ABSTRACT

For most of his professional life Bernard Herrmann (1911–75) aspired to be a conductor and a composer of ‘serious’ music. Whilst he is widely known for his work with such filmmakers as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, and Brian De Palma, Herrmann in fact composed a number of substantial works outside of his film music career. Examined in this chapter are such works as his opera Wuthering Heights, his cantata Moby Dick, his Echoes for string quartet, and his Souvenir de Voyages for clarinet and strings. The chapter examines these and other of Herrmann’s concert works within the context of his career in film, but it seeks especially to shed light on his compositional techniques apart from his work in film music. To foreshadow further work on Herrmann’s concert music, the chapter includes information on performance history that offers insight as to why some of these concert works, up until now, have not received the regular performances that they perhaps deserve.