Miklos Rozsa (1907-1995) - the dark and the epic

Miklos Rozsa was born in Budapest in 1907 and from an early age demonstrated his mother's same affinity for music. (His mother had trained as a pianist at the Liszt Academy.) He learned the violin, the viola and the piano and was publicly performing Mozart at the age of 7. A musical career awaited, and he was inspired by Bartok, Kodaly and Liszt among others, and shared their liking for Hungarian folk music. He studied formally at the University of Leipzig and there he composed a number of classical works including his first Violin Concerto. He continued composing after moving to Paris and won the attention of Richard Strauss and Dohnanyi. He studied further in London's Trinity College and his first film music was for European films by directors Jacques Feyder and Alexander Korda. When war broke out in Europe, Rozsa moved to the U.S. where his music for "The Thief of Bagdad" brought him instant attention and an oscar nomination. He continued his work in hollywood with a distinguished and prolific career scoring numerous well-known movies. Among these are several examples of classic "Film Noir" before he carved out a new reputation with several notable scores for historical and/or biblical epics such as Ben-Hur, "Quo Vadis" and "El Cid". He was also a music tutor to Jerry Goldsmith.

Ben Hur - the essential Miklos Rozsa CD soundtrack cover Rozsa's musical style is generally big and direct, though he is also capable of underscoring more delicate scenes. Some of his music has a religious feel to it as befits some of the biblical epics for which he provided the soundtrack, including for example his simple yet powerful setting of The Lord's Prayer for "King of Kings" which didn't appear in the movie but was written solely for the original soundtrack. His versatility allowed him to move effortlessly between Historical Epics and Thillers, Film Noir or Psychological Dramas such as "Double Indemnity", "The Lost Weekend" and "The Killers". In many ways his technique was a fore-runner for the music of Bernard Herrmann, not only when you consider his score for Hitchcock's "Spellbound", the schizophrenic waltz from "Madame Bovary", and the mythical adventure yarn "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad" but also simply his powerful, darkly atmospheric but charismatic soundscapes. Incidentally, Rozsa adapted his oscar-winning music for "Spellbound" into a piano concerto.

Rozsa's Film Noir style is so closely associated with this type of film that it has been much borrowed and parodied, even to the extent that it now sounds almost cliched. The 4-note motto used in "The Killers" was employed (though not intentionally) on the TV series "Dragnet" and later also on the movie version with its dead-pan form of parody, and Steve Martin's "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" with its many ingenious clips from classic Noir films seemed to demand a Rozsa score. This was ironic since Rozsa had scored at least three of the original movies from which clips were taken, including "Double Indemnity", "The Lost Weekend" and "The Killers", so Rozsa ended up with something of a self-parody calling the score "Dead Men's Bolero". For "The Lost Weekend" (and also for "Spellbound"), Rozsa used that early electronic instrument the theremin to depict the mysterious attraction and effects of the Demon Drink, in much the same way as other composers have used this sound for B-movies of alien invasion.

Despite this versatility in his writing, it is impossible not to think of Rozsa without bringing to mind the Historical Epics for which he is justly famous. These soundtracks accompanied gargantuan spectacles with thousands of extras and demanded large and powerful orchestral forces to project fanfares and dark march themes. These depicted not just the scale of the movies but the sheer impact that these stories have had on succeeding generations, whether from the cultural influence of these past civilisations or the importance to the founding of some of today's leading religions. Throughout his years in film music, Rozsa continued to consider opportunities to create music for the concert hall. He composed another Violin Concerto for Jascha Heifetz in 1953 for example, and his "Sinfonia Concertante" for Violin, Cello and orchestra is essentially a double concerto for Heitetz and Gregor Piatigorsky. He later wrote a full Cello Concerto for Janos Starker, and his concert version of his music for "Spellbound" is very much in the form of a Piano Concerto. His health declined in later years and one project to create Choral Suites from the Biblical Epics was interrupted by his death in 1995, though completed by friends and pupils of the composer - see Miklos Rozsa: Three Choral Suites.

Among the items released to mark the composer's centenary year in 2007, are the book A Composer's Notes: Remembering Miklós Rózsa and the limited collector's edition CD of his music for The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes based on his violin concerto and including a number of tracks unused in the film's final cut.

Films by Miklos Rozsa:

TV themes by Miklos Rozsa (or not):

The interesting story behind the Dragnet theme is that it was composed by Walter Schumann, but unknowingly he used a 4-note motto which Rozsa had previously written for the movie "The Killers". When people noticed the similarity there was a law suit, and Schumann agreed to pay half the royalties for his Dragnet theme to Rozsa.

Recommendations:

CDs to look for include a number featuring his epic themes to Ben-Hur and El Cid, and the Dragnet theme can also be found. Check out our mfiles reviews of:

Rozsa wrote an autobiography called "A Double Life". The book can be hard to obtain now but can sometimes be found on Amazon and similar sites. However, a interesting book has been published shortly before the centenary of Rozsa's birth (on April 18th, 1907). Called "A Composer's Notes: Remembering Miklós Rózsa", this includes the personal remembrances of author Jeffrey Dane and uses a wealth of private correspondence between Dane and Rozsa over a period of more than 20 years. To highlight the book's publication we present some extracts and illustrations from it, and further information can be obtained at Amazon.com.

In addition to our own reviews and recommendations of Rozsa soundtracks, Steve Vertlieb (another big fan of Rozsa and his music) has a comprehensive summary of the composer and his major scores at this web page on the The Thunder Child site.


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