although I am not a great believer in the technique of the “leit-motiv” for motion picture music, the nature of this film demanded some “leit-motivs’”in linking together the various time juxtapositions. The most important motif—that of Kane’s power—is given out in the very first two bars heard. The second motif which should give away the secret of “Rosebud” is also heard early in the film.

The “power” motive is a very familiar motive in the film since it is heard so many times throughout. This motive, however, is virtually identical to a prominent theme in Rachmaninoff’s symphonic poem, The Isle of the Dead. For a composer as steeped in the classical musical tradition as Herrmann, such a relationship can hardly be coincidental. Also, the second of Herrmann’s motives, the “Rosebud” motive, is itself a transformation of the “power” motive, so both motives seem to derive from Rachmaninoff’s theme. But why might Herrmann have created these relationships? I give my thoughts below in a film music analysis.

The “Power” Motive

This motive is five notes long and in its initial form outlines the interval of the tritone, which lends the theme a dark, sinister character:

As Herrmann says, we hear this motive with the film’s opening shots, those of Xanadu, Kane’s enormous estate filled with unusual and lavish items he has collected over the years. The motive is actually played twice successively as the camera pans up the estate’s gate with the “No Trespassing” sign. Hear it in this clip from 0:33:

The motive often appears with the last note changed to form the smaller interval of a third:

We hear this form of the motive in the famous “Breakfast Montage” (from 1:48):

Rachmaninoff’s Theme

Now compare this motive to Rachmaninoff’s theme from The Isle of the Dead (transposed to the same key for comparison):

Hear it below at 3:17, 11:02, and 18:02 (among many other locations):

Not only are the notes the same as Herrmann’s second form of the power motive, but the rhythm and orchestration with muted brass instruments (at 3:17 in the clip above) are also incredibly similar. The resemblance is striking enough to suggest that Herrmann had this theme in mind when writing Citizen Kane.

The “Dies Irae” Chant

The origins of the power motive run even deeper—Rachmaninoff’s theme is shaped from the first four notes of the chant known as the “Dies Irae” (“day of wrath”), which is part of the Catholic Requiem Mass (again, transposed to the same key for comparison):

Rachmaninoff had something of an obsession with this chant, as he incorporated it into several of his works including the Second Symphony, the Symphonic Dances, and here in The Isle of the Dead.

Being a quotation of Rachmaninoff’s theme, Herrmann’s power motive therefore draws on the Dies Irae as well. But why quote Rachmaninoff? Why not just quote the chant directly? Well, the chant does not have its own set rhythm, as is the case with all old chants like this one. Herrmann’s borrowing of Rachmaninoff is likely a way of keeping the association with the chant while giving the motive a rhythm that makes it more recognizable. But then, why the association with the chant in the first place?

An Interpretation

The Power Motive

The text of the Dies Irae chant is all about the Day of Judgement, when devout Christians will rise to heaven while the “cursed” will be “sentenced to acrid flames”. Herrmann’s allusion to the chant is therefore a commentary on Kane’s morality: by evoking the Dies Irae, the power motive signals a condemnation of Kane’s actions, and indeed this is how it is generally associated with Kane throughout the film. In the clip of the breakfast montage above, for example, we hear the motive in the growling brass when Kane rudely finishes his wife’s sentence, saying that, by printing his opinions in his newspaper rather than actual fact, people will think “what I tell them to think”. This drives Kane and his wife further apart and towards their ultimate divorce.

There are plenty of other examples of this theme’s association with Kane’s selfish lust for power and the negative connotations it entails:

• When the reporter, Thompson, arrives at the library to read the diary of Thatcher, who was Kane’s guardian and a heavy influence in the development of Kane’s greed (the power motive is heard right at the start of the clip in slightly varied form):

• The bankruptcy of Kane’s newspaper business and his admission that he never made a single investment, but only used his money “to buy things” (heard at 0:23 in the following clip):

• When we are introduced to Kane’s years at the Inquirer newspaper, where he slowly becomes corrupted by greed (here, the motive is part of a larger ragtime march by Herrmann – at 0:03 in the muted trumpets, and at 0:18 in clarinets):

The Rosebud Motive

Herrmann emphasizes the power motive’s association with condemnation by contrasting it with the other prominent leitmotif in the score—the one for Rosebud:

Like the power motive, The Rosebud motive contains five notes and is nearly identical in rhythm. But its contour is very much the opposite of the power motive. And instead of a tritone or minor third, it ends with a falling fourth, which gives the motive a much brighter, even hopeful sound.

This motive is associated with the more positive influences in Kane’s life, most of all the sled, Rosebud, which symbolizes his lost childhood and the resulting unhappiness he has felt ever since.

As Herrmann himself says, the meaning of the word Rosebud, around which the entire film hinges, is actually given away through the music well before it is revealed in the images. The motive is heard just after Kane utters his final word, “Rosebud”, then is heard again when we see Kane as a young boy playing in the slow with the sled.

