Abstract:

Introducing a special issue of Popular Music History honoring, on his centenary, the great American film composer Bernard Herrmann, this essay explores the complex and conflicted relation Herrmann had to the world of ‘popular’ music—his great interest in its history, yet the distance he kept from contemporary popular styles. Among matters discussed are: his partnership with Alfred Hitchcock and its breakup over Hitchcock’s insistence on the inclusion of a ‘pop song’ for the 1966 film Torn Curtain; the scores to The Wrong Man and North by Northwest; and Herrmann’s attempts to write Broadway musicals. In the process, comparison is made to music by Henry Mancini and Max Steiner—among others. The essay suggests that Eli Siegel’s philosophy of Aesthetic Realism can shed crucial light on both the music and life of Herrmann; in particular it can make sense of the anguish Herrmann had on the question of whether his artistic self-expression could include contemporary vernacular styles of music, or needed to exclude them. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the term ‘classic’, and also of current
methodology in the field of ‘popular music studies’.

Author: Edward Green