Bernard Herrmann

So what is it that we look for in drama and music that we can't get from life. A sense of escape of course but also a dramatic intensity that we could never maintain in the humdrum reality that most of us are condemned to endure for the major portion of our lives. The bits we won't remember when the last grains of sand finally run out. 

Bernard Herrmann's score for Psycho is a case in point. It soundtracked the best part of an hour of my life at work stuck at a screen today, one of a sea of heads perching above monitors in an anonymous open office like countless billions adrift in their own waking dreams all over the world. It cast its spell, giving me the sense that I was undergoing some intense, unforgettable and dangerous emotional journey while all along sitting utterly immobile at my desk, ticking off the time.

Of course, even a score as heightened and intense as Psycho is prone to repetition, and even, I imagine, if listened to on repeat play a certain tedium of its own. But then again, variations on a theme is a feature of most great pieces of work. It was never meant to be listened to end to end I imagine even really by Herrmann, although in terms of quality it surely stands its own next to the great classical works. Played interestingly enough, only by the string section of the orchestra it's like a drive down a mountainside on a winding darkened road at night, serene in the knowledge that despite the intense, heightened drama, you are actually utterly safe.

I recommend it. It's an hour of your life you won't get back but then again rest assured it's not one of the ones you'll be demanding a refund on when that time finally comes..