Erich Wolfgang Korngold

[music] The previous year, the New York Philharmonic had participated in the first Vitaphone projects, recording Wagner's Tannhäuser overture as the first-ever music video and performing the soundtrack for an otherwise silent drama entitled Don Juan starring John Barrymore.

Within a decade, Hollywood orchestras would be recording the classic film scores of European émigré composers like Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Max Steiner, and within two decades, American composers like Aaron Copland and Bernard Herrmann would be writing their memorable film scores as well.

But back in 1927, all of that was well in the future, and as one of Al Jolson's lines in The Jazz Singer so prophetically put it, "You ain't heard nothin' yet." Composer's Datebook is produced by APM, American Public Media, in collaboration with the American Composers Forum, reminding you that all music was once new.

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And as you know, w- with a lot of the electronic scores, it sort of, a lot of it hovers around a pedal, you know, this low droning note.

And, and as a consequence, if there's a long droning note, it's gonna make harmony and melody restricted, you know? And so harmonically, you know, if we listen to scores by Korngold or, you know, Erich Wolfgang Korngold or Bernard Herrmann or some- You know, these things are always harmonically the chords always moving around.

They can go anywhere they want.

They modulate.

And I, I've...

Every program that I've been asked to teach at, I, I established that.

I said, "Listen, my generation I believe is the last generation that really has h- held steadfast whenever pop..." We've had to adjust, but we were raised in an environment, a musical or film music environment, where the aesthetics that we were taught to adhere to were essentially a hand-me-down from the aesthetic that was established by, by, uh, Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Dimitri Tiomkin and all those guys way back in the '30s and the '40s.

Now that has, has, has changed.

Yeah.

For the scoring category, we have Anthony Adverse- Head of the music department there for Warner Brothers is Leo Forbstein, the score done by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

The Charge of the Light Brigade, studio head Leo Forbstein again, score by Max Steiner.

The Garden of Allah, head of the music department is Max Steiner, that's so interesting, and the score was done by Max Steiner.

The General Died at Dawn, music department head Boris Morros, score by Werner Jansen.

And Winterset, head of the music department Nathaniel Shilkret, scored by Nathaniel Shilkret.

And the winner here was Leo Forbstein with Warner Brothers for the film Anthony Adverse, and we did say that Erich Wolfgang Korngold did the score, but the win does go to the head of the music department.

Right, which is why the Max Steiner, uh, nomination for the, was it The Garden of Allah? Yes, is notable because then either way he's taking the award.

Sometimes part two is even better than the original.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold would surely have agreed.

Part one for him was the Academy Awards ceremony for 1936, where his music for the movie Anthony Adverse was recognized with an Oscar.

But they presented the award to a movie studio executive instead of the composer himself.

[laughs]

Basically, ever since George Lucas started with John Williams and these Eric Wolfgang Korngold, s- sort of very martial, rumty-tum stuff, all other Star Trek, Star Wars, whatever they're called, movies have always started that way.

And I said, "I, I'm tired of that." And I really, everything about this movie should be a curveball.

It should be different.