Erich Wolfgang Korngold Replies

Compiled by Lukas Kendall

Here are two informative responses to our Korngold Overview from last week:

From: Josh Gizelt <Josh.Gizelt@gte.net>

Hal Jackson's overview on Erich Wolfgang Korngold was an excellent idea. Too many people into film music today know little about him, even though there are a wealth of great recordings out there.

When watching an Errol Flynn/Michael Curtiz picture, the music would always jump out of the screen and grab you. They knew good music when they heard it in those days, and they treated it with the respect it deserves.

The score that made me notice Korngold's music, more than any other, was the music from the film "The Sea Hawk." It is brash, bold, adventurous, playful... everything about the film that has made it a classic. It contrasts Sol Polito's marvelous monochrome cinematography, and the climactic fight scene between Flynn and Henry Daniell is a grueling triumph of cinema (if you rent this movie, make sure you get the 129 minute complete version, not the truncated re-release version that may inhabit the shelves of older video stores).

Korngold's music is also, posthumously, partly responsible for the interest in recorded film music today. Charles Gerhardt's film music recordings were spearheaded by a Korngold album, and the historical importance of both is incontrovertible

John Williams's debt to Korngold can be seen most clearly in the main title for "Star Wars," in which the theme from "King's Row" is directly quoted, and in the music for "The Sea Hawk," which is in the style that he pastiched so well for his epics of the late '70's and early '80's. Anyone interested in Williams' work would do well do discover Korngold's, a recommendation I have made often while working at the record store, one which was all too often brushed away by the comment that they were "too old."

One thing:

"Erich composed all of his scores sitting at a piano at Warner Bros., and did not use any of the technical devices such as click tracks and other visual aids."

While it is true Korngold composed his scores without timing aids, this sentence gives the impression that he recorded them "wild," and this is not true. Korngold used a click track when conducting his scores like most film music performers. See Tony Thomas' book "Film Score: The Art and Craft of Movie Music," in which Korngold himself describes the process.

From: brian donohue <b.donohue@gte.net>

I enjoyed yesterday's article on Erich Wolfgang Korngold so much I thought I would take the opportunity to denigrate your magazine. Just kidding. But I do wonder why you do not feature more articles on composers from the past. Taking a look back at your January '98 issue confirmed something I had long suspected. In an article entitled "The Readers Strike Back," you list the results of a survey which include the topic "Favorite Composer of All Time." Of the 14 composers listed, 7 are no longer with us. I certainly wouldn't want FSM to become totally RETROGRADE but how about a little more on Herrmann, Rozsa, Steiner, Korngold, Newman, North, Waxman (a personal favorite), and other great composers of the past? Just a thought.

A note for your "Film Music Live Around the World" feature: Leonard Slatkin and the National Symphony Orchestra will perform MUSIC FROM THE MOVIES featuring the works of Leonard Bernstein, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (two dead guys, go figure!), John Williams and more. Dates: January 8 and 9, 1999.

Thanks for the info!

As for us not having enough coverage of composers like Korngold, and others of his generation... guilty as charged. And we'll do better. And, one of the thing we have coming up in FSM is an interview with Korngold's biographer.

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com