Bernard Herrmann, architect of vertigo

There is a chord every viewer recognises without being able to name it: the spiral of Vertigo, rising and falling at the same time, like its protagonist. That is Bernard Herrmann in a single phrase — music that does not accompany the scene but diagnoses it.

Herrmann entered cinema through the front door: his first assignment was Citizen Kane. With Hitchcock, in the 1950s, he formed the partnership that redefined suspense; without him Psycho would be another film — the decision to attack the shower with strings alone was his.

From the fifth dimension to the taxi

Television owes Herrmann too: he composed the original theme for The Twilight Zone and the scores of entire episodes, proving that television’s tight budgets could sound like major art.

The camera shows what happens; Herrmann’s orchestra shows what it costs.

After the break with Hitchcock he became a hero to the new cinephiles: Truffaut, De Palma and Scorsese sought him out. Herrmann recorded the Taxi Driver score in December 1975 and died hours after the final session — an exit worthy of his own dramaturgy.

His scores stay alive in vinyl and CD reissues much sought after by collectors — the perfect way in to listening to cinema with no image at all.