Prior to all his film and radio scores Bernard Herrmann wrote a series of orchestral works which he called "Melodrams" as accompaniment to poetry readings. The success of these works led directly to his creation of original scores for the new art of radio drama and ultimately to his unparalleled film scoring career over the next four decades. The "Melodrams" have gone unheard and unrecorded for 75 years until now.

Herrmann's word "Melodram" derives from the Greek words for song and drama. This term, he said, is "not to be confused with the word Melodrama in which highly colored incidents are presented in dialogue form". The music was inspired by the poems much in the manner in which a song or opera is created. In these works Herrmann first explored the dramatic use of music to support emotional content and meaning beneath dialog. These early works were fundamental to his subsequent development as a composer of dramatic underscore for radio, television, and film.

In several of the Melodrams the music is of a "broad and general nature reflecting and augmenting the poem but of sufficient independent construction to be played by itself". But Herrmann also experimented with a more complicated Melodram which "follows the action of the verse word by word and becomes inseparable from the poem" as in La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats.

Origin of "Melodrams"
as told by Lucille Fletcher in a 1936 "Screen and Radio Weekly"

"In 1932 a shy, thin lad of 21 named Bernard Herrmann was working as Johnny Green’s assistant at CBS Radio. One day in the elevator, David Ross, the announcer reading poetry in a weekly series ("Columbia Variety Hour"), saw Herrmann with a copy of Emily Dickinson’s Poems in his pocket.

“Why don’t you write me a musical background for my poetry reading?” Ross asked him. He never dreamed Herrmann would take him seriously. But young Herrmann went home that night, and in two days turned out a symphonic score for Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci. A week later, he was conducting it on Variety Hour as background to Ross’ reading.

It was so successful, so different from any other type of musical background then known, that CBS executives promptly commissioned the youngster to turn out many more of these "Melodrams". They made Herrmann’s reputation as a composer, and established him as a composer for experimental radio drama.

The melodramas were full of cue music gems – effects like the shrill wind or the scattering of dead leaves in La Bell Dame Sans Merci, the moonlight in Annabel Lee, the mental loneliness of the sightless kings in The City of Brass.

In 1937 CBS Radio dedicated a program to replay several of these Melodrams where the focus was placed upon the music and Herrmann's contributions were openly acknowledged as experimental. Introductions for several of these works were written by Herrmann and illustrate his thinking with respect to the dramatic potential of mixing music and speech as he tried different approaches in each piece. These experiments served as the basis for his style of scoring radio dramas and later for his film scores."


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