Franz Waxman

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Franz Waxman (24 December 1906 – 24 February 1967) was a German-American composer known primarily for his work in the film music genre. Waxman was the composer of such film scores as The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Rebecca (1940), and Rear Window (1954). He was also a composer of concert works including his oratorio Joshua (1959), and the work for orchestra, chorus, and children's chorus The Song of Terezin (1965), based upon poetry written by children in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during World War II.[1] Waxman also founded the Los Angeles Music Festival in 1947 with which he conducted a number of West Coast premieres by fellow film composers, and concert composers alike.[2]

Contents

Biography[edit]

Early life (1906-1934)[edit]

Waxman was born Franz Wachsmann in Königshütte (Chorzów) to Jewish parents in the German Empire's Prussian Province of Silesia (now in Poland). At the age of three Waxman suffered a serious eye injury involving boiling water tipped from a stove, which permanently impaired his vision.

In 1923, at age 16, Waxman enrolled in the Dresden Music Academy and studied composition and conducting. Waxman lived from the money he made playing popular music and managed to put himself through school.[3] While working as a pianist with the Weintraub Syncopaters, a dance band, Waxman met Frederick Hollander, who eventually introduced Waxman to Bruno Walter.[4]

Waxman worked as an orchestrator for the German film industry, including Hollander’s score for The Blue Angel in 1930. Waxman’s first dramatic score came in 1934 for the film Liliom. In the same year Waxman was attacked by Nazi sympathizers in Berlin, precipitating his move with his wife to Paris,[5] and then soon after that to Hollywood.

Film music and the Los Angeles Music Festival (1935-1949)[edit]

In Hollywood Waxman met James Whale, who had been highly impressed by Waxman’s score for Liliom. Waxman’s breakout score for The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) followed. Its success led to the young composer’s appointment as Head of Music at Universal Studios.[6] Waxman, however, was more interested in composition than musical direction for film, and in 1936 he left Universal to become a composer at MGM.[7] Waxman scored a number of pictures of the next several years, but the score that made him famous was for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca in 1940. Because of his success with Bride of Frankenstein Waxman was frequently called to work on scores of horror or suspense films, and Rebecca was the culmination of the genre for Waxman.[8]

Rebecca was Hitchcock’s first film made in Hollywood, and thus it was the first time he was allowed a full symphonic score.[9] David Selznick financed the film at the same time as he was making Gone With the Wind. Selznick had asked Hitchcock to leave England to come work on the film.[10] Waxman’s score for Rebecca is eerie and ethereal, often setting the mood and as Jack Sullivan put it, becoming a “soundboard for the subconscious.”[11]

In 1943 Waxman left MGM and moved to Warner Bros., where he worked alongside such great film composers as Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. A period of extended composition followed, including such films as Mr. Skeffington (1944) and Objective, Burma! (1945).[12] However, his time at Warner Brothers did not last long and by 1947 Waxman had left Warner Brothers to become a freelance film composer, taking only the jobs he wanted rather than being appointed by the studio.[13]

1947 brought with it another major development in Waxman’s career: he formed the Los Angeles Music Festival, for which he served as music director and conductor for the next twenty years, until his death in 1967.[14] Waxman’s goal with the LA Music Festival was to bring the thriving town to “European cultural standards,” according to Tony Thomas.[15] In addition to performing the work of great masters such as Stravinsky, he also collaborated with his colleagues, such as Miklos Rozsa, conducting his Violin Concerto.[16]

In 1948 Waxman scored the film Sorry, Wrong Number, which climaxes with the use of a passacaglia, highlighting Waxman’s highly inventive use of unusual musical forms in film.[17] Waxman had used classical forms before: the climactic “Creation” cue from The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) (as Christopher Palmer puts it) “is in effect a fantasia on one note.”[18] A climactic scene in Objective, Burma! (1945) was scored fugally, and this would become one of Waxman’s trademarks, returning in The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) and Taras Bulba (1962).[19]

Sunset Boulevard (1950-1959)[edit]

1950 brought with it Waxman’s Academy Award for Sunset Boulevard. The score is fast paced and powerful, utilizing various techniques to highlight the insanity of Norma Desmond, including low pulsing notes (first heard in The Bride of Frankenstein) and frequent trills. According to Mervyn Cooke, Richard Strauss’s opera Salome was the inspiration for the wild trills heard during Desmond’s insane final performance.[20]

