Korngold, Erich Wolfgang b. May 29, 1897; Brunn,Austria d. November 29, 1957; Los Angeles, California

Celebrated Austrian Jewish opera com­poser in Europe and film composer in the United States. His music helped transform Hollywood film into an art form, and he won two Oscars for his film music.

Korngold’s first musical success was the premiere of his ballet Der Schneemann (The Snowman) at the Court Opera in Vi­enna. The musical establishment was as­tonished by this new genius, who was ad­mired for his accomplishments by Richard Strauss, Jean Sibelius, Camille Saint-Saens, and Giacomo Puccini. World-renowned opera singers, such as Maria Jeritza, Richard Tauber, Leo Slezak, and Lotte Lehmann, lined up to receive a part in his operas Der Ring des Polykrates (The Ring of Polykrates) and Violanta (1916). Korngold reached the peak of his musical career with the premiere of his opera Die tote Stadt (The Dead City) in 1920. Within one year, this opera was staged in more than eighty cities. The text was written by his father, who had adopted the pseudonym Paul

Viennese composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold and his family arrive in Los Angeles by train, October 1936.

Schott. The intoxicating music and the contents of the opera appealed to a very broad audience. Among its hits was the duet “Gluck, das mir verblieb” (Joy, Sent from Above). This music was used in the film The Big Lebowski (1997) and the aria “Mein Sehnen, mein Wahnen” (My Yearn­ing, My Dreaming).

When Korngold turned thirty, he was already an internationally recognized com­poser and the youngest candidate ever to receive a professorship at the Austrian Academy of Music. In 1924, he married Luzi von Sonnenthal, the daughter of a fa­mous Viennese actor. Over the next three years, Korngold worked on his next opera Das Wunder der Heliane (The Miracle of Heliane), intended to be his opus magnum, which premiered in 1927. However, He- liane, based on a text by the expressionist author Hans Kaltnecker, proved to be a disaster. It tells the story of a land without happiness in which a foreign wanderer challenges the ruler of the country. The wanderer commits suicide, only to experi­ence an apotheosis after the ruler’s wife suf­fers through a trial by ordeal. Critics were unified in their condemnation of this work as kitsch. The Heliane marked a turning point in Korngold’s life and his musical production.

In 1934, when Max Reinhardt was working on his movie version of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream, he could not think of a better musician to write the film’s music. He invited Korngold to join him in Hollywood for six to eight weeks. Korngold’s talent, however, quickly made him indispensable for Warner Broth­ers, and he simply stayed on. Reinhardt’s invitation saved Korngold’s life. Korngold would have been unable to find employ­ment in either Nazi Germany or Austria after the German annexation in 1938, since he would have been persecuted as a Jew and since his music was considered to be “degenerate.”

One of Korngold’s first big achieve­ments in Hollywood was the transforma­tion of the studio orchestra into a veritable symphonic orchestra.

Between 1934 and 1947, Korngold produced the music for seventeen movies, including Anthony Adverse (1936, Acad­emy Award winner), The Adventures of

Robin Hood (1938, Academy Award win­ner), The Seahawk (1940, Academy Award nomination), Another Dawn (1937), Be­tween Two Worlds (1944), and Deception (1946, this became the basis for his fa­mous Cello Concerto, op. 37). Although he had quite a comfortable life compared to other German and Austrian intellectu­als who were forced to leave their countries after 1933 and then 1938, Korngold never accepted that his career as an opera com­poser was over. Film music paid for his liv­ing, but he felt that he had betrayed his true calling. However, Korngold wrote not simply film music; he considered it as an­other way of creating art. When he turned fifty, Korngold acknowledged: “First I was a prodigy, then a successful opera com­poser in Europe..., and then a movie composer... I feel I have to make a deci­sion now, if I don’t want to be a Holly­wood composer the rest of my life” (MGG, vol 7, 1986, 1632). In 1947 he decided to leave Hollywood and return to Austria. However, his hopes to continue where he had left off over two decades ear­lier quickly dissolved since Europe’s musi­cal taste had changed. Korngold’s neo­romantic operas were no longer in demand. A new symphony, one he had written for the European stage, met with harsh criticism and made clear to him that he would not have a future as an opera composer in Europe. Disappointed, he re­turned to Los Angeles where he worked day and night on another big symphony. A stroke ended his life before he could finish this symphony and an opera based on Franz Grillparzer’s Das Kloster bei Sendomir (The Monastery at Sendomir).

Michael Rudloff

See also Hollywood; Intellectual Exile;

Reinhardt, Max; Schonberg, Arnold

References and Further Reading

Caroll, Brendan G. The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Newark, NJ: Amadeus, 1997.

Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG) vol. 7. Kassel/New York: Barenreiter Verlag, 1986.

Palmer, Christopher. The Composer in Hollywood. London/New York: Marion Boyars, 1990.

Wells, Ralph. Korngold: He Haunts My Heart. A Tale of Vienna and Hollywood (CD). Wells 404, 1997.

Wolff, Hugh, and Barry Gavin. Erich Wolfgang Korngold—The Adventures of a Wunderkind (DVD). Arthaus, 2001.