James Michael Bernard (20 September 1925 – 12 July 2001) was a British film composer, particularly associated with horror films produced by Hammer Film Productions. Beginning with The Quatermass Xperiment, he scored such films as The Curse of Frankenstein and Dracula. He also occasionally scored non-Hammer films including Windom's Way (1957) and Torture Garden (1967).

Early years and World War II

Bernard was educated at Wellington College, previously attended by Christopher Lee, who starred in many of the Hammer horror films Bernard scored. In an interview late in his life, Bernard recalled that in his mid-teens three of his favourite books were The Devil Rides Out, She, and The Hound of the Baskervilles. While still a schoolboy, Bernard met Benjamin Britten when the composer came to consult the school's art master, Kenneth Green, about the stage designs for Peter Grimes. Britten took interest in an inter-house music competition, and advised Bernard on the music he was writing. The two stayed in touch during Bernard's service in the RAF from 1943 to 1946, and Britten encouraged him to learn the principles of composition.

During the war, Bernard worked with the team dedicated to breaking the code of the German Enigma machine, specialising in deciphering intercepted Japanese messages. During those years, on occasion Bernard came to London to turn pages for Britten while he played piano in recitals. inviting him to stay at his home in Aldeburgh. He went to the opera's opening night with Benjamin Britten's housekeeper and the librettist, E.M. Forster.

Paul Dehn, by now a writer and critic, asked Bernard to collaborate with him on the original screenplay for the Boulting brothers film Seven Days to Noon (1950). For this Paul Dehn and James Bernard shared the 1952 Academy Award for the Best Writing, Motion Picture Story. Then in 1953 Bernard received his first commission to write incidental music: for a radio play by Patric Dickinson, The Death of Hector. Not having been taught orchestration at the RCM, Bernard often turned for advice to Imogen Holst, whom Britten had recommended when Bernard had asked for someone "with whom I could study or go to or take things to".

Bernard also sought Holst's assistance when writing incidental music for a broadcast radio production of The Duchess of Malfi, which starred Richard Burton, Peggy Ashcroft and Paul Scofield. The music for this so impressed John Hollingsworth, effectively the music director of Hammer Film Productions, that when the composer originally scheduled to score The Quatermass Xperiment fell ill the job was offered to Bernard. The score, predating Bernard Herrmann's for Psycho by five years, has been cited as the first film score to treat strings in an unconventional, non-romantic manner, including the use of tone clusters and asking string players to bow on the wrong side of the bridge. Again, Bernard showed the score to Imogen Holst before he committed it to the recording sessions for the soundtrack. Next came Dracula (1958), in which the title cue featured a motif based on the sound Dra-cu-laaaaa, inspired by a suggestion Paul Dehn made to Bernard.

Final decades

Paul Dehn died in 1976. Working on She (1965), Bernard first met the man who later became his second life partner, actor Ken McGregor (died January 24, 1994), with whom he lived in Jamaica until McGregor's death there in 1994. Bernard then returned to London and lived there for the remainder of his life.

In later years, he was called upon by silent film historian Kevin Brownlow to write an original score for F.W. Murnau's silent horror film Nosferatu (1922/1997) and for Brownlow's documentary Universal Horror (1998) on the horror films of the American studio. He also wrote the score to Paul Cotgrove's 2001 short horror film Green Fingers (starring Hammer actresses Ingrid Pitt and Janina Faye). David Huckvale's critical biography of the composer, James Bernard – Composer to Count Dracula was published by McFarland in 2006.

References

  • Bridcut, John. Britten's Children. Faber & Faber, 2006.
  • Huckvale, David. James Bernard, Composer to Count Dracula: A Critical Biography. McFarland, 2006.
  • Huckvale, David. Hammer film scores and the musical avant-garde. McFarland, 2008.
  • Larson, Randall D. Music from the House of Hammer: Music in the Hammer Horror Films, 1950–1980. Scarecrow Press, 1996.
  • 1996 interview by film music historian Randall D. Larson
  • Music by James Bernard - Themes For A Tapestry of Terror by Steve Vertlieb
  • 1997 article in The Independent