Miklós Rózsa
From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki
- born: 18/Apr/1907 (Budapest, Hungary)
- died: 27/Jul/1995 (Los Angeles, California, USA)
Biography
Miklós Rózsa was born in Budapest and exposed to classical and folk music through his mother, a classical pianist who had studied with pupils of Franz Liszt, and through his father, a well-to-do industrialist and landowner who loved Hungarian folk music. He began to study the violin at age 5 and later the viola and piano. By age 8 he was performing in public and composing. He also collected folksongs from the area where his family had a country estate north of Budapest in an area inhabited by the Palóc, an indigenous Magyar people.
Rózsa's first two works, "String Trio op.1" and the "Piano Quintet op.2", were published in Leipzig and in 1929 he received his diplomas cum laude. For a time he stayed on in Leipzig as Grabner's assistant but at the suggestion of the French organist and composer Marcel Dupré, moved to Paris in 1932.
In Paris, Rózsa composed classical music, including his "Hungarian Serenade for small orchestra op.10" (later revised and renumbered as "op. 25") and the "Theme, Variations, and Finale op. 13", which was especially well received and was performed by conductors such as Charles Munch, Karl Böhm, Georg Solti, Eugene Ormandy, and Leonard Bernstein.
Rózsa was introduced to film music in 1934 by his friend, the composer Arthur Honegger. They had given a concert together of their compositions when Honegger mentionned he had written the score for the movie of the "Les Miserables". Rózsa went to see it and was greatly impressed.
However, it was in London that Rózsa broke into the new medium when he was invited to write the score for the picture "Knight without Armour" directed by his fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda. After his next score for Korda (for "Thunder in the City"), he joined the staff of Korda's London Films.
In 1939 Rózsa went with Korda to Hollywood to complete "The Thief of Bagdad". It was the best of Rózsa's early film scores. Rózsa remained in California the rest of his life and scored over 100 films. The recipient of 17 Academy Award nominations, Rózsa won 3 Oscars: for "Spellbound", "A Double Life", and his magnum opus, "Ben-Hur" (1959). In 1995 a 2 hour Public Radio documentary "Ben Hur: The Epic Film Scores of Miklos Rozsa" was produced by film historian Bruce Crawford. Rozsa also wrote an autobiography, "A Double Life".
Filmography
With Hitchcock...
- Spellbound (1945) - composer