Franz Waxman
From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki
- born: 24/Dec/1906 (Chorzów, Poland)
- died: 24/Feb/1967 (Los Angeles, California, USA) - cancer
Biography
Franz Waxman, born Franz Wachsmann, was a German-born Jewish-American composer, known for his bravura "Carmen Fantasy" for violin and orchestra and for his musical scores for films.
In the early 1930s he orchestrated Frederick Hollander's score for the 1930 film "Blue Angel" (1930) and wrote original scores for several German films. With the Nazis in power he worked briefly in France, composing the music for Fritz Lang's French version of "Liliom", but arrived in the United States by 1935. He received 12 Academy Award nominations, winning in consecutive years for "Sunset Boulevard" and "A Place in the Sun".
In addition to his film scores, Waxman composed concert works and, in 1947, founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival. Waxman headed this Festival for twenty years. During the twenty years of his tenure, the Festival served as the venue for world and American premieres of 80 major works by composers such as Igor Stravinsky, William Walton, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Dmitri Shostakovitch and Arnold Schönberg.
According to the autobiography of fellow composer Miklós Rózsa, Waxman conducted a performance of the Igor Stravinksy composition Greeting Prelude (based on the song Happy Birthday). The performance lasted exactly sixty seconds. In this book, "A Double Life", Rózsa stated that Stravinsky gave precise instructions that a performance of this piece should last exactly sixty seconds. Consequently, Stravinsky was very happy with Waxman's conducting of the work.
Waxman died of cancer at age 60.
Filmography
With Hitchcock...