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It’s been a Bernard Herrmann week!

Bernard Herrmann might not be a name dripping off everyone’s lips.

But this brilliant film composer wrote some of the most imaginative film and TV music of last century, with films like Citizen Kane, Psycho, Vertigo and Jason and the Argonauts.

And although having passed away 40 years ago, he has been making a bit of a comeback lately.

Both Twisted Nerve and Taxi Driver are about to be re-released on vinyl — while earlier this year, a special tribute to Herrrmann’s work with Alfred Hitchcock was put on by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Interestingly, there is an Australian connection to Bernard Herrmann, too: While a music student at the Julliard School in New York, he studied under the Australian composer Percy Grainger, and according to ‘A Heart at Fire’s Centre’, the biography of Bernard Herrmann by Stephen C. Smith, the two of them were quite fond of each other. Joining in on the conspiracy, the above interview with Smith just went up a few days ago online, made by the Film Noir Foundation.

And then the thing that topped everything off this week for me was getting an email from Jonny Trunk tonight, letting us all know that we can download Herrmann’s fantastic ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ with it’s infamous use of the Russian-invented Theremin (and if you don’t know what that is – trust me, you will, the moment you hear it!) for the special price of 50p!!!!!!!!!!

https://trunkrecords.greedbag.com/buy/the-day-the-earth-stood-still-or-2

And if this isn’t enough, you can always join the Bernard Herrmann Film Society Group and read up on the maestro here.

Happy Bernard Herrmann Week!

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