Bernard Herrmann

'A black-and-white sound' was how Bernard Herrmann described his strings-only score for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), designed to mirror the film's photography. Hitchcock originally wanted the shower sequence silent; after screening it both ways, he changed his mind.

He learned his craft on New York radio, writing for Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre broadcasts, where even five seconds of music could tell the ear a scene was shifting – an idea carried into his first picture, Citizen Kane (1941). For The Devil and Daniel Webster he conjured the devil with telephone wires singing at 4 a.m.

Nine Hitchcock collaborations followed, including North by Northwest and Vertigo, whose obsessive love story echoes Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Away from Hitchcock came The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Twilight Zone. His last assignment, recorded shortly before he died in 1975, was Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.