10 Great Jewish Film Music Composers
Invariably from Eastern European stock and often classically trained musicians, these gifted composers not only adapted their creative talent to incorporate the American idiom but transformed and defined the music of the Holywood movie.
Alfred Newman
(b. 1900, New Haven, Connecticut, USA; d. 1970, Hollywood, California, USA)
Influential composer, arranger and conductor of film scores who received forty-five Academy Award nominations and won a record nine Oscars. He wrote music for over 200 films including Wuthering Heights (1939), All About Eve (1950) and How the West Was Won (1962). His brothers Lionel and Emil were also film composers.
More on Alfred Newman
How The West Was Won - Opening Titles
Books:
John Koegel, Alfred Newman and Wuthering Heights (s.n., 1975)
Frederick Steiner, The Making of An American Film Composer: A Study of Alfred Newman's Music in The First Decade of The Sound Era (University of Southern California, 1981)
Elmer Bernstein
(b. 1922, New York, NY, USA; d. 2004, Ojai, California, USA)
Trained as a pianist and conductor, he had a long and distinguished career as a composer of film and TV music. Closely associated with Westerns such as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Comancheros (1961), he wrote for a variety of genres (To Kill A Mockingbird, The Great Escape, The Age of Innocence). He composed music for more than 200 films and TV shows and received many awards, including an Oscar in 1967 for Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Elmer Bernstein The Official Site
Elmer Bernstein: A Musical Tribute
Books: Elmer Bernstein, Elmer Bernstein's Film Music Notebook : A Complete Collection Of The Quarterly Journal, 1974-1978 (Film Music Society, Sherman Oaks, 2004)
Dmitri Tiomkin (Dmitri Zinovievich Tiomkin)
(b. 1894, Kremenchuk, Ukraine; d. 1979, London, England, UK)
Prolific composer of film and television music. He toured Europe and the United States as a piano virtuoso in the 1920s and later began writing theme music for Holywood movies. He wrote scores for films as diverse as High Noon (1952), Giant (1956), Friendly Persuasion (1956) and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and won three Academy Awards.
Books:
Christopher Palmer, Dimitri Tiomkin: A Portrait (Ashgate,1984)
Peter Larsen and John Irons, Film Music (Reaktion Books, 2008)
Bernard Herrmann
(b. 1911, New York, NY, USA; d. 1975, Hollywood, California, USA)
Studied composition and conducting at the Julliard School, founding his own orchestra at the age of 20. In 1940 he became conductor of the CBS Symphony Orchestra where he championed new British and American music. As a Hollywood composer, he is best known for his Hitchcock scores but also wrote distinctive music for many other films, from Citizen Kane (1941) to Taxi Driver (1976).
Steven C. Smith, A Heart at Fire's Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann (University of California Press, 1991)
Graham Bruce, Bernard Herrmann: Film Music Narrative (UMI Research, 1985)
Jerome Moross
(b. 1913, New York, NY, USA; d. 1983, Miami, Florida, USA)
Composer for stage, screen and theatre. Like high school friend Bernard Herrmann (see above), he studied conducting at Juilliard and composed classical concert works. He wrote many notable film scores in a career lasting more than twenty years and received an Academy Award Nomination in 1959 for The Big Country.
Books:
Mark Grant, The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical (Northeastern University Press, 2005)
Gerald Bordman, American Musical Theater: A Chronicle (Oxford University Press, USA, 2001)
Lalo Schifrin (Boris Claudio Schifrin)
(b. 1932, Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Argentinian pianist, composer and conductor who has written music for film, television and video games. His well known scores include "Mission Impossible" (1966-1973), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Bullitt (1968) and Dirty Harry (1971). He has won four Grammy Awards and received six Oscar nominations.
Lalo Schifrin's Official Website
Lalo Schifrin - Mission Impossible
Books:
Lalo Schifrin, Mission Impossible: My Life in Music (The Scarecrow Press, 2008)
Richard Davis, Complete Guide to Film Scoring by (Berklee Press, 2000)
Jerry Goldsmith (Jerrald King Goldsmith)
(b. 1929, Pasadena, California, USA; d. 2004, Beverly Hills, California, USA)
Versatile composer for radio, TV and film. He studied piano and composition as a boy and developed an interest in writing music for movies after meeting Miklós Rózsa while a student at the University of Southern California. Scores for films and TV series include Lonely are the Brave (1962), Planet of the Apes (1968), The Omen (1976), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." (1964-1967) and "The Twilight Zone" (1960-1961).
Jerry Goldsmith Online
Jerry Goldsmith Tribute
Books:
Karlin Tilford, Jerry Goldsmith (Film Music Masters) (Karlin/Tilford Production 1995)
Franz Waxman (Franz Wachsmann)
(b. 1906, Königshütte, Germany; d. 1967, Los Angeles, California, USA)
Composer and conductor who, like fellow composers Dimitri Tiomkin and Max Steiner, received his musical education in Europe before starting a Holywood career in the 1930s. He won Oscars for Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951).
Franz Waxman Official Website
The Ride of the Cossacks - Franz Waxman
Books:
Joseph Horowitz, Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts (Harper, 2008)
Richard Davis, Complete Guide to Film Scoring by (Berklee Press, 2000)
Ernest Gold (Ernst Gold)
(b. 1921, Vienna, Austria; d. 1999, Santa Monica, California, USA)
Originally trained in Austria as a classical composer before fleeing with his family to the United States. He composed music for over fifty films and won several awards, including an Oscar for his score for the 1960 film Exodus. He was the founder/conductor of the Los Angeles Senior Citizen's Ochestra.
More on Ernest Gold
Main Theme From Exodus
Books:
Reuben Musiker and Naomi Musiker, Conductors and Composers of Popular Orchestral Music: A Biographical and Discographical Sourcebook (Greenwood Press, 1998)
Erich Wolfgang Korngold
(b. 1897, Brünn, Moravia, Austria-Hungary; d. 1957, Hollywood, California, USA)
A precocious musical wunderkind who started composing as a boy and impressed the likes of Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss and Giacomo Puccini with his composition skills. By the age of 30 he was a noted classical and opera composer and a professor at the Vienna State Academy of Music. Arriving in the US in 1934, he began composing music for film, eventually gaining renown as a pioneer of the new style in Holywood music. Among his film scores are The Prince And The Pauper (1937), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Sea Hawk (1940), King's Row (1942) and Of Human Bondage (1946).
Erich Wolfgang Korngold Unofficial Web Site
Erich Korngold - The Sea Hawk
Books:
Brendan G. Carroll, The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Amadeus Press, 1997)
Jessica Duchen, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (20th-Century Composers) (Phaidon Press, 1996)
This page was last modified on 18 May 2008