“Psycho” in the Cathedral, Part Two

Robert Berks’ twelve-foot-tall statue of Einstein, Washington, DC.

For context, please read my post from September 2, 2024, “Psycho” in the Cathedral, Part One.

Part Two

A Day in DC

The next morning I was up early and getting ready to drive to DC. My plan was to spend the day sightseeing and then go to supper . . . with Bernard Herrmann’s daughters!

Yes, Herrmann’s daughters, Dorothy and Wendy, were attending the concert, and they had invited anyone who was interested to join them for a meal before the concert. I jumped at the chance!

But first I spent the day sightseeing.

As I prepared to head to DC carrying a change of clothes and my phone, Louise suggested I might want to take along something to eat or drink.

“Oh, no, I’ll be fine!”

She (wisely) insisted I take two oranges along. And later in the day, after trudging for miles around DC in the heat, I ate those two oranges, and they were the most delicious oranges I had eaten in my life! Like Jonathan in the Old Testament eating honey, my “eyes brightened,” and I had strength to go on.

I arrived in DC and decided to park in an underground garage at the National Cathedral, since that’s where my day would end. I left my nicer clothes for the concert in the car, locked it up, and struck out.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, DC.

I had been to DC before and seen a lot of things, so this was a chance to get a few more locations checked off my bucket list. I went to the Albert Einstein Memorial and stopped by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which I had visited before but is always an emotional experience. All those names. . . !

The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial

was quite impressive, much larger than I expected it to be. I continued to the FDR Memorial, which was a new experience. I spent some time out on the National Mall and then attempted to tour the Smithsonian Castle, but it was so hot in there (and the tour was so boring) that I thought I was going to pass out, so I slipped out early. I walked by the FBI Building (acting nonchalant so none of the agents would think I was up to something) and passed by Ford’s Theatre and the Petersen House across the street where Lincoln had died.[i]

Then it was time to catch a bus to take me back to the National Cathedral. As supper approached, I grew more and more nervous. I had seen pictures of Dorothy and Wendy before, so I thought I would recognize them, but to meet them now was quite nerve-wracking! I arrived at the parking garage early enough to catch a thirty-minute nap in my car, which I greatly needed. Then I changed into my nicer clothes for supper and the concert—also in my car. (Oh, good grief, no one was around! And if the FBI has security footage of me gracelessly and ineptly changing clothes in the passenger seat of my two-door 2011 Honda Accord, remember that I had had the foresight to nonchalantly pass by their building earlier in the day, thus removing any concerns they might have that I am some sort of sicko.) I stepped out of the car, viciously adjusted my rumpled garb, collected my thoughts, and walked to Glover Park Hotel, where we were to eat supper.

Smithsonian Castle

I entered the lobby early and waited—still very nervous. After fifteen minutes or so, the elevator door opened and out rolled Dorothy Herrmann in a wheelchair. I knew her immediately from photos I’d seen. A very elderly white-haired gentleman as pushing her. Other people came up and started talking to her—apparently they were members of our supper group who already knew her.

Seeing her in a wheelchair threw me for a second­­—I hadn’t known she was disabled. I found out soon enough, though, that she wasn’t: she was in her late 70s (although she didn’t look like it) and used the chair only for ease in getting around.

I don’t remember introducing myself to her, but I do remember that when we—a group of about ten people—entered the restaurant, I snagged the chair right across from her.

Plump and bewigged, Dorothy was completely unpretentious, talking freely, downing drinks, dropping crumbs on her bosom, and making people feel at home. Of Benny’s two daughters, she is the elder and is always the one you see referenced in public—if there’s a gathering where one of the daughters speaks, it will always be Dorothy. She has also written four nonfiction books, including biographies of Helen Keller and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

I was thrilled to find out that her only sibling, Wendy Herrmann Harlow, and her husband were also in the group. Wendy is the younger, more reticent daughter, not eager to be out in front of the public. Both daughters were born to Herrmann and his first wife, writer Lucille Fletcher.[ii] Wendy is a copy of her lovely mother, while Dorothy has her father’s looks.

I remember only snippets of dinner—Dorothy asking me why I was such a fan of her father’s music, so I told her my story about the Gerhardt recording; having a copy of Benny’s biography under my chair but being too shy to ask her to sign it (nobody else in the party was asking for autographs, so . . .); learning that the old man who pushed Dorothy in her wheelchair was a neighbor of hers who had taken it upon himself some years ago to watch over her and was still doing so—even though he was much older than she and in poorer health; and someone commenting on Benny’s infamous, irascible, bombastic personality, to which I replied, smiling, “He didn’t suffer fools gladly.” And Dorothy, loving and devoted daughter, disagreed: “He was a pussycat!”

The Venue

After the meal the Herrmann sisters and their entourage drove to the National Cathedral while those of us who were not entouragees took a pleasant walk several blocks up Wisconsin Avenue to the Cathedral, entered, presented our tickets, and came into the mammoth, echoing, open space, the vaulted ceiling far above us.

The architectural design of the Cathedral—the second largest church building in the US and the third tallest building in DC—is called “Neo-Gothic,” based on Gothic churches built in the 1300s. Interestingly, the construction of the edifice began in 1907, with President Theodore Roosevelt laying the cornerstone, but was not completed until 1990 with President George H. W. Bush in attendance.[iii] The Cathedral is officially part of the Episcopal Church.

