Psycho

Rather than following a movement-by-movement concert structure, Herrmann's "Psycho" score unfolds as a series of short, tightly focused cues written to track the film's scenes, and concert performances (often played live alongside a screening of the movie) present them in that same order.

The music opens with a jagged, agitated idea for the strings alone, all sharp attacks and nervous energy, establishing a mood of unease before a single line of dialogue is spoken. As the story moves through its ordinary daytime scenes, the music mostly recedes, offering thin, quiet sustained tones that never let the tension fully relax.

The landmark every listener waits for arrives with the shower scene: a series of shrieking, high-pitched notes played with a hard, biting stroke of the bow, repeated in short stabbing bursts. It is one of the most famous sounds in film history, instantly recognizable even to people who have never seen the movie.

After that climax, the score turns darker and more sustained, with low, groaning lines underpinning the film's final revelations. The last cues are spare and unresolved, trailing off rather than building to a triumphant close, leaving the listener with the same unsettled feeling the story does.

Bernard Herrmann composed the score for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" in 1960, choosing to write for string orchestra alone, an unusual and economical decision that gave the film a lean, biting sound. Hitchcock had initially wanted no music at all for the famous shower scene, but Herrmann's shrieking string cue became inseparable from that moment and from the film's identity. The score was written quickly to meet the production's schedule and recorded with a hired string ensemble. In the decades since, it has become one of the most widely excerpted and performed film scores in the orchestral repertoire, frequently presented in concert either as a standalone suite or performed live alongside a projection of the film itself, introducing new audiences to Herrmann's writing.