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Bernard HerrmannAnother View Other Friends, Anthony Collins -Herrmann's Rebirth andApotheosis O rson Welles's masterpiece Citizen Kane, with Bernard Herrmann's innovative score, greatly impressed Annette and me, so I was especially pleased to meet and work with Herrmann, an enthusiastic young conductor, on his score for Welles's next film, The JI,fagnijicent Ambersons. A highlight of the score was a nine-minute violin solo with only woodwind accompaniment to underline Richard Bennett's long soliloquy about the Ambersons' decline, which we recorded in one take. (However, later the scene and its music were eliminated, and the film was dramatically cut and given a "happy ending." Herrmann protested this mutilation of his score by removing his name from the screen credits. Roy Webb was hired to patch up a musical conclusion to close this botched production.) After that first encounter, I reported to Annette how stimulating the day's session had been and how fascinating Bernard's comments about music, composers, and conductors had been during orchestral breaks. About 10 P.M. that evening, Bernard was walking in our neighborhood (he had rented a house nearby) and observed our lights on. He knocked at the door and entered to say how very pleased he was with my performance of the long solo (he, too, played violin). Attracted by our paintings , sculptures, and books, he became engrossed in speaking about music, art, and books, only departing about 2 A.M. We were equally 160 BernardHerrmann -Another View • 161 Lucille Fletcher Herrmann, Bernard Herrmann, with baby Wendy and Dorothy (Taffy) as residents in the Kaufman home, April 1946. entranced by his conversation and thoughts about the vast universe. He mused, "Imagine an ant in this living room ... could it envisage the size ofyour house with many rooms, on a block with several houses, in a city containing hundreds of thousands of buildings, the extent of Los Angeles County, the state of California, the entire United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin and South America, the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, r62 A Fiddler's Tale Asia, Africa, and Europe?" Benny continued, "Whenever I am annoyed that some music isn't well played, I think of the universe's infinity and how insignificant such matters are!" We became close friends ofBenny and his wife, the screenwriter Lucille Fletcher, and admired their adorable little girl Dorothy (Taffy) and baby Wendy, who arrived a year later. With Lucille and Benny we browsed in bookstores and visited the Huntington Library and Art Collections . The museum's impressive collection of English paintings delighted Bernard and Lucille, who greatly loved England and its arts. They introduced us to the delights oftravel, painting, and musical books ofthe Sitwells. Bernard became obsessed with composing an opera based on Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and over many years would perform excerpts for us, playing on a small rented upright piano, and singing all the roles in his hoarse, cracked smoker's voice. Lucille had created a libretto using Bronte's own words as much as possible. Benny couldn't bear the idea of any cuts being made in the completed work, so he refused several opportunities for its production, including one with Julius Rudel conducting the New York City Opera. I found it bracing to work on Benny's next score, AllThat Money Can Buy, based on Stephen Vincent Benet's The Devil and Daniel Webster. This inventive score featured a reel that no one violinist could perform. I played "Pop Goes the Weasel" with a few virtuoso tricks several times. Benny then imposed these sound tracks on top of each other, creating a dynamic sonic montage for the violinistic Beezelbub, Mr. Scratch! This effective score won the coveted Academy Award for Herrmann. Jascha Heifetz asked Benny, "Who was that violinist?" Amused, Benny replied, "Oh, a Hungarian fiddler I picked up." Bernard, a fascinating, stormy personality, enriched America's musical life with his New York CBS broadcasts of rarely heard American, English, French, Russian, German, and Austrian composers. He generously invited refugee composers to conduct their own music with the CBS Symphony, among them Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Igor Stravinsky , Darius Milhaud, and Anthony Collins. Bernard premiered works of Charles Ives, Gerald Finzi, Edmund Rubbra, and Ralph Vaughan Williams , and revived nineteenth-century composers Joachim Raff and Hermann Goetz, whom George Bernard Shaw considered more gifted than Brahms! During the afternoon rehearsal of Goetz's symphony, Benny suddenly asked the orchestra to stand up while playing. He had read that all orchestral strings...

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