Herrmann scored the shower against orders
Hitchcock asked for the murder to play unscored. Herrmann wrote the strings anyway, and Hitchcock conceded on the spot.
- audio
- atomic
- production-story
Hitchcock's instruction was that Psycho — the shower scene should play with no music — water, screams, knife. Bernard Herrmann wrote the shrieking string cue anyway and played the scene for him both ways; Hitchcock immediately agreed the scored version was right, reportedly waving off his own earlier instruction as an "improper suggestion." The story comes from Herrmann's own telling, retold in Rebello — self-serving, perhaps, but nobody disputes the outcome.
Two lessons filed under Non-diegetic sound: the scene's violence is substantially a sound effect (screen the two versions back to back), and authorship is negotiated — the most famous directorial choice in Hitchcock's most famous scene was the composer's.
Herrmann scored the whole film for strings alone: his "black-and-white sound" for a black-and-white film.