The Sound of Hollywood

With his music, Erich Wolfgang Korngold has had a more profound impact on Hollywood than hardly any other composer who came before him or after him. He arrived at the movie metropolis as a classically trained composer with the musical heritage of Vienna after Gustav Mahler in his luggage. Korngold composed his film music as if it were opera dedicating himself with the same seriousness to these pieces as he would apply to his classical work. While Korngold's operas – especially the "Miracle of Heliane" – were criticized for sounding too much like Hollywood, the reverse argument can be made that Hollywood to this day sounds like Korngold. Thanks to him, film music has become recognized as an independent genre. Korngold's influence can be traced in films that have become classics as well as in box office hits: "Star Wars," "Jaws," "Harry Potter" and "Schindler's List."
    Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born on May 29, 1897 in Brünn, the second son of a liberal, secularized bourgeois Jewish family. His father Julius, originally a lawyer and passionate music lover, went to Vienna in 1901 to work as a music critic for the publication Neue Freie Presse, which was the most prominent German-language newspaper of the Hapsburg monarchy at the time. Music was omnipresent in the Korngold household. At age 5, Erich started piano lessons and, upon a recommendation by Mahler, at the age of 10 he took lessons with Alexander von Zemlinsky. Only a year later, he wrote the Pantomime ballet "The Snowman."

Celebrated wunderkind

    His critical father discovered Korngold's gift for music early on, even though he was skeptical at first. Julius Korngold sent "The Snowman" and several pieces for piano anonymously to musicians and composers outside of Vienna for review. The reactions were positive throughout. "The Snowman" first premiered with great success in 1910 in a private salon; the version for orchestra premiered at the Vienna Court Opera, the Wiener Hofoper. Korngold was celebrated as the new wunderkind, and many conductors like Bruno Walter and Wilhelm Furtwängler sought to promote the performance of his works. Especially his operas – primarily "The Dead City" (1920) und "The Miracle of Heliane" (1927) – were great international successes. When he was only 23 years old,  Korngold already had a reputation for being the most successful contemporary opera composer.

    For as long as his father was alive, Julius has an enormous influence over his son. Often Julius' support had detrimental repercussions for his son; at the same time, Julius was a tough critic of those conductors and musicians who brought Korngold's works to life. Many jokes and caricatures circulated in Vienna poking fun at father and son Korngold. For example, in one satirized dialogue one musicians asks another: "I hear you are playing a sonata written by young Korngold, is she thankful?" - "Not the sonata, but the father!"
    To gain greater freedom from his strict and domineering father, Korngold escaped into operetta. He arranged operettas by Jacques Offenbach, Johann Strauss and Leo Fall, thus also achieving financial independence that would allow him to marry Luzi Sonnenthal in 1924 – against his father's wishes. Operetta also led to his first collaboration with the director Max Reinhardt, the founder of the Salzburg Festival and director of the German Theater in Berlin. In 1929, Korngold adapted "Die Fledermaus" by Johann Strauss for Reinhardt and, in  1930, "La belle Hélène" for the German Theater. When Korngold and Reinhardt were already in American exile, "The Fledermaus" was played on Broadway 521 times under the title "Rosalinda" – a mega-success! The adaptation of "La belle Hélène" also saw successful performances on many international stages.
    In 1934, Max Reinhardt put "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy on stage at the large amphitheater of the Hollywood Bowl. 200,000 visitors saw this performance on ten different nights, which gave Mickey Rooney and Olivia de Havilland their first triumphs on stage. After the positive reception of the piece, the film studio Warner Brothers contracted with Max Reinhardt to create the film version. Reinhardt talked Erich Wolfgang Korngold into coming to Hollywood to collaborate on the film. Hesitant as first and after an exchange of multiple telegrams between Hollywood and Vienna, Korngold and his wife Luzi traveled to Hollywood. Their two sons, Ernst and Georg, remained with the grandparents in Vienna. When the Nazis took power, Korngold's adaptations and compositions were banned overnight from German theater and stage programs, which made the couple's decision to accept the offer from Hollywood easier.
    Korngold was successful in creating a new musical genre already during this collaboration with Reinhardt – film music à la Korngold is still setting the standard even today. He expanded the orchestra to a previously unimaginable size; a modest dance band became a symphony orchestra. Korngold also involved himself in the direction by adapting the speech of the actors to the music, and in part even writing dialogue. Korngold related at one time how he laid down in the bushes during some scenes so he could direct the actors while they were giving their lines. He expanded on Mendelssohn's music; in part he used Mendelssohn's motifs, but some pieces he composed himself. Korngold's music for the film "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" was lauded by all, while the film itself did not receive good reviews from the critics. After this experience, Reinhardt never worked for the cinema again. Korngold's dream of composing an entire film score from the first to the last note for a Reinhardt film would never come true. Together with his wife Helene Thimig, director Reinhardt organized a theater academy where many Hollywood stars learned their trade. Though prestigious, Reinhard was not able to repeat his European successes.

