too bad Bernard Herrmann didn't live longer. When he died in 1975, on the day he finished scoring Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," he had long since earned his position as one of the top film composers of his era. But he longed for something more. An opera of "Wuthering Heights" went unperformed, and he craved the kind of serious attention he's now getting.

That attention is well deserved. Herrmann grew up in New York City, the son of a prosperous family of Russian-Jewish immigrants, and attended NYU and Juilliard. Hired as a conductor for the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1934, he wrote incidental music for radio dramas and led the CBS Symphony. He was an adventurous programmer of Milhaud, Stravinsky and Hindemith, a member of Aaron Copeland's Young Composers' Group, and he introduced American audiences to much of the music of William Walton.

When one of his radio employers moved to Hollywood, Herrmann followed. The employer was Orson Welles, the film "Citizen Kane." Like his boss, Herrmann was an outsider in the clique-ish Hollywood musical scene. His music wasn't reassuring and soothing; he went for stark, experimental sounds, raucous rhythms and odd textures. Herrmann didn't write melody so much as mood, but he was a harmonizer second to none. As part of a film narrative, his scores were ear magnets — they made everything you were watching feel more lifelike. As stand-alone compositions, they hold your attention without making you feel like a lowbrow.

The usual take on Herrmann is how well he wrote for such Hitchcock thrillers as "Psycho," "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and "Vertigo." But it was clear to anyone with ears that much of this music transcended its genre. When heard by itself, "Psycho: A Suite for Strings," comes off as a strangely edgy string workout, with jagged rhythms and sighing melodies that make it at once modern and challenging, yet completely accessible. The "Marnie: Suite" mixes a Mahlerian sweep with the stately repose of Elgar. With its creepy snare drum opening and ominous, nocturnal colors, Herrmann's "Taxi Driver" music, here arranged as "A Night-Piece for Orchestra," oozes affectionate, after-hours sleaze.

Fans of conductor Esa-Pekkasalonen have a new disc to swear by. These persuasively recorded performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic are attentive and shapely, the playing keenly felt: This disc should inspire the more liberal orchestral programmers out there.

Instead of embracing serialism and atonality, Herrmann dabbled in everything from gushy romantic tidal waves to aimless, other-worldly musings. Perhaps that's what makes Herrmann the quintessential American composer: non-academic, ambitious, successful and a polyglot of influences, he was a proud dabbler. Eat your heart out, John Williams.

— Tim Riley

Tim Riley is a commentator for Public Radio International's "The World."