Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef

In an attempt to draw audiences away from their televisions and back into the cinemas, Fox started to film and present its movies in widescreen and stereophonic CinemaScope from 1953. Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef was the first film in this format that Herrmann scored and he responded to its sumptuous photography and visual scale with one of his greatest scores. Unfortunately, its story of two rival families of sponge fishermen off the Florida coast was not equal to the size of the picture, and the young leads Robert Wagner and Terry Moore lacked chemistry. Although the Romeo and Juliet underwater plotline failed to excite Herrmann, there were plenty of visuals above and below the waves that provided him with rich possibilities for inventive scoring.

To depict the sea he used harps and horns over a broad string melody and its presentation over the main titles gives a promise of adventure and romance that the picture is unfortunately unable to deliver. With each harp player (and there were nine of them) playing a separate glissando, the music crashes around your ears like waves. When above the water, the music is jaunty and almost playful (rather like the piratical music that John Williams provided for Jaws), but below the surface it becomes dark and sinister. Herrmann marks the divers' descent underwater with harp arpeggios and as they go deeper he uses brass and organ to suggest the mounting pressure and the shifting currents. Some of these same techniques would be put to similar effect in the subterranean world of Journey to the Centre of the Earth and in the underwater sequences in Mysterious Island.

Darryl Zanuck was suitably impressed and shot off a memo to head of music Alfred Newman. "I thought Beneath the Twelve Mile Reef one of the most original scores I have ever heard. It really gave me a thrill ... The entire picture has been enormously enhanced ... [The music] gives it a bigness it did not originally have."

Herrmann paid almost as much attention to the recording of the score as he did to the writing of it. Unusually for a composer, he was allowed to conduct his own work at Fox, and he was nearly obsessive about the placing of microphones to take advantage of the extended dynamic range offered by CinemaScope. The nine harps were also positioned strategically around the orchestra to allow for a wide as possible range of sound.

The full score is available on an FSM release (FSM Vol. 3 No.10), but has deteriorated over the years. There are several significant moments of distortion and drop-out, but this is a small price to pay for being able to hear the complete score. Prior to this release, only a twelve minute suite had been available on the RCA disc. Wonderfully recorded by the National Philharmonic Orchestra under Charles Gerhardt, the suite is a glorious glowing tone poem to the sea.