Honored with the Oscar

Korngold returned to Vienna to continue working on what would be his last opera "The Kathrin." Already in 1935, Warner Brothers invited him to write the film music for "Captain Blood" (in the German distribution also known as "Unter Piratenflagge") – thus began Korngold's work in the genre of cloak-and-dagger films.
    The flick is still watchable even today and brought Korngold for the first time in contact with director Michael Curtiz and actor Errol Flynn. For Flynn, this movie was the breakthrough to stardom. Korngold earned his first Oscar nomination for "Captain Blood." At the same time, he wrote the music for two films for Paramount that did not do so well at the box office: "Give Us This Night" with Jan Kiepura and "Rose Of The Rancho." Korngold's Hollywood career did not suffer because of it. In early 1936, Warner Brothers approached Korngold requesting that he write the film music for "Anthony Adverse," an ostentatious costume drama set in the Napoleonic period, wrought with love, deception and adventure. Mervyn LeRoy was the director, and the lead roles were played by Frederic March and Olivia de Havilland. The film cost over a million dollars to make and lasted over two and a half hours. Korngold was thrilled that he had the opportunity to compose the entire score from the beginning to the end of the film from scratch. Indeed, Korngold gave the film a dimension of opera, which earned him the first of two Oscars. "Anthony Adverse" was nominated in seven other categories and received three Oscars. The film was an enormous success in its own right and is considered one of the most important films of the 1930s. Today, it has been forgotten and is not available on DVD.
    In early 1938, Korngold returned once more to Vienna to attend the premiere of his last opera "The Kathrin" at the Vienna State Opera House, the Wiener Staatsoper. Warner Brothers urged Korngold around that time to write the music for "Robin Hood." At first he refused working with Flynn and Curtiz again, because he did not like the film. But the political uncertainty in Austria caused him to change his mind. This is how it came about that Korngold, his wife Luzi and son Georg returned to Hollywood even before Austria was forced into the union – the Anschluss" – with Nazi Germany. Father Julius Korngold had recognized the severity of the situation in Austria and had secured American tourist visas for himself, his wife and his grandson Ernst. Only a few hours after Hitler marched into Vienna, the three Korngolds were able to leave their homeland en route to the United States. But because they had to make haste, Julius had to leave behind a great many of his possessions. His apartment in the 6th municipal district of Vienna was "aryanized." The entire estate of Julius Korngold went missing, without a trace to this day. The Nazis also confiscated Erich's villa in Vienna and his summer home in Gmunden. A great deal of his correspondence and numerous original scores have been lost.
    The film "Robin Hood," which Korngold had initially said no to, in fact saved the lives of the whole family. This classic also brought Korngold his second Oscar. In the aftermath he signed a unique exclusive contract with Warner Brothers: he retained the rights to all of his compositions and was able to use the musical themes for his own work. Furthermore, he was now in the unique position of being able to pick and choose his projects, which was unusual for Hollywood. Overall, Korngold composed the scores to 19 films between 1935 and 1946, including successes like "The Sea Hawk" ("Der Herr der Sieben Meere," 1940), a further collaboration with Curtiz and Flynn. But after 1946, Korngold turned his back on the cinema and dedicated himself again to absolute music. But this redirection did not resonate with audiences in the United States, nor in Europe. After his death in Los Angeles on November 29, 1957, Korngold and his work were slowly forgotten. This changed when his compositions were rereleased in 1972 in the United States. It was the beginning of a Korngold revival reaching its climax around the time of what would have been his 100th birthday. Since then, his classical music is played again more often and can be heard on the radio.
Michaela Feurstein-Prasser studied History and French in Vienna. Over ten years, she was the cultural attaché and curator of the Jewish Museum in Vienna. She has worked as a freelance Historian in Vienna since the summer of 2011. At the Jew Museum, she was involved in the design and catalogue for a big exhibit on Erich Wolfgang Korngold.