A History of Film Music: Popular music in the cinema

A large percentage of producers today are so unaware of their pictures they're looking for a musical gimmick to lure the public. Like the hit title tune, a harmonica surrounded by a choral group, the twanging sound of an electric zither, or the wail of a kazoo in an espresso cafe. Stuff like that. It only takes away from what's happening on the screen. ( bernard herrmann, quoted in hollywood reporter , 14 july 1964 ) i am particularly concerned with the need to break away from the old-fashioned cued-in type of music that we have been using for so long … unfortunately for we artists, we do not have the freedom that we would like to have, because we are catering to an audience … this audience is very different from the one to which we used to cater; it is young, vigorous and demanding … this is why i am asking you to approach this problem with a receptive and if possible enthusiastic mind. (alfred hitchcock, cable to bernard herrmann, 4 november 1965; quoted in s. smith 1991, 268–9) The Torn Curtain fiasco, in which Herrmann's score for Hitchcock was rejected partly owing to pressure from the studio to include a hit song which the composer refused to provide (see Chapter 5), drew attention to a fundamental and seemingly irreconcilable tension in the mid-1960s between traditional methods of film scoring – increasingly viewed as outdated and inappropriate as films became more youth-oriented – and a more modern approach in which up-to-date popular idioms prevailed.