John Williams

Apart from 'Cavatina' from 'The Deer Hunter', I'm not a fan of Williams. I just find him a bit OTT and lacking subtlety. I much prefer Hermann.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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Herrmann was many things - but I don't think he was ever once subtle.

How about Taxi Driver?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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You mean outside of the gigantic building drumroll and brass hits?

Which were off-set by the smooth jazz, representing Travis' mental decline. Hermann's scores often mirrored multiple facets of the film. Just listen to the music from Vertigo.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

'In Taxi Driver, just as the torment of his personality refuses to leave him, the movie stresses us out with a dreary, hypnotic narration, and the famous Bernard Hermann score, whose percussion is loud, commanding and scary, and underlined by a queasy saxophone track, unrefined and sleazy.'

'Bernard Hermann's soundtrack, which he wrote shortly before his death, turns Travis's ordinary life into what is sometimes a heroic epic, sometimes a horror film, and other times no more than just another New York story. Two major themes dominate the score of Taxi Driver. The first features an eight-bar melodic sighing of a solo saxophone. The theme evokes the lonely melancholy of an individual alienated from his environment. The smooth, jazzy tones of the saxophone also complement New York's urban terrain, which we see as Travis passes through the various neighborhoods of the city in his taxi. The theme varies somewhat, particularly in tempo, but it follows Travis in his taxi as he drives his often sordid passengers around the city.
Travis's psychotic tendencies shine through in a second theme, characterized by an unresolved, dissonant chord played by trumpets over rhythmic snare drums. At various points in the movie, a harp joins the trumpets and snare. At the beginning of the movie, the trumpets punctuate moments that augur Travis's instability, such as when he hits Iris with his car. While Travis descends gradually into psychosis, this theme becomes dominant in the score. The unresolved chords of the blaring trumpets echo Travis's feelings of discord with the city, and the snare drums propel him to action. The unresolved quality of this theme is characteristic of several Hitchcock movie scores, particularly that of Vertigo, which Hermann also composed.'

There's a difference between loud and unsubtle.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?