Psycho: Suite for Strings

The suite strings together the film's key cues into a continuous narrative for strings alone, without brass, woodwinds, or percussion.

It opens with the restless, scurrying music that underscored the opening credits and Marion Crane's flight from the city, all nervous repeated notes and short, cutting phrases that never quite settle into a melody.

A quieter, more anxious middle section follows, built from held chords and sighing figures, tracking the unease that builds once Marion arrives at the Bates Motel.

The suite's most famous landmark arrives with the music for the shower scene: high, stabbing, dissonant chords played in short, violent strokes, an effect achieved entirely by bowed strings without a single drum or cymbal.

After that climax the music pulls back into bleaker, sparser writing, echoing the film's turn toward dread and aftermath, before the suite closes on an unresolved, unsettled chord rather than a triumphant ending.

Bernard Herrmann composed the score for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" in 1960, choosing to write for string orchestra alone at a time when thrillers typically used a full orchestra. Hitchcock had originally wanted no music at all under the shower scene, but Herrmann's stark, shrieking string chords became one of the most recognized passages in film music and helped define the scene's terror. After the film's release, Herrmann and others arranged a concert suite drawing on the score's main cues, allowing the music to be performed independently in the concert hall. It has since become a familiar entry in orchestral pops programs and Halloween-season concerts, valued both as a showcase for string players and as an introduction to Herrmann's film work for listeners who may never have considered a soundtrack as concert music.