Leonard Rosenman

Leonard Rosenman
Background information
Birth name	Leonard Rosenman
Born	(1924-09-07)September 7, 1924 Brooklyn, New York, United States
Died	March 4, 2008(2008-03-04) (aged 83) Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, United States
Occupation(s)	Composer, conductor
Instrument	Orchestra
Years active	1955–2001

Leonard Rosenman (September 7, 1924 – March 4, 2008) was an American film, television and concert composer with credits in over 130 works, including Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Beneath the Planet of the Apes and the animated The Lord of the Rings.

Life and career

Leonard Rosenman was born in Brooklyn, New York. After service in the Pacific with the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, he earned a bachelor's degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley. He also studied composition with Arnold Schoenberg, Roger Sessions and Luigi Dallapiccola.

Amongst Rosenman's earliest film work was the scores for James Dean movies East of Eden (1955) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Rosenman had lived together with Dean whom he gave piano lessons to and it was Dean who introduced him to the director Elia Kazan. Dean also lobbied George Stevens to let Rosenman score Giant, but Stevens preferred the more traditional Dimitri Tiomkin.

Rosenman remarked "The year I did my first film, I had five major performances in New York," however. "The minute I did my first film, I didn't have a performance there for 20 years. They would never say, 'I don't like them'. They wouldn't look at them."

He composed the score for Vincente Minnelli's The Cobweb (1955) regarded as the first major Hollywood score to be written in the Twelve-tone technique. His avant-garde music was used for Martin Ritt's Edge of the City (1956) and John Frankenheimer's The Young Stranger (1957). He composed scores for war films such as William Wellman's biographical Lafayette Escadrille (1958), Lewis Milestone's Pork Chop Hill (1959), Delbert Mann's The Outsider (1961), Don Siegel's Hell is for Heroes (1962) and the Combat! television series (1962). He wrote incidental music for such television series as Law of the Plainsman, The Defenders, The Twilight Zone, Gibbsville and Marcus Welby, M.D..

He went on to compose George Cukor's The Chapman Report then Fantastic Voyage (1966) where he rejected producer Saul David's instructions. Rosenman stated "A producer asked me to write a jazz score, and I asked him why. He said he wanted the picture to be the first hip science fiction movie. I said that's a great idea for an advertising agency, but it doesn't fit the film."

He provided scores to science fiction films such as Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) and the first, animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings (1978), Cross Creek (1983) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). In the 1970s he composed Bass Concerto Chamber Music 4 for bassist Buell Neidlinger and four string quartets with a second bass.

In 1995 Nonesuch Records issued an album of music from both East of Eden and Rebel Without A Cause, played by the London Sinfonietta conducted by John Adams.

In his 70s Rosenman was diagnosed with Frontotemporal dementia, a degenerative brain condition with symptoms similar to Alzheimer's disease.

He died March 4, 2008, of a heart attack at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California.

Awards

Leonard Rosenman earned two Academy Awards:

• Barry Lyndon (1975), for Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation (music by Handel, Schubert and others)
• Bound for Glory (1976), for Best Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score (the songs of Woody Guthrie)

After receiving his second Oscar he quipped "I write original music too, you know!"

He received two additional Academy Award nominations:

• Cross Creek (1983), for Best Music, Original Score
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), for Best Music, Original Score

He also received two Emmy Awards:

• Sybil (1976), for Outstanding Achievement in Music Composition for a Special (Dramatic Underscore), with Alan and Marilyn Bergman
• Friendly Fire (1979), for Outstanding Music Composition for a Limited Series or a Special

Filmography

• The Cobweb (1955)
• East of Eden (1955)
• Rebel Without a Cause (1955)
• Edge of the City (1957)
• The Young Stranger (1957)
• Bombers B-52 (1957)
• Lafayette Escadrille (1958)
• Pork Chop Hill (1959)
• The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960)
• The Bramble Bush (1960)
• The Savage Eye (1960)
• The Crowded Sky (1960)
• The Plunderers (1960)
• The Outsider (1961)
• The Chapman Report (1962)
• Hell Is for Heroes (1962)
• Convicts 4 (1962)
• Fantastic Voyage (1966)
• Stranger on the Run (1967)
• A Covenant with Death (1967)
• Stranger on the Run (1967)
• Countdown (1968)
• Hellfighters (1968)
• Any Second Now (1969)
• The Todd Killings (1970)
• Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970)
• A Man Called Horse (1970)
• Banyon (1971)
• Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
• The Phantom of Hollywood (1974)
• Judge Dee and the Monastery Murders (1974)
• Race with the Devil (1975)
• Barry Lyndon (1975; Academy Award)
• Sybil (1976; Emmy Award)
• Bound for Glory (1976; Academy Award)
• An Enemy of the People (1977)
• The Possessed (1977)
• The Car (1977)
• Nero Wolfe (1977)
• September 30, 1955 (1977)
• The Lord of the Rings (1978)
• Prophecy (1979)
• Promises in the Dark (1979)
• Friendly Fire (1979; Emmy Award)
• The Jazz Singer (1980)
• Hide in Plain Sight (1980)
• Joshua's World (1980)
• City in Fear (1980)
• Murder in Texas (1981)
• Making Love (1982)
• Miss Lonelyhearts (1983)
• Cross Creek (1983)
• Heartsounds (1984)
• Heart of the Stag (1984)
• Sylvia (1985)
• First Steps (1985)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
• Promised a Miracle (1988)
• Body Wars (1989)
• RoboCop 2 (1990)
• Ambition (1991)
• Aftermath: A Test of Love (1991)
• Keeper of the City (1991)
• The Face on the Milk Carton (1994)
• The Color of Evening (1994)
• Mrs. Munck (1995)
• Levitation (1997)
• Jurij (2001)

External links

• Leonard Rosenman at IMDb
• Leonard Rosenman at Memory Alpha
• Leonard Rosenman Turns 80 — Film Music Society (September 7, 2004)
• Leonard Rosenman Remembered — Film Music Society (May 1, 2008)
• Guide to the Leonard Rosenman Papers at NYU's Fales Library