Bernard Hermann: Whitman

In June 1944, as Americans huddled around radio receivers awaiting the latest bulletins from the Allied invasion of Normandy, CBS radio paused to present something rather astonishing by the standards of today’s 24-hour news cycle: a radio drama based on the writings of Walt Whitman. It was part of a trilogy of adaptations of American writers, the others being Carl Sandburg and Thomas Wolfe. Conceived by CBS’s star producer, Norman Corwin, it featured music by the network's foremost composer, arranger and conductor, Bernard Herrmann. 

Yes, that Bernard Herrmann. The brilliant and irascible New Yorker had already caused a stir in Hollywood with his Oscar-nominated score to Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” (1941), but it would be another decade before his landmark collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, including the scores for “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and “Psycho.” To the public, the 33-year-old Herrmann was increasingly known as the chief conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra, not to mention composer of Welles’ notorious “War of the Worlds” broadcast. 

“Whitman” aired twice, on June 20, 1944, then disappeared. An audio tape long circulated among scholars, and later surfaced on YouTube, but it is marked by crunchy period acoustics. Fortunately, however, this lost gem of radio’s golden age has been reconstructed by Herrmann scholar Christopher Husted, and can be experienced on a world-premiere Naxos recording by the Washington, D.C.-based PostClassical Ensemble, conducted by Angel Gil-Ordóñez. 

“It's timely, it's provocative, it's stimulating, and in some ways, it's disturbing, and you can't ignore it,” asserts Joseph Horowitz, the PostClassical Ensemble’s executive producer. He cites some of the drama’s most potent lines that extol the American branches of government, such as: 

The President is there in the White House for you, it is not you who are here for him;  

The Congress convenes every twelfth-month for you; 

Laws, courts, the going and coming of commerce and mails, are all for you;  

“This is America in 1944 and look where we are in 2020,” Horowitz continues. “It’s actually staggering that you are sampling a moment of unity, patriotism and optimism, using a mass medium that's far more ubiquitous than anything today.” 

Whitman’s Timely Message 

Born 201 years ago, and almost certainly America’s greatest poet, Walt Whitman has often been summoned in times of crisis. Leaves of Grass, his revolutionary collection of more than 400 free-verse poems, is a rhapsodic celebration of the country’s vast landscapes and ideals of democracy. Even as he processed the horrors of the Civil War, Whitman told of a thriving nation for all of its citizens, not just a few. His rhapsodic words inspired Corwin, whom CBS had tasked with rallying the citizenry.

“Some of Corwin's programs were conceived as propaganda but he tried to not make propaganda programs,” said Steven C. Smith, author of A Heart at Fire’s Center, a biography of Herrmann. “Rather, he used great American writers to illustrate the ideals of what America could be.” At points in the drama, Corwin frames Whitman's war poetry with what sound like WWII communiqués, complete with morse code sound effects and reports of enemy positions. “He was creating a juxtaposition — between the ideals of America and the ideas of fascism and demagoguery that were threatening to take over the world. Herrmann felt very strongly about this too.” 

For modern listeners accustomed to the casual patter of talk radio or podcasts, the Corwin-Herrmann production might seem a bit overwrought or “stentorian,” as baritone William Sharp notes in a documentary about the recording. Sharp essentially plays the role of Whitman, delivering poems including “Song of Myself,” “By Blue Ontario’s Shore,” and “A Song for Occupations.” At times the music seems to echo Aaron Copland’s 1942 Lincoln Portrait, complete with references to old American tunes. But there’s also a stark realism to Herrmann and Corwin’s approach.  

“These guys were presenting a radio drama every week,” Gil-Ordóñez says of Corwin and Herrmann. “Sometimes it's like Bach, writing a cantata every week. They had very limited means and created things that were very improvised.” Gil-Ordóñez marvels at how a pastoral sequence, featuring a gentle harp and string melody, segues to a battle poem with a dark, percussive accompaniment. 

Celebrating Herrmann’s Legacy 

The Naxos recording grew out of a month-long festival in 2016 called “Bernard Herrmann: Screen, Stage, and Radio,” which the PostClassical Ensemble co-produced with several other organizations including the National Gallery of Art. The album also contains Herrmann’s wistful Souvenirs de Voyage for clarinet quintet, and Psycho: A Narrative for String Orchestra, based on the original film score, and which conductor John Mauceri reconstructed in 1999.  

Psycho: A Narrative weaves together some of the most celebrated cues in all of film music (including those eek-eek slicing chords). But it’s worth noting that the proud Herrmann had an uneasy relationship with Hollywood. He fiercely defended film scoring against attacks from conductors and critics, and chose his projects selectively. Keeping one foot in the concert hall, he championed Charles Ives, composed a Moby Dick cantata (premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 1940) and wrote an opera version of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. 

Author Stephen C. Smith maintains that Herrmann’s three-decade career at CBS is greatly under-appreciated, for he championed much new and forgotten music. “Most people don't realize that CBS had its own symphonic concerts which I think were far more interesting than what Toscanini was doing,” Smith said, referring to the NBC Symphony and conductor Arturo Toscanini. “CBS was incredibly proud of that time and the fact that they had someone who was such an original.” 

That originality has been slowly but steadily recognized in the concert world. Horowitz hopes that we can finally move past outdated arguments over the validity of film music. “It's very hard for us to [move past that] and just look at him in juxtaposition with Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, and Howard Hanson,” he said. “But Herrmann is at least at the same level, pure and simple. He knew it but nobody else did.” 

- Written by Brian Wise

Brian Wise writes about classical music for BBC Music Magazine, Musical America, and is the producer of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s national radio broadcasts.