If you haven't heard of Alfred Hitchcock, then I'm deeply concerned. He was one of the most iconic horror film directors of all time, utilizing camera angles and music to make his viewers shiver at the edge of their seats in suspense. He was the first to set many trends that are now commonly used in most horror films today, I mean, they didn't nickname him the Master of Suspense for nothing. For one of his most well known films, Psycho, he had a theme composed specifically for that film by Bernard Herrmann (Wikipedia), to which the song "The Murder" is probably one of the most famous themes of all time.
The song "The Murder" is composed of three main movements that offer momentum from start to finish. The first is a slow build up, composed of runs, trills, and short staccato stabs, making the audience alarmed of the sudden sound and onscreen movement. The second movement consists of a lone violin making screechy and discordant sounds, then joined by the rest of the string section. The third movement consists of long and low drawn out notes performed by the cello and contrabass (Wikipedia), leaving the audience to grieve solemnly after witnessing the main character of the film die 20 minutes in. The film was released in 1960, so it's important to keep in mind that the audience has never witnessed a scene in cinematic history so horrific. The theme only added to the horror, its discordant sounds startling the viewer, creating a kind of unsettling disturbance that the audience at the time had never experienced before.
Hitchcock and Hermann revolutionized horror as a genre with their partnership, their techniques and music still being used today to invoke intense feelings of dread and suspense in horror.
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