Herrmann, for all his Angst, was a New Yorker born and bred. His Sinfonietta was composed in 1936, just before his film career took off. It contains what Steven Smith, Herrmann's biographer, describes as ''a quality dissonant Interlude''. Many years later this resurfaced as the 'madhouse theme' in Psycho.

The Sinfonietta is composed of five movements that are played without a break between them and contain constant developments of material from the opening of the first movement.