Hugo Riesenfeld

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Hugo Riesenfeld (born January 26, 1879 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † September 10, 1939 in Los Angeles , California , United States ) was an Austrian-American film composer . As director of the cinema, he began to write his own orchestral compositions for silent films in 1917 and was thus a co-founder of modern film music , which is a composition of his own that is appropriate to the plot. Riesenfeld composed around 100 film scores in his career.

His most successful compositions were those for Cecil B. DeMilles Joan the Woman (1917), The Ten Commandements and King of Kings (1927), David Griffiths Abraham Lincoln (1930) and the original scores for Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Sunrise (1927) and Tabu (1931) ).

Life

Hugo Riesenfeld grew up in a Jewish family. He began at the age of seven years with a violin at the Conservatory of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna , where he met 17 years ago in the subjects piano , violin with Jacob Green and Arnold Rosé and composition with Robert Fuchs graduated . From 1901 to 1907 he worked as a violinist with the Vienna Philharmonic at the State Opera . From the middle of the 1890s he played in a string quartet with Arnold Schönberg , Artur Bodanzky and Edward Falck .

In 1907 Riesenfeld emigrated to New York , where he was concertmaster in Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera Company until 1911 . He then was orchestra director for the musical company Klaw & Erlanger for three seasons , followed by a position as concertmaster and conductor at Century Opera . He first worked for the film in 1915 when he conducted the musical accompaniment for Jesse L. Lasky's silent film Carmen .

As the successor to Samuel Lionel “Roxy” Rothafel , he directed the Broadway cinemas of Paramount Rivoli (2300 seats), Rialto (2300 seats) and Criterion (650 seats) from 1917 to 1925 , where he introduced the practice of long run film . The cinemas were among the first to show films for more than a week - in 1923 "the same play was shown occasionally for ten weeks with undiminished appeal - that's how well he knows his audience," wrote the Viennese journal Der Filmbote in 1923 in an article about the New Yorkers Cinemas and Hugo Riesenfeld. “He says that knowing the audience and knowing what to show them is the secret of success in theater and cinema; you just have to individualize and know what 'pulls' there and what there. "

The cinemas he ran had their own orchestra to accompany silent films. At that time, however, this still made use of an existing repertoire of opera and operetta music as well as excerpts from other compositions. Riesenfeld was one of the first to write his own compositions for films. Along with AW Ketelby and Ernö Rapée, he became a pioneer of modern, high-quality film music and was also a co-founder of cinema music - thematically structured music collections for silent film orchestras and musicians. "Mr. Riesenfeld puts a lot of emphasis on the music in the cinema," wrote Der Filmbote in its 1923 report. “In his two large theaters, the orchestra alternates with the organ. His organist receives $ 250 a week, and the 70 orchestra musicians are well paid because the lowest fee is $ 70 a week. [...] Of course, business expenses in America are very different from ours. Mr. Riesenfeld explains that he has to have an income of 50,000 dollars a week to cover his expenses and 120,000 viewers a week for this purpose, otherwise he will pay on it. [...] In his theaters, innovations always appear in the first week. [...] Mr. Riesenfeld pays up to 6000 dollars a week for the premiere rights of a good film. "

From 1923, when he set the Western The Covered Wagon to music, Riesenfeld was one of the busiest film composers in Hollywood. From 1928 to 1930 he was General Music Director of United Artists . Then Riesenfeld worked for independent productions.

Apart from the film industry, he worked as a conductor of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra and as a composer in the classical field. He composed the ballet Chopin's Dances (1905), the comic opera Merry Martyr (1913), the 1921 Broadway music show Betty Be Good , Children's Suite (1928) as well as overtures , orchestral music and songs.

Hugo Riesenfeld died in 1939 after a serious illness. His daughter Janet worked under the pseudonyms Raquel Rojas and Janet Alcoriza in several Mexican films as a dancer and actress and later advanced to become a screenwriter.

Filmography (selection)

used posthumously:

  • 1940: The Return of Frank James (stock music; Director: Fritz Lang )
  • 2003: The Last Man - The Making of (short documentary, director: Luciano Berriatúa )

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Warren M. Sherk:  Riesenfeld, Hugo. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
  2. ^ Christian Fastl: Riesenfeld, Hugo. In: Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon . Online edition, Vienna 2002 ff., ISBN 3-7001-3077-5 ; Print edition: Volume 4, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-7001-3046-5 ., As of April 27, 2005
  3. ↑ Sabine Feisst: Schoenberg's Correspondence with American Composers . Oxford University Press, New York 2018, ISBN 978-0-19-538357-7 , pp. 1 (English, 949 pages, full text in Google Book Search [accessed December 3, 2019]).
  4. ↑ a b c d e New York cinemas. Der Filmbote , 6th year, No. 24, June 16, 1923, p. 2
  5. ^ New York cinemas. Der Filmbote, 6th year, No. 24, June 16, 1923, p. 2 f.
personal data
SURNAME Riesenfeld, Hugo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American film composer
DATE OF BIRTH January 26, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1939
Place of death Los Angeles , California , United States