The composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was an Austrian composer, conductor, and pianist. As a composer, he moved between European classical music and the emerging film music of Hollywood. His Jewish heritage and the political upheavals of the 20th century had a significant influence on his career and artistic work. To this day, his musical work inspires musicians and film composers worldwide.

Childhood and youth

Korngold was born in 1897 in Brünn (now Brno, Czech Republic) and showed exceptional musical talent from an early age. His father was the renowned Jewish music and theater critic Julius Korngold, who placed great importance on his son's musical education from the beginning. Korngold grew up in Vienna and was closely connected to the Jewish musical tradition of the city, which was one of the cultural strongholds of Europe at the time. At the age of just six, Korngold began composing and was performing as a pianist by the age of nine. At the age of twelve, he wrote his first opera, The Ring of Polycrates , which premiered in Frankfurt in 1916 and received much acclaim.

Korngold and Viennese Modernism

Korngold's hometown of Vienna, the cultural center of the Habsburg monarchy, offered him fertile ground for his development. The atmosphere was characterized by a lively exchange between Viennese Classicism, the emerging atonal music, and experimental modernism. His early works, including the opera Die tote Stadt (1920), brought him international fame and established him as one of the most well-known composers of Viennese Modernism. Korngold was adept at blending the late Romantic legacy of composers like Richard Strauss with a personal touch, combining lyrical beauty with dramatic tension.

Emigration and success in Hollywood

The political situation in Europe in the 1930s radically changed Korngold's life. As a Jew, he became a target of the National Socialists, who increasingly directed cultural policy in Germany and Austria toward anti-Semitism. In 1934, he moved to Hollywood to compose film scores—initially intended only as a temporary stay. However, with the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, his return became impossible.

In Hollywood, Korngold revolutionized film music. He composed monumental soundtracks for films like The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), for which he received an Oscar. His music wasn't just background music; it told the stories with its symphonic sound. His influence on film music can still be felt today, especially in composers like John Williams.

Return to Classical Music

Despite his success in Hollywood, Korngold remained committed to concert music. In the 1940s, he began composing more classical works again, including his Symphony in F Major , which premiered in 1954, and several chamber pieces. However, the political situation and the development of music in Europe made it difficult for him to achieve the same success in Europe as he had in the United States.

Especially in his later years, Korngold's works were often permeated by a subtle longing for home and a deep emotional connection to his Jewish roots. In some of his organ and choral works, as well as in the music for his films, there are echoes of Jewish melodies and themes that enhance both the spiritual depth and dramatic intensity of his music. Korngold was unable to directly reflect the challenges of his Jewish identity and the threats to it in his music, yet his heritage, his connection to his origins, and his inner conflict often penetrated the emotional dimensions of his works. It is this influence that imbues Korngold's music with a universal depth and tragedy that transcends the purely aesthetic.

Korngold's return to classical music was often seen as an attempt to free himself from the Hollywood stereotype he had fallen into. However, recognition for his concert works dwindled, and his name was increasingly pushed out of musical history. Even the film music for which he was once celebrated increasingly declined in importance as 20th-century industrial composition techniques and electronic music revolutionized the industry.

Rediscovery of Korngold's works

In the last decades of the 20th century, a rediscovery of Korngold's work began. Music scholars and conductors who explored the history of film music discovered a deeper complexity and rich musical expressiveness in Korngold's works. Today, he is considered one of the pioneers of film music, and his works are regularly performed in concerts and on recordings.

The JCOM has recorded Korngold's incidental music for William Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing ; the recordings can be found here .