In 1951 Waxman became the first composer to win the Academy Award two years in a row, this time for the film A Place in the Sun. However, while awards for film music highlighted the beginning of the 1950s, the 50s is also the decade during which Waxman began to write serious works for the concert hall. 1955 brought with it the Sinfonietta for Strings and Timpani and 1959 saw the completion of Waxman’s oratorio Joshua.[21] Composed to commemorate the death of Waxman’s wife, Joshua with its strong Hebrew influences and extensive use of form is a powerful example of Waxman’s compositional powers by the end of the 1950s.[22]

Later life (1960-1967)[edit]

Waxman’s later life continued to see extreme growth as a composer. Christopher Palmer writes that at the time of his death in 1967, “Waxman was at the Zenith of his powers.”[23] Waxman’s output in the 1960s was perhaps more subdued than that which came before it, however he did write one of his great masterpieces[citation needed], Taras Bulba in 1962. Waxman worked on several television shows, including Gunsmoke, in 1966. Even so, the true masterpiece[citation needed] of Waxman’s life appeared in 1965, "The Song of Terezin". Written based upon poetry by children trapped in a Nazi concentration camp.[24] Perhaps Waxman’s deep spiritual connection to the subject came from his own encounters with Nazism on a Berlin street in 1934, but whatever the reason for Waxman’s deep commitment to the subject, "The Song of Terezin" stands as the exemplary work of the composer’s life, and seems to be one of the great-unsung concert works of the twentieth century[citation needed]. Composed for mixed chorus, children’s chorus, soprano soloist, and orchestra, "The Song of Terezin" is in many ways the suggestion of a religious experience.

Waxman’s career ended with his death from cancer in February 1967, two months after his sixtieth birthday.[25] He leaves a legacy of over 150 film scores and an abundant collection of concert works.

Legacy[edit]

Some of Waxman's music has been featured on commercial recordings, both on LP and CD. Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra played highlights from various Waxman scores for an RCA Victor recording in the early 1970s that utilized Dolby surround sound.

The American Film Institute ranked Waxman's score for Sunset Boulevard #16 on their list of the greatest film scores. His scores for the following scores were also nominated for the list:

Selected filmography[edit]

Selected concert works[edit]

  • Carmen Fantasie, (1946) for violin and orchestra
  • Tristan and Isolde Fantasy, for violin, piano and orchestra
  • Auld Lang Syne Variations (1947), for violin and chamber ensemble. Movements: "Eine kleine Nichtmusik," "Moonlight Concerto," "Chaconne a son gout," and "Hommage to Shostakofiev."
  • The Song of Terezín (1964–65), based on poems by children of Theresienstadt concentration camp
  • "Joshua" (1959), Oratorio

References[edit]

  1. ^ Palmer, Christopher. "Franz Waxman", Chapter 4 in The Composer in Hollywood. New York, NY: Marion Boyars, 1990, 96.
  2. ^ Palmer, 96.
  3. ^ Thomas, Tony. “Franz Waxman.” Chap. 4 in Film Score: The Art & Craft of Movie Music. Burbank, CA: Riverwood Press, 1991, 35.
  4. ^ Thomas, 35.
  5. ^ Thomas, 35.
  6. ^ Thomas, 36.
  7. ^ Palmer, 96.
  8. ^ Palmer, 102.
  9. ^ Sullivan, Jack. Hitchcock’s Music Chapter 5, “Rebecca: Music to Raise the Dead.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006, 60.
  10. ^ Palmer, 102.
  11. ^ Sullivan, 59.
  12. ^ Thomas, 36.
  13. ^ Thomas, 36.
  14. ^ Palmer, 95.
  15. ^ Thomas, 36.
  16. ^ Palmer, 35.
  17. ^ Cooke, Mervyn. A History of Film Music. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 99.
  18. ^ Palmer, 101.
  19. ^ Cooke, 100.
  20. ^ Cooke, 101.
  21. ^ Palmer, 96.
  22. ^ Thomas, 37.
  23. ^ Palmer, 97.
  24. ^ Palmer, 96.
  25. ^ Palmer, 97.

External links[edit]
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