Hear it in this flashback scene from 0:09:

The motive is also heard in relation to another positive influence in Kane’s life, Susan, his second wife. Hear it in the following scenes:

• Kane’s first meeting with Susan (from 0:19):

• Kane after Susan leaves (from 2:30):

Taken together, the Rosebud and power motives suggest the basis of Kane’s psychology—the lost happiness of childhood that he attempts to replace with all the material goods that money can buy. Herrmann establishes this relationship musically at the start of the film by juxtaposing the two motives in the very opening scene. Listen a final time to the music of this scene (from 0:33) and note the appearances of the two motives at the following times:

0:33 – Power (muted brass)

0:44 – Power (muted brass)

0:55 – Rosebud (same muted brass as the power motive, already suggesting their connection)

1:34 – Rosebud (hauntingly in the vibraphone)

2:03 – Power (muted brass)

2:14 – Rosebud (flute)

2:47 – Power (muted brass)

2:55 – Rosebud (flute)

These kinds of intricate details in Herrmann’s score certainly contribute to the widely-held belief that Citizen Kane as a whole is one of the greatest films—if not the greatest—ever made.

Bernard Herrmann’s score for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is one of the most highly regarded in film history, most of all because the music does so much to create the suspenseful and sometimes terrifying atmosphere of the film. It is surprising, then, that some of the score was not written originally for the film. As Royal S. Brown observes in a film music analysis in his book, Overtones and Undertones,

an entire cue from Psycho (“The Swamp”) was lifted almost note for note from the “Interlude” of a nonfilm-music composition … Herrmann had composed nearly twenty-five years before Psycho, a Sinfonietta (1936) which, like the Psycho score, is for strings only. That Interlude, in fact, contains a three-note motif associated with Norman Bates’s “madness” heard throughout the film. Parts of the Psycho score are taken from other of the Sinfonietta’s five movements as well.

Brown is certainly correct in pointing out the similarity between “The Swamp” and the sinfonietta. Listen, for instance, to the first thirty seconds or so of “The Swamp” cue below (start from 6:08):

Now listen to the same amount of music from the fourth movement of the sinfonietta (starting from 10:07):

There is no question that the two are nearly identical throughout. Especially striking is their opening three-note figure, which is the “madness” motive that Brown mentions from Psycho. There are other similarities between the sinfonietta and Psycho, but they are much more tenuous than this. Listen, for instance, to the repeated chords at the opening of the Psycho prelude:

Now listen to the start of the sinfonietta’s second movement, which is a scherzo (begin from 3:46):

There is some resemblance here, but even so, it would be wrong to think that Herrmann simply looted his sinfonietta to create the Psycho score. Despite both being scored for strings only and producing quite an intense mood, the two are actually quite different in three important respects: repetition vs. development, harmony, and ostinatos.

1. Repetition vs. Development

The sinfonietta is composed of five movements that are played without a break between them and contain constant developments of material from the opening of the first movement. This technique is typical of classical concert music, where one of the main objectives of the composer is to unify a whole work through the constant development of a few motives.The idea really gained momentum with Beethoven, whose symphonies tend to lead the listener through a psychological journey that often climaxes with the last movement (the Ninth Symphony being the best example of this). Thus it only makes sense that Herrmann would compose his sinfonietta in this way – after all, this is what concert composers had been doing for the last few centuries.

But clearly, Herrmann recognized one of the key differences between concert music and film music. Concert music, especially that given only an abstract name like “symphony”, “sonata”, or indeed “sinfonietta”, generally builds its own structure because it has no external associations. In other words, a concert piece tends to create its own progressive “narrative” by developing rather than repeating its musical material.

On the other hand, in films the music is always associated with the narrative being played out onscreen, so it needs no musical narrative for it to make sense. The narrative in films is also usually presented in a fragmentary manner, with quick jumps between different times and locations. So in most cases writing a continuous concert-style piece with a musical narrative is one of the worst things a composer can do with a film score because the fragmentary nature of film generally prevents such a technique from succeeding. Also, because we are so focused on the film’s narrative when watching a film, we devote less of our attention to the music. Consequently, repeating ideas is more desirable than developing them because, unless we are paying close attention to it, much of the music tends to be heard only subconsciously.

Herrmann was clearly well aware of this tendency, as he once said that audiences at best “listen with only half an ear.” Hence in the Psycho score, many of the cues are heard in essentially the same form several times throughout the film to help unify the many disparate fragments of the film’s narrative.

Compare, for example, the first few seconds of the highlighted cues with those below them:

“Prelude”

“The Rainstorm”

“The Search” (start from 8:12)

“The City” (start from 1:56)

“The Car Lot” (start from 5:05)

“The Parlor” (start from 5:15)

“Temptation”

“The Package” (start from 6:50)

“Hotel Room” (start from 3:10)

Herrmann’s sinfonietta does not repeat material this extensively. The motives there are always being developed and transformed, keeping the music progressing along its own musical narrative. In Psycho, much of our attention is focused on the gripping narrative, so repetition of the cues helps us to think of the film as a complete whole despite its fragmentary nature.

