Bernard Herrmann 1911 - 1975

One hundred years ago to this very day - the twenty nine of June - Bernard Herrmann was born in New York's Lying In Hospital, New York City. It was thanks to a generous donation from financier J.P.Morgan that construction on the facility had got under way at the end of the nineteenth century, and by 1902 the new maternity hospital was open for business, serving the neighbourhoods of the lower east side. Today the building, which is at Stuyvesant Square between 17th and 18th Streets, is the site of Rutherford Place, home to 122 wealthy New Yorkers.

Among the American films of 1911 were two shorts by D.W.Griffith (The Voice of the Child and Her Awakening), literary adaptations by Theodore Marston (David Copperfield and The Last of the Mohicans) and a romance called Sweet Memories starring Mary Pickford by Thomas Ince. Cinema - like the infant Herrmann - could still not yet speak, and the music that accompanied the images was limited to crude piano accompaniment.

That tiny bundle swaddled in cotton - born prematurely, two months before his mother's natural term - was to revolutionise the sound of cinema. Abrasive and belligerent, he forged his own way through life, and his toxic anger would corrode many of the personal and professional alliances that he formed over his turbulent career. John Green, the head of MGM's music department in the 1950s summed it up: "I think Benny Herrmann committed suicide. Unwittingly, not with drugs, not with a pistol, but with a four-letter word called hate."

Was Herrmann a difficult man? Undoubtedly, yes. Was he a genius? Again, undoubtedly, yes. Do the two often go hand in hand? Probably.

I've spent the last seven days on a journey through Herrmann's music, beginning with Citizen Kane and ending with Taxi Driver. I've written about each score, and I offer this blog as a small tribute to the composer on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth.