Bernard Herrmann was an American composer and conductor best known for his work in composing for films. As a conductor, he championed the music of lesser-known composers. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest film composers. Alex Ross writes that "Over four decades, he revolutionized movie scoring by abandoning the illustrative musical techniques that dominated Hollywood in the 1930s and imposing his own peculiar harmonic and rhythmic vocabulary."
An Academy Award-winner for The Devil and Daniel Webster, Herrmann is known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, notably The Man Who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds and Marnie. He worked in radio drama, composing for Orson Welles's The Mercury Theater on the Air, and his first film score was for Welles's film debut, Citizen Kane. His other credits include Jane Eyre, Anna and the King of Siam, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Cape Fear, Fahrenheit 451 and Twisted Nerve. Herrmann scored films that were inspired by Hitchcock, like François Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black and Brian De Palma's Sisters and Obsession.