2. Harmony

Another major difference between Herrmann’s sinfonietta and Psycho score is in their use of harmony. The sinfonietta is a modernist work based on harmonies that largely avoid chords built in thirds, that is, the familiar major, minor, and seventh chords of tonal music. Rather, its harmonies are built more in seconds, tritones, and sevenths, like much concert music of the twentieth century. It also has no external “program” to suggest what the music might mean. It is simply called “sinfonietta” with rather neutral names for each movement such as “adagio” and “variations”. As a result, at nearly twenty minutes, it is a difficult work to listen to, even for an ardent Herrmann fan like myself.

By contrast, when one listens to Herrmann’s score for Psycho, especially after hearing the sinfonietta first, it is surprising to find that much of the music uses familiar tonal chords. (The famous shower scene music with its harsh dissonant chords is therefore unusual in the score, a fact that makes it stand out all the more.) The Prelude, for example, begins with a repeated minor chord with a major seventh, what is called a minor-major seventh chord:

Although such a chord is not exactly common in tonal music, it is not difficult to hear the minor chord as the main component here and the seventh as an element of dissonance that demands resolution. Herrmann never gives the chord resolution, so we are left with a feeling of suspense as long as the chord sounds and whenever it recurs, which is often. In fact, Herrmann employs the minor-major seventh chord so frequently in Hitchcock films that Royal S. Brown has dubbed it “the Hitchcock chord”.

“The City” begins with alternating diminished and half-diminished seventh chords:

While this progression is not a common one in tonal music, the chords themselves are familiar ones that, because they are seventh chords, demand resolution and push the music forward. Herrmann, however, deprives this music of any resolution and therefore appropriately matches the suspenseful quality of these scenes.

Also consider the music of “Temptation” and similar cues:

These cues involve a half-diminished seventh chord going to a minor chord, both familiar tonal harmonies. The progression itself, however, is quite uncommon and lends a feeling of strangeness to the music. As well, the minor chord is not simply a pure minor triad—it has the interval of a ninth superimposed onto it in the melody. Through its dissonance, this interval does not allow the chord to sound like a resolution of the half-diminished chord in the previous bar. Thus the feeling of suspense appropriately continues through these cues.

3. Ostinatos

The other main difference between the sinfonietta and the Psycho score is the latter’s use of ostinatos. An ostinato is a short span of music that is repeated many times, usually as an accompaniment figure. For Herrmann, the ostinato was one of the fundamental techniques of film music composition. Indeed, it can be found in many of his film scores. Unlike a melody, an ostinato has no beginning or end, so it can be broken off at any time. This is a great advantage in film music since scenes can change rapidly between times, locations, or even between emotional states of the different characters. For this reason, Herrmann was generally against the practice of writing melodies in film scores. As he once said,

You know, the reason I don’t like this tune business is that a tune has to have eight or sixteen bars, which limits you as a composer. Once you start, you’ve got to finish—eight or sixteen bars. Otherwise, the audience doesn’t know what the hell it’s about. It’s putting handcuffs on yourself.

Psycho makes use of many different ostinatos. The Prelude alone contains a number of them that rotate furiously among themselves. This structure mirrors the agitation Marion feels in the first third of the film with the several conflicting thoughts going on in her mind.

“Temptation” is another example of an ostinato in Psycho. In this case, the ostinato is consistently linked with Marion’s thoughts on the $40,000 she decides to steal. Although it is calmer in its rhythm, the dissonance of its half-diminished and minor chord with added ninth (as noted earlier) lend it an appropriate sense of sustained, low-level tension.

“The Peephole” offers yet a different ostinato in the Psycho score, this one accompanying Norman’s spying on Marion through a hole in the wall as she undresses. In this scene, the ostinato maintains tension not only because of its insistent repetitions, but also because of the dissonant major second it reiterates, and the uneven syncopated rhythm on which it is based:

Here’s a YouTube clip of the same (start at 1:54):

As mentioned earlier, the sinfonietta is based mainly on the development of a few motives throughout the work. Like repetition in general, ostinatos are essentially foreign to its musical language. The Psycho score, on the other hand, makes extensive use of ostinatos, thus giving it a distinct sound from the sinfonietta.

Conclusion

In summary, there are obvious similarities between Herrmann’s sinfonietta of 1936 and his Psycho score of 1960. Both are scored for strings alone, both express a dark mood, the “madness” motive of Psycho derives straight from the sinfonietta, and the fourth movement of the sinfonietta appears virtually unchanged in “The Swamp” cue in Psycho. Yet at the same time, Herrmann differentiated the two works through repetition vs. development, harmony, and ostinatos. Thus, it becomes clear that Herrmann did not employ the same strategies in both works but was deeply sensitive to the vastly different functions of concert music and film music. No wonder he continues to be one of the most admired film composers of all time.