Early on in production Hitchcock decided that The Birds would have no conventional music score, and so on the final picture Herrmann is credited as Sound Consultant. This meant working with two Germans (Oskar Sala and Remi Gassmann) who were experts on the electro-acoustic Trautonium, an instrument that Hitchcock had first heard on Berlin radio in the late Twenties. The croaks and cries of the birds that punctuate the latter part of the film were created on the machine under the supervision of Hitchcock, who, together with Herrmann, spent a month in West Berlin working on the picture's unique soundscape. Even some of the film's silences were electronic manipulations. Hitchcock knew the importance of music in cinema and, in particular, the importance of music in his own films, but for him a film score wasn't music per se but another element of the overall sound design. It's surprising, given the views Herrmann expressed in interviews, that the composer should agree with his director. "Very few films can dispense with [music] altogether," he said. The Birds was a bold aural experiment, but there's a part of me that wishes Herrmann had written music for the picture.
In the year that The Birds was released Herrmann started work on another Hitchcock project, but this time for the small screen. From 1963 to 1965 he scored seventeen episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, a total of about five hours of music. The director's cameo appearances in his own films had made his portly profile famous all over the world, but it was television that turned him into a celebrity. His lugubrious delivery of the blackly comic introductions to Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour cemented his on-screen persona in the public imagination. Like the fat boy in The Pickwick Papers he delighted in making the flesh creep.
Until now, the music that Herrmann wrote for Hitchcock's TV shows has been unavailable on disc. To coincide the the 100th anniversary of the composer's birth Varese Sarabande have released the first of a projected two volume set (VCL 0511 1119). My copy arrived in the post just six days ago, and I've put off listening to it until now. The music is playful, suspenseful, lyrical, macabre, and, above all, fresh.
hello, interesting what you wrote...i just have one question were did you find the reference for the quote of hitchcock saying " the birds was a bold aural experiment....."! thank you very much, keep up the good work
ReplyDeleteDo you happen to know who chose the song that the school children sang while Tippi Hendren's character waits outside? I always found that an effective scene and use of music.
ReplyDeleteApparently screenwriter Evan Hunter asked his children for a song, but he had to write some additional lyrics to make it long enough for the scene.
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