Auditory Thriller: Sound, Music, and Audience Emotions in 'Psycho' Anonymous College

Try to imagine music that would accompany someone getting stabbed to death in a movie. Now try to imagine music that would accompany a love scene. Hopefully these are two very different pieces of music. Sound alerts the audience of the action and atmosphere of a film. Many films’ scores have brought audiences to tears, made them smile, or tied their stomach in knots. Two gifted composers that have written such scores are Bernard Herrmann, best known for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, and Danny Elfman, best known for feats such as “The Simpsons Theme” and The Nightmare Before Christmas but also was in charge of scoring and arranging the soundtrack for Gus Van Sant’s 1998 reinterpretation of Psycho. The 1960 Psycho film sets a precedent for sound’s relation to mood and plot, which the 1998 remake utilizes to destabilize the audience’sfeelings and expectations of events.

Bernard Herrmann’s score in the 1960 Psycho commands the audience to feel specific ways during specific parts of the film. The fast-paced, mid-register string motif evokes anxiety, because the minor and seconds and dissonances cause uneasiness, and this motif never has a definitive resolution. The higher register legato violin soli that carries over the above motif is...