.
His more direct influence on American culture, however, comes from his 50 films — ranging from the gritty (Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver”) to the fantastic (Ray Harryhausen’s “Seventh Voyage of Sinbad”) — and musical that is part of America’s psyche. That includes the moody music in the Twilight Zone series (but not the theme) and one of the most famous sounds in history: the piercing strings used during the shower stabbing in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”
“The music was 33 percent of the film,” said Hitchcock, who enlisted Herrmann for that film and several others, including the 1955 thriller “The Man Who Knew Too Much” — in which Herrmann appears as himself conducting an orchestra. Music from that film will also be performed in Trenton.
“The most sensitive directors can be completely ignorant about the use of music,” noted Herrmann about composing for film. “The camera can only do so much; the actors and the direction can only do so much. But the music can tell you what people are thinking and feeling — that is the real function of music.”
For the famous love scene in Vertigo, Herrmann said it was “eight minutes of cinema without dialogue or sound effects, just music and film. (Hitchcock) simply said to me, ‘Music will do better than words there.’”
Herrmann said he decided to use the “drive of the emotions” and created what film critic Roger Ebert called one of cinema’s great erotic moments — one achieved in sound.
New Hope resident Dorothy Herrmann, the composer’s daughter, says an aspect of her father’s artistry came from his willingness to try new sounds. “He was always interested in very unusual combinations of instruments. When he came to Hollywood, many of film composers in the 1940s had come from Europe and they were influenced by Viennese opera and musicians and German musicians — Wagner was big.”
Yet Wagner was also an influence on “Vertigo.” As New Yorker music critic Alex Ross writes, “In the stretch of music entitled ‘Scene d’amour,’ (Herrmann) turns to Wagner’s ‘Tristan und Isolde’ as an example. One hears citations not only of the sweeping phrases of the ‘Liebestod’ (Love-Death) but also of the savage leitmotif of daylight, the black-as-night Prelude to Act III and the delirious ecstasy of the central love scene.”
It was an insightful choice made by a major artist who understood that seeing a film is more than just seeing.
New Jersey Capital Philharmonic, Cinematic Classics, War Memorial Patriots Theater 1 Memorial Drive, Saturday, May 14, 7:30 p.m., $30 to $65. 215-893-1999 or www.capitalphilharmonic.org.
,
