Erich Wolfgang Korngold - Biography
Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in Brunn Moravia on May 29th 1897 and died in Los Angeles on November 29th 1957. Korngold was born into an assimilated Jewish family; his father was the eminent Viennese music critic Julius Korngold. Erich lived up to his middle name, with the exception of Mozart and Mendelssohn there has not been a musical prodigy to equal him. Besides his father he was taught by the well known Austrian conductor Alexander Zemlinsky. At the age of nine he was presented to Mahler who upon hearing him play one of his works proclaimed him a genius. At the age of twelve he composed a Piano Trio and his pantomime The Snowman was presented at the Vienna Court Opera when he was 13. Symphonic works from Korngold teen years premiered by famed conductors like Arthur Nikisch and Felix Weingartner. Cynics and perhaps crypto Anti Semites claimed this was due to the influence of his father; but these conductors were far too eminent to curry favor with a music critic. Korngold at 19 had two operas premiered Violanta and Der Ring des Polykrates His most famous opera Der Tote Stadt (The Dead City) had simultaneous premieres in Hamburg and Cologne in 1920 and became a favorite vehicle for the glamorous soprano Maria Jeritza. He continued to have operatic successes throughout the 1920’s including an opera Der Wunder Helene written for famed soprano Lotte Lehman.
In the late 1920’s he started collaborating with famed theatrical director Max Reinhardt to arrange and conduct some of the lesser known operettas by Johann Strauss and Offenbach. In 1934 Reinhardt who emigrated from Germany due to Hitler’s ascendency wanted Korngold to arrange Mendelssohn’s music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream for an extravagant film Reinhardt was to make along with director William Dieterle of Shakespeare’s comedy. The film was made for Warner Brothers and was marginally successful in Europe bit a flop in the U.S. It has some unintended humor such as the casting of 14 year old Mickey Rooney as Puck, James Cagney as Bottom and Dick Powell as Lysander crooning the conclusion of Mendelssohn’s Scotch Symphony. Korngold though an Austrian realized that his country would eventually be overtaken by Germany and moved his family including his father to Los Angeles. He was now part of the musical staff at Warner Brothers along with the legendary Max Steiner. His new assignment was the Errol Flynn swashbuckler Captain Blood and also wrote scores for The Prince and the Pauper and Anthony Adverse. In 1938 he wrote his most famous score Adventures of Robin Hood again with Errol Flynn. His film scores unlike the work of other composers were symphonic in their scope and while highly influenced by the post romantic Richard Strauss and Mahler were inimitably Korngold. In 1939 he scored again for Dieterle the bio Juarez with Paul Muni. In the following years he wrote scores for the Bette Davis and Flynn film Elizabeth and Essex and Flynn’s Sea Hawk. Korngold was generally given historic costume films but when he was give an American turn the Century drama Kings Row he came up with his finest score , that also includes Ronald Regan’s best performance( he wakes up after a railroad accident with no legs and cries out ”where is the rest of me”). Korngold for the next five years was to write a number of scores for Warner Brother’s mostly melodramas by far the most interesting as a film and a musical score is the Bette Davis, Claude Rains film Deception where Paul Henried is a famous cellist who plays a concerto of course written by Korngold who was eventually to refashion it as concert concerto.
Korngold in the late 1940’s stopped writing film scores and wished to re establish himself as a concert composer. His first big work for this period was a Violin Concerto written for Bronislow Huberman but after his death pemiered by Jascha Heifitz. The work now popular had a tepid response and inspired one wag to write “it is more corn than gold”. Korngold returned to Vienna for a series of concerts in 1950 that resulted in a rare recording on the Remington Label of his music conducted by him. Korngold didn’t feel comfortable in Austria and felt that the lack of critical enthusiasm was due to lingering Nazi sympathies. Korngold was to have one more film assignment; Dieterle in 1955 directed a biography of Wagner for independent Republic Magic Fire and Korngold arranged Wagner’s music for the film. Korngold was working on a large scale Symphony in the mid 1950’s but it wasn’t performed in concert until 1972, long after his death. Korngold had a major stroke in 1957 never recovered and died on November 27TH of that year.
Korngold’s music went through a long period of eclipse; this was to change with the release of a recording in 1972 of an album entitled the Sea Hawk that had excepts from Korngold films put together by his son recording producer George Korngold and conducted by Charles Gerhardt. The great success of this album produced a sequel along with a recording of Der Tote Stade and the Symphony conducted respectively by Erich Leinsdorf and Rudolf Kempe. A cult among younger collectors surrounded Korngold and Warner Brothers Records released recordings of Korngold conducting his soundtracks. Korngold would be pleased to know that the Germany he felt had abandoned him has recorded and regularly performs all his operas. The music of Kornrgold is the last breath of Ausro/German post romanticism and if not very original is often very beautiful.
