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<\/a><\/p>\nA towering figure in twentieth century American music, Bernard Herrmann<\/strong> (1911-1975) has long been pigeon-holed as a \u201cHollywood composer.\u201d Though he is widely acknowledged the supreme American composer for film (Citizen<\/em> Kane, Vertigo, North by Northwest<\/em>, etc.), his concert output remains virtually unknown. Working with the young Orson Welles<\/strong> and later with the legendary radio and screenwriter Norman Corwin<\/strong>, he was also America\u2019s foremost radio composer, and conductor of a radio orchestra \u2013 William Paley\u2019s visionary CBS Symphony \u2013 that boldly promoted new and unfamiliar music.<\/p>\nThe forthcoming Bernard Herrmann festival <\/a>in Washington, D.C. \u00a0\u2013 a collaboration of PostClassical Ensemble<\/a>, the National Gallery of Art, the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center, and Georgetown University — is the first ever to celebrate Herrmann \u201cin the round\u201d as one of the most important and influential American musical personalities of his generation. It includes world-premiere recreations of two classic Corwin\/Herrmann radio dramas with live actors and orchestra, the DC premiere of Herrmann\u2019s \u201cPsycho<\/em>: A Narrative for String Orchestra,\u201d a one-hour exploration of \u201cThe Music of Psycho<\/em>\u201d with live orchestra, screenings of 21 films, and much more. In addition to myself and PostClassical Ensemble \u00a0Music Director Angel Gil-Ordonez, the participants include the conductor\/scholar John Mauceri, the Herrmann scholar Christopher Husted, the Corwin scholar Dan Gediman, the film-music scholar Neil Lerner, the composer\u2019s daughter Dorothy Herrmann, and Norman Corwin\u2019s daughter Diane Corwin Okarski.<\/h4>\n
The festival has been undertaken in the conviction that Simon Rattle\u2019s performance of Herrmann\u2019s \u00a0Psycho<\/em> Symphonic Narrative, opening the present Berlin Phiharmonic season, is a harbinger \u2013 that Herrmann is a major twentieth century musical personality whose time will come, and relatively soon. He has never lacked admirers, even venerators, for his incomparable film scores. But no musician capable of inventing the brilliant faux French Romantic opera aria of Citizen<\/em> Kane<\/em>, or the immortal shower screeches of Psycho<\/em>, or the daring Liebestod of The<\/em> Ghost and Mrs. Muir<\/em> could possibly have failed to matter beyond Hollywood. That Herrmann\u2019s pioneering radio work, as composer and conductor, is a necessarily ingredient in appreciating Herrmann\u2019s film genius is in fact one starting point of our festival.<\/h4>\n
Of the festival\u2019s participants, John Mauceri was responsible for rescuing the Psycho<\/em> narrative from undeserved oblivion. Christopher Husted was responsible for creating the performance materials for the radio plays \u201cUntitled\u201d (1944), about a dead American soldier, and \u201cWhitman\u201d (1944), which pays tribute to Walt Whitman. During World War II, these and other Norman Corwin radio dramas, scored and conducted by Herrmann, were a vital part of the \u201chome front\u201d effort. The radio-drama genre, of which Corwin was the acknowledged master, became a forgotten art with the advent of television. Dan Gediman, a peerless authority on Corwin and the golden age of radio drama, will use audio clips to illustrate the Corwin\/Herrmann collaboration and how it fostered Herrmann\u2019s film work to come.<\/h4>\n