CHAPTER 15 | FILM MUSIC 363
Lady Be Good! in 1924). Steiner’s score for King Kong (1933) is an early
landmark in sound fi lm: its title music, played under the open-
ing credits, functions like an operatic overture, setting the tone
for the ensuing drama and introducing important leitmotifs. At
its best, as in the sweeping “Tara” theme from Gone with the Wind
(1939), Steiner’s music adds grandeur and emotional intensity to
the cinematic experience. At its worst, his music can be busy and
intrusive, a holdover from the silent era, when the music had to be
continuous from start to fi nish.
Steiner’s fi lm scores set the tone for what has been called Hol-
ly wood’s “golden age,” from the advent of sound through the
1950s. A number of the golden age’s leading fi lm composers were,
like Steiner, European émigrés with classical training; some had
careers as concert performers and composers in addition to their
fi lm work. Among them were the German Franz Waxman (The
Bride of Frankenstein, 1935), the Hungarian Miklós Rósza (The Thief
of Baghdad, 1940), and the Ukrainian Dimitri Tiomkin (High Noon,
1952). One of the few native-born American contemporaries to
match their level of achievement was Alfred Newman (Wuthering
Heights, 1939) —unlike the Europeans, essentially self-taught as a
composer.
Perhaps the most remarkable fi l m comp o s er of t h i s g enerat ion
was Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957), who as a child prodigy in his native
Vienna won the praise of Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, and other eminent musi-
cians. Before the age of twenty Korngold had composed two operas, a ballet, and
several orchestral, chamber, and solo piano pieces. When the Austrian director
Max Reinhardt came to Holly wood in 1934, he encouraged Korngold to accom-
pany him there. For the next several years, Korngold produced some of the best
fi lm scores of the period, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Sea
Hawk (1940), and King’s Row (1941). Korngold’s lush, romantic fi lm scores have
been called “operas without singing,” and their complex, intricate scoring and
elaborate systems of leitmotifs make them true successors to the operas of
Wagner and Richard Strauss.
Korngold’s concert music and fi lm scores are essentially identical in style—so
much so, in fact, that one of his most attractive concert works, the Violin Concerto
in D major, op. 35, composed in 1945, reworks themes from four of his fi lm scores.
By the time Jascha Heifetz played the concerto’s premiere in 1947, however, Korn-
gold’s opulent late-romantic style was considered out of date in the concert hall.
Only in recent years has a new generation of violinists taken up Korngold’s cause,
and the concerto is now a standard part of the virtuoso violin repertory.THE FILM MUSICAL
Not all fi lm music of the era was classical in fl avor. Three fi lm genres used popu-
lar music prominently and in pathbreaking ways: the animated cartoon (which
also made copious use of classical music), the story musical based on fantasy, and
the dance musical.
In 1928 Walt Disney produced a short fi lm picturing a cartoon character called
Mickey Mouse as pilot—with Minnie Mouse as passenger—of a boat transporting aK Max Steiner (1888–
1971) rehearses the New
York Philharmonic for an
outdoor concert in 1943.Erich Wolfgang
Korngold172028_15_361-385_r3_ko.indd 363 23/01/13 8:36 PM