Who Wrote the Music to Psycho?

Initially director/auteur Alfred Hitchcock didn’t want any music to accompany what has become one of the most famous scenes in the history of motion pictures: The “Shower Scene” in his 1960 suspense-thriller Psycho.

The film was revolutionary in a number of ways, not the least of which was killing off a major star of the big screen, Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, just half-way into the story.

The music, too, was unusual. Composer Bernard Herrmann, who worked extensively with Hitchcock, composed and recorded the entire soundtrack to Psycho utilizing only strings, including the terrifying shower scene.

“The soundtrack [for the scene] of screeching violins was an original all-strings piece by composer Herrmann entitled ‘The Murder.’ Hitchcock originally wanted the sequence (and all motel scenes) to play without music, but Herrmann begged him to try it with the cue he had composed. Afterwards Hitchcock agreed that it vastly intensified the scene and he nearly doubled Herrmann’s salary…

“In the mid-1960s [Herrmann also] composed the highly-regarded music score for the François Truffaut film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Scored for strings, two harps, vibraphone, xylophone and glockenspiel, Herrmann’s score created a driving, neurotic mood that perfectly suited the film; it also had a direct influence on George Martin’s staccato string arrangement for Paul McCartney’s landmark 1966 smash Beatles hit single ‘Eleanor Rigby’…

Many people mistakenly credit Bernard Hermann for the famous and equally eerie Twilight Zone theme from the 1960s hit TV show. While Herrmann did compose music for episodes of the show, the FAMOUS “nee nee nee nee” theme was actually composed by Marius Constant.

“Herrmann’s last film scores included Sisters and Obsession for Brian De Palma. His final film soundtrack, and the last work he completed before his death, was his sombre score for the 1976 film Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese. It was DePalma who had suggested to Scorsese to use the composer. Immediately after finishing the recording of the Taxi Driver soundtrack on December 23, 1976, Herrmann viewed the rough cut of what was to be his next film assignment, Larry Cohen’s God Told Me To, and dined with Cohen, after which he returned to his hotel for the night. Bernard Herrmann died from cardiovascular disease in his sleep at his hotel in Los Angeles, California, during the night. Scorsese and Cohen dedicated both Taxi Driver and God Told Me To to Herrmann’s memory.” —Wikipedia

The “strings only” soundtrack composed by Herrmann for Psycho, as well as the film’s black-and-white treatment, were not entirely artistic choices. Psycho was one of Hitchcock’s lowest budget films but by both popular and critical acclaim, the movie is a masterpiece of the genre. Everything worked.

Professor Royal S. Brown, in his interesting analysis of the film score, has noted that Herrmann’s use of muted violins for much of the theme helped to create a cold, eerie ambiance which elevated the terror of the story and that in particular, the screeching strings during the shower scene “forced the viewer to participate” rather than just observe the brutal stabbing of Leigh’s character, Marion.

SIDEBAR: “The blood in the shower scene is in fact chocolate syrup, which shows up better than stage blood on black-and-white film…The sound of the knife entering flesh was created by plunging a knife into a casaba melon…the Bates’ house was based off a Victorian home in Kent, Ohio near Kent State.” —Wikipedia

The Fascinating Story of The House Behind the Bates’ Mansion in Hitchcock’s 1960 Classic