Psycho · Dir. Alfred Hitchcock · 1960 · 109 min · Music by Bernard Herrmann
Hitchcock was making Psycho cheaply, in black and white, and by the account of a BAFTA piece on the film's music he first asked Herrmann for something light and jazzy. Herrmann went the other way. He wrote for strings alone, a choice the composer's own description (reported by Hollywood Bowl and BAFTA) calls a "black and white" sound to match the photography. No brass, no woodwind, no percussion. Strings are normally Hollywood's shorthand for romance; here they do the opposite job.
That is the whole idea, and it is worth hearing for yourself. Everything below is about what one section of the orchestra can be made to do.
The film's main-title music is a hurtling, driven piece, and Dr Tim Summers of Royal Holloway notes a detail that sounds like a mistake: the players are told to use mutes, the little clips that soften and dull a string, even though the opening chords are marked very loud. The result is force with a lid on it. Herrmann explained what the opening is for in a line Summers quotes:
[A]fter the main titles you know that something terrible must happen
Bernard Herrmann, quoted by Dr Tim Summers, Royal Holloway
Underneath sits what is often called the "Hitchcock chord", a minor triad with an added major seventh, which keeps returning instead of settling anywhere comfortable. Herrmann also leans on ostinato, short repeating figures, rather than long character tunes. The effect is hypnotic, and it keeps the tension up in quiet scenes where nothing seems to be happening.
Everything from this point talks about the film's most famous scene, which comes well after the first act. If you have not seen Psycho, stop here and come back.
Hitchcock's own notes of 8 January 1960, as Jack Sullivan reported in the Wall Street Journal, asked for no music in the early motel sequence, and the shower scene was meant to play without any. Herrmann wrote a cue for it anyway. By the published accounts he played it for the director, and Hitchcock reversed himself. Screenwriter Joseph Stefano recalled that Hitchcock said the music raised the film's impact by a third; the figure is usually given as "33 percent".
The cue is the one place where the mutes come off. The strings are played hard and as high as they can go, which produces the shrieking sound everyone remembers. Summers describes how it is built: each string part enters in turn, descending in pitch, piling up a cluster of notes, and the pattern is repeated with different articulation. There is no melody, only slashing glissandi and extreme registers. Film writers have heard the violins as the knife, as screams, or as bird cries. Asked what he intended, Herrmann is reported to have said one word: "Terror."
This is a score that rewards headphones. The interesting detail is the texture: the dull, damped quality of muted strings against the bare bite of the shower cue. Closed-back studio headphones show that contrast cleanly, and noise cancelling helps if you are listening somewhere noisy. Herrmann also reworked the music in 1968 as Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra, a concert suite that is easier to follow without the film. Listen at a modest volume first; the loud passages are very loud.
Gear is optional. A phone speaker will tell you the idea; a decent pair of headphones will tell you how it was done.
The film is on disc and sometimes on streaming services, and availability varies by country. Herrmann's own recordings and later re-recordings of the score exist on CD and in digital form, and which ones are available also varies by country.