I had paid extra for my ticket so that I could be in the “premium” section of seats. I was really happy to find that I was just seven rows back and on the center aisle. We were seated in the nave, and the musicians were seated on the elevated floor of the chancel.

I struck up a conversation with the two guys to my right—a college student and his professor. I asked the student if he was a fan of Herrmann. “Never heard of him,” he replied. “I’m just here to fulfill a requirement.”

I glared past him at his professor. “And you call yourself a music educator!” I hissed scornfully. “For shame, sir, for shame!”

No, I didn’t really say that. But I wanted to. Surely the paucity of intelligence among today’s youth regarding extremely famous, immensely gifted twentieth-century-genius composers is staggering and disheartening. I can but hope that attendance at this unique event greatly elevated the young man’s appreciation of such.

The Concert: Psycho

The name for the concert was “Beyond Psycho: The Musical Genius of Bernard Herrmann.” Conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez took the podium, acknowledging the audience’s applause, raised his arms, and—chunk! chunk! chunk-chunk, chunk!—we were off, enveloped by “Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra,” Herrmann’s arrangement of Psycho’s musical themes.

Herrmann was often very creative in his instrumentation. Written back in 1951, his score for The Day the Earth Stood Still required electric violin, electric cello, electric bass, three organs, two pianos, and two theremins, giving this early science-fiction film an eerie, otherworldly atmosphere. In 1953 he scored Beneath the 12-Mile Reef, and, in order to evoke the movement and moods of the sea, Benny’s score included nine harps playing nine different parts (!). His Garden of Evil (1954) score occasionally requires brass players to blow air through their instruments while moving the valves, producing an almost subliminal sound reminiscent of the western wind. And Herrmann described his score for Journey to the Center of the Earth this way: “I decided to evoke the mood and feeling of inner Earth by using only instruments played in low registers. Eliminating all strings, I utilized an orchestra of woodwinds and brass, with a large percussion section and many harps. But the truly unique feature of this score is the inclusion of five organs, one large Cathedral and four electronic” (Smith, 228).

Psycho, too, had an unorthodox score. Unlike Journey to the Center of the Earth, though, from which all strings were eliminated, Herrmann decided to go with a strings-only score for Psycho—no percussion, no brass, no woodwinds. Herrmann said he did it “to complement the black-and-white photography of the film with a black-and-white score” (Smith, 237), but limiting the size of the orchestra also saved money, since Hitch was making the film on a tight budget.

A horror film with no brass “stings” when there’s a jump scare? No crashing cymbals or spine-chilling, dissonant clarinets to increase the tension? Could it be done?

Yes, it could, and Benny did it masterfully. The score moves between driving, rapid-fire pulses of short motifs repeated seemingly ad infinitum to long, slow, quiet passages that ratchet up the suspense little by little.

One example: when Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is driving her car, on the run after stealing $40,000, she imagines what others will say when they realize what she’s done (including the real-estate customer who threatens to take the loss “out of her fine, soft flesh”—foreshadowing, perhaps?). It gradually grows dark and starts to rain, and her (knife-like?) windshield wiper slashes back and forth. Oncoming headlights make it difficult for her to see. And behind it all, we have the pounding, repetitious theme from the opening credits pushing her onward. Said Benny, “[Hitch and I] both agreed to bring back the music we’d related to the opening of the film, which again tells the audience, who don’t know something terrible is going to happen to the girl, that it’s got to” (Smith, 239).

During the concert Benny’s music was masterfully played by the PostClassical Ensemble under Angel Gil-Ordóñez’s precise conducting. When the piece was through, the audience responded with a warm round of applause. I wanted to elbow the kid next to me—“Pretty good stuff, huh? Impressed now, you neophyte?”—but I refrained.

Stay tuned for the third and final portion of this post, in which we hear anecdotes from Dorothy Herrmann and learn about a guy named Norman Corwin, not Bates.

Photos and text copyright 2024, Steven Nyle Skaggs.

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[i] I was grieved to see, directly across from Ford’s Theatre and next door to the Petersen House, a tacky little souvenir shop called “Abe’s Café and Gift.” I didn’t go in. Just looking in the front window at T-shirts and cheap keychains with Lincoln’s likeness on them and other trashy tchotchkes depressed me. I love our country, but this crass desecration of a revered location just to make a buck highlighted the worst side of American capitalism. I am glad to say, however, that when I looked up the location on Google Maps today (08.30.24), the shop was closed, dark, and for lease. Maybe many others felt the same way about it as I did—I hope so!

[ii] Lucille Fletcher and Benny met while both were working in radio in the 1930s, marrying in 1939. Fletcher was a screenwriter, best known for the thrillers “Sorry, Wrong Number” (originally written for radio and later turned into a popular film starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster) and “The Hitch-Hiker.” Fletcher wrote “The Hitch-Hiker” script for radio, and husband Herrmann scored it; both the script and the score were later adapted for an eerily memorable episode of television’s The Twilight Zone. Recalling their relationship some years later, Fletcher said, “[Benny] was very nice to me. Our relationship was one of mutual respect.” Later, her voice breaking, she added, “But he had, um, love for my cousin, and that was—he wanted another woman” (Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann, 25:51–26:16). Their marriage ended in 1948, and in 1949 Benny married Fletcher’s cousin, Lucy Anderson.

[iii] If you want to see a seven-minute video documenting the Cathedral’s mind-boggling size and construction, click here.