Franz Waxman

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Franz Waxman , born and active as Franz Wachsmann until 1934 , (* December 24, 1906 in Königshütte , Upper Silesia ; † February 24, 1967 in Los Angeles , USA ) was an important German- born film composer , conductor and arranger with almost 200 film scores .

Franz Waxman as a film composer

In Germany

Franz Waxman was born in 1906 as the son of the Jewish businessman Otto Wachsmann and his wife Rosalie nee. Perl born. At the age of six, after the family moved to Opole , Franz Waxman began taking piano lessons. According to his father's will, he should learn banking. He worked as a cashier for two years and used his salary to study piano , harmony and composition on the side. In 1922 he left Opole and the bank and moved to Dresden and later to Berlin to study music. He made his living playing piano in nightclubs and then joined the Weintraub Syncopators , a popular jazz band of the late 1920s.

During this time he began to write arrangements for some German music films. His best-known early work was the orchestration and orchestral direction for Josef von Sternberg's Der Blaue Engel (1930) with Marlene Dietrich . Due to the great success of the film, Erich Pommer, director of the UFA studios in Berlin, gave him further commissions, including writing the music for Fritz Lang's version of Liliom (1934), which was then made into a film with Charles Boyer in Paris . As a Jew , Waxman had to flee Nazi Germany after the " seizure of power " . In 1934 he only worked temporarily in France and a little later moved to the United States of America .

In America

The next order from Erich Pommer, the arrangements for the film Music in the Air by Jerome Kern , took Franz Waxman to America. His first great success as a composer was the setting of the horror classic Frankenstein's Bride (1935) with Boris Karloff .

He worked for Universal Studios and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , among others . Numerous pieces of music for film classics were created, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) and Suspicion (1942), The Woman You Talk about , Having and Not having (1944) with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall , Hitchcock's The Paradin Case (1949) with Gregory Peck , Sunset Boulevard (Sunset Boulevard) (1950), Prince Valiant (1954), Rear window (1954), the Court Jester (1956) with Danny Kaye , the nun's story with Audrey Hepburn , Sayonara (1957) with Marlon Brando or Taras Bulba (1962) with Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis .

Franz Waxman died on February 24, 1967 in Los Angeles of complications from cancer .

Features and influences

In most of his film scores, Franz Waxman was not so keen on the conception of a simple and catchy lead melody , but rather on the overall symphonic structure of a work with many side themes, long spinning and complicated characters. Although one can clearly structure his works in themes , these are more likely to be understood as leitmotifs in the tradition of Richard Wagner . Waxman's stylistic devices include jazz in the tradition of George Gershwin and the musical as well as epic, romantic symphonies in the style of Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler .

Frankenstein's bride is considered to be one of Waxman's first great masterpieces and madea name forhim in Hollywood for many other film scores . Alfred Hitchcock directedhis first filmwith Rebecca in Hollywood, after shooting in England for around 20 years. Franz Waxman delivered romantic- dramatic music for large orchestra, which he later regarded as one of his best film scores and for which he also received an Oscar nomination. The focus is on the "Rebecca theme ", which symbolizes the deceased landlady full of mysticism. A so-called Novachord is used here. In contrast to this are the cheerful love theme and the easy-going waltzes , expressions of naive and carefree love. In dramatic moments, the harmonious, soft sound of the strings becomesharder and rougher and Waxman shifts the weight to the brass section .

In the war film The Hero of Burma , Errol Flynn plays Captain Nelson , leader of a unit of 50 parachutists who, in 1944, were given the task of destroying a Japanese radar station. The mission succeeds, but the rescue plane is stopped and the troops have to fight their way through the jungle on their own. The central theme of the march sounds again and again in the course of the film music, orchestrated differently depending on the mood and the contrasting, strange-looking “Burma motif” varies.

Franz Waxman's music for Billy Wilder's film Boulevard of Twilight combines Richard Wagner's leitmotif technique with entertaining melodies such as jazz and elements from Richard Strauss' opera Salome . He received an Oscar for it. With its mix of jazz and tango , the main theme is reminiscent of the light music of the 1920s and thus of the time of the main character. Joe and Norma are each assigned topics.

In addition to Waxman's original music, Alfred Hitchcock's macabre and intelligent thriller Das Fenster zum Hof (1954) used the following themes:

Waxman also incorporated parts of his own film scores, Elefantenpfad and Ein Platz in der Sonne, into the soundtrack for Das Fenster zum Hof . Throughout the entire score, which is mostly held in jazz style, the leitmotif is the song Lisa, composed by Waxman especially for this film (the name of the female lead, played by Grace Kelly ). It is sometimes only hinted at, appears in various volumes and orchestrations and only sounds sung in full length at the end of the film. This structure was partly according to Hitchcock's ideas, but he was dissatisfied with the end result. The score for Das Fenster zum Hof , with its crazy, eccentric city-backyard atmosphere, is undoubtedly one of Franz Waxman's best.

Works

Film music

Concert works

Waxman also wrote a number of lesser-known and very personal concertante works:

  • Carmen Fantasy (for violin and orchestra)
  • Tristan and Isolde Fantasy (for violin, piano and orchestra)

Waxman originally composed these two fantasies for the 1946 film Humoresque . John Garfield plays a young, aspiring violinist who “plays” these pieces (for the recording by Isaac Stern). At the suggestion of Jascha Heifetz, Waxman revised the Carmen Fantasy and expanded it into an independent concert piece.

  • Overture for Trumpet and Orchestra
  • Sinfonietta for String Orchestra and Timpani
  • The Song of Terezin (song cycle)
  • Joshua (oratorio)

Awards

Franz Waxman received a total of 12 Oscar nominations and won the Academy Award twice.

Oscar nominations

Oscars

Waxman was the first composer to win two Academy Awards in consecutive years.

Golden Globe

  • 1951 for Twilight Boulevard
  • 1962 for Taras Bulba (nomination)

grammy

1959 for the story of a nun (1959) (nomination)

Honors

Others

  • Franz Waxman composed the Metro Goldwyn Mayer fanfare that opened each of the studio's films.
  • A 33 ¢ postage stamp with his portrait appeared in the USA.

literature

  • Tony Thomas : Franz Waxman on film music and the film music by Franz Wachsmann. In Tony Thomas: film music. The great film composers - their art and their technique (OT: Film Score ). Heyne, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-453-09007-1 , pp. 41-55.
  • Stefan Schmidl: Blueprints for Hollywood. For the 100th birthday of the film composer Franz Waxman. In: ray Filmmagazin , December 2006, pp. 104-107.
  • Herbert Martin, Robert Usaczyk: Franz Waxman - "Music is born in his soul" as well as the present and future of film music , conversation with Waxman by Artur Holde from Aufbau dated December 10, 1943, in: Filmharmonische Blätter . Issue 8 / February / March / April 1988, pp. 8-21.
  • Kay Less : Between the stage and the barracks. Lexicon of persecuted theater, film and music artists from 1933 to 1945 . With a foreword by Paul Spiegel . Metropol, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938690-10-9 , p. 361.
  • Waxman, Franz , in: Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 . Volume 2.2. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 1211

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b registry office Königshütte II: birth register . No. 1756/1906.
  2. ^ Museum of the History of Polish Jews ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Program text for the Carmen Fantasy ( memento of February 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at: Franz Waxman homepage
personal data
SURNAME Waxman, Franz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wachsmann, Franz (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American film composer, conductor and arranger
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Königshütte , Upper Silesia
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1967
Place of death Los Angeles , USA