Book Excerpt of the Day

"One of Bernard Herrmann's finest sci-fi scores is Fahrenheit 451. The project came along at a difficult time in the composer's private life, as he'd just gone through a painful divorce. Then Alfred Hitchcock fired Herrmann from Torn Curtain, their seventh big-screen collaboration, for failing to deliver a pop-oriented score. Ironically, it was Hitchcock disciple Francois Truffaut who hired the composer to score his adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, a cautionary tale of a dystopian future where books are forbidden and burned by firemen... When Herrmann asked Truffaut why he'd been selected when the director had access to younger, more avant-garde composers, the director said that those composers would supply him with music of the 20th century, and that Herrmann would compose music for the 21st century."

– from Chapter 5: Sci-Fidelity and the Superhero Spectrum of Kristopher Spencer’s Film and Television Scores, 1950-1979