Erich Korngold and the Development of Modern Film Music

If you are an avid movie watcher, you probably know the names Hans Zimmer or John Williams. They are two of the most important film composers of our time, and with good reason; they have helped define film music as its own genre, one that tells the story of the movie (even outside of the film).

However, you may not have heard of Erich Wolfgang Korngold. This Austrian composer was one of the first to make a lasting mark on film music. And his compositional style still influences Hollywood film music. 

About Erich Korngold (1897-1957)

A child prodigy, Korngold was writing original music by the time he was seven years old. He composed his ballet Der Schneemann (The Snowman) at age 11, and a few years later it became a hit after its premiere with the Vienna Court Opera. Korngold’s teen years were full of musical successes. He wrote his first orchestral work at the age of 14 and his first full-length opera when he was 23. It’s no wonder that composers like Mahler, Puccini, and Richard Strauss praised the young Korngold as a “musical genius”.

Film Music

Korngold first dabbled in film music in 1934 when approached by Max Reinhardt, a fellow Austrian who was currently in Hollywood directing the movie A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Warner Bros. Reinhardt wanted Korngold to adapt Felix Mendelssohn’s incidental music for the movie, and it became a smashing success. Korngold adapted, enlarged, and conducted the music for the movie, and it left a strong impression on Hollywood and movie watchers around the world.

Here’s the promo made for A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1936. It shows behind-the-scenes clips of the making of the movie as well as the only known footage of Korngold playing the piano (that starts at 2:47 – it’s worth the watch):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B-YLW1pOuA

Captain Blood (1935)

After the success of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Warner Bros. asked Korngold to write his first original film score for the movie Captain Blood. At first, he declined (because he didn’t really relate to the whole pirate thing), but he eventually accepted after watching some of the filming process.

However, after Korngold agreed to write, he was informed he needed to compose over an hour of music in less than three weeks. As a result, he borrowed some music from Romantic era composer Franz Liszt (listen at 12:17 for an example of this) and wouldn’t take full credit for the composition of the score.

Captain Blood was a milestone for Korngold. The score received an Oscar nomination, and he became the first international composer to become one of Hollywood’s prominent film score writers.

Escaping Hitler

In the late 1930s, after Korngold returned to Austria following Captain Blood, he received an invitation to return to California and score The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). The composer did not want to accept, but a friend convinced him to say yes. The next week, Austria joined Germany, and Korngold – who happened to be Jewish – did not return home until after World War II.

Korngold spent his time in America composing for many movies, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938); The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939); The Sea Hawk (1940); The Sea Wolf (1941); King’s Row (1942); and Deception in 1946. After 1946, though, Korngold did not write film music ever again. Sadly, after the war his style was thought to be old-fashioned.

This video showcases some of Korngold’s other film scores. Listen for dramatic entrances, sweeping melodies, and lush harmonies. 0:42, for example, reminds me of something John Williams would write for Star Wars!

Compositional Style

Korngold approached writing for film the same way a composer would write an opera: he gave each character a leitmotif (a recurring musical theme throughout the composition, associated with a particular person, idea, or situation) and varied them based on the mood of the scene. As a result, his film scores are exciting and unifying at the same time. His beautifully lyrical melodies, full textures, sparkling orchestration, and emotional harmonies combine to tell the story. Brendan G Carroll, Korngold’s biographer, says:

Treating each film as an ‘opera without singing’ (each character has his or her own leitmotif) [Korngold] created intensely romantic, richly melodic and contrapuntally intricate scores, the best of which are a cinematic paradigm for the tone poems of Richard Strauss and Franz Liszt. He intended that, when divorced from the moving image, these scores could stand alone in the concert hall. His style exerted a profound influence on modern film music.

Impact on Modern Film Music

Korngold established the Hollywood film language. Movie watchers fell in love with his ability to tell any story through music, and since then, composers have implemented similar characteristics in their own film scores. Listen to his overture for the film The Sea Hawk:

Now listen to John Williams’s Star Wars main theme:

Do you hear any similarities between the two pieces? Carroll sums it up quite nicely:

Film music more or less came of age with Korngold, who in [Captain Blood] showed what could really be achieved with a symphonic score…His music was designed to elevate the sometimes cardboard events on the screen and to flesh out the romantic dream that he instinctively recognised as underlying the story.