It's Miklos Rozsa's birthday. He was born 99 years ago today in Budapest.
Rozsa was the 2nd greatest composer of the Golden Age of Hollywood (Bernard Herrmann was the greatest, duh). While his music was firmly rooted in both the European tradition and Hungarian folk music (a la Bartok) it also had an undeniably more "modern" quality than many of his European contemporaries who emigrated from Europe and found themselves working in pictures.
Rozsa had a lengthy list of both film and concert works that distinguish themselves from many of his contemporaries, was well traveled and moved in the circles of the artistic elite regardless of where he found himself. He greatly disliked many of the films he scored but still lavished great attention on most of them (there's a lesson in there I think). He was also one of the few composers in Hollywood that Bernard Herrmann openly respected, which was extremely rare. He was also a musicologist (he was awarded a PhD at the Leipzig Conservatory) and threw himself into research for such films as Quo vadis?, Ivanhoe and El Cid in order to better colour (that's for you, Tim) his scores.
I suggest his book, A Double Life, if you can get your hands on it. It's a great read.
The Playlist:
Symphony in 3 Movements (if you like Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, this is a great spin)
String Quartets 1 & 2
Julius Caesar - probably one of Rozsa's most thoughtful scores in which he makes interesting use of overdubbing and stereo separation during the lengthy final scene.
Ben-Hur - pretty much one of the greatest scores for one of the greatest films ever.
Knights of the Round Table - a dull script and wooden performance by Robert Taylor (as Lancelot) don't stand in the way of Rozsa's score being detailed and rousing.
El Cid - yet another epic role for Charlton Heston.
10 comments:
Yet another composer I know little about. Once I'm done with grad school, I'm determined to expand my knowledge of repertoire. Although, admittedly, I don't much care for the style of those older film scores...
...you might say... it's not my... favourite?
Actually, Korngold is the one I don't really like. It's just unrelenting, bombastic texture. But that's the way it was done back then, and the music itself is pretty well done.
One has to remember some things with regard to Korngold. A lot of people accuse his music of sounding like "Hollywood". Well that's fine and dandy, but there wasn't a Hollywood sound before Korngold came along. He just wrote in the late-Romantic vein that he was an unequivocal master of (from the time he was 8 Years Old!!!) and everyone else merely imitated him. I actually find much of his music to be a lot more interesting, melodic, well-constructed, and sensitive than many of his Viennese contemporaries.
Also, if you listen to some well-done rerecordings of Korngold's music you'll find that it's not the music that isn't good but rather the recording quality of the time. I suggest the recent recording with Andre Previn and the London Symphony on Deutsche Gramophone. It's awesome and has healthy suites from 4 of Korngold's finest scores (and doesn't include music from The Adventures of Robin Hood).
From a concert standpoint his opera Die Tote Stadt (available at budget price on Naxos) is awesome, his violin concerto is gorgeous (the Anne-Sophie Mutter recording is my favorite) and his Symphony in F# is to die for.
I never challenged his originality. And you're right, there was no "Hollywood" sound... and I'm not so sure there is now, either. People are bitches.
I just don't get into his sound, that's all.
I find Strauss' tone poems uninteresting, as well. To some people, that's heresy. *shrugs*
I'm not challenging your non-challenging of his originality either.
i am.
The gauntlet has been thrown!
You'll meet on the playground after school!
Knives, chains, rocks, dancing gangsters, no guns.
We should have a medieval brawl like in Anchorman.
What about biting and hair pulling?
Wait...we'll settle this the old Navy way...first guy to die, loses!
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