Bernard on Broadway (Taxi Driver)

This is Herrmann in a different register — not the grand orchestral obsessive, but something looser, almost conversational. Jazz-inflected textures edge against a melodic line that carries a hint of the theatrical, as though Times Square itself has been scored rather than just depicted. The rhythm section provides a momentum that the earlier taxi music lacks, giving the piece forward motion rather than circular dread. There is something almost celebratory here, a city alive rather than threatening — neon-lit and kinetic — though Herrmann still plants unease in the harmonic corners, small dissonances that remind you the protagonist walking these streets is not quite of them. The orchestration has color and personality, brass figures punctuating the melody with something approaching wit. It exists in the film as contrast, and that contrast is meaningful: this is what normal city life sounds like from the outside, from someone who can never fully enter it. Play this when you want Manhattan energy without Manhattan anxiety.