Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was one of the most astonishing child prodigies in musical history. Born in 1897 in Brno, then part of Austria-Hungary, he grew up in Vienna, where his father was an influential music critic. Gustav Mahler reportedly called him a genius when he was ten, and by his teens his works were being performed across Europe. His opera Die tote Stadt (1920), written in his early twenties, was an international success.

Korngold first came to Hollywood in 1934 at the invitation of director Max Reinhardt to adapt Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream. He returned several times, and when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, while he was in California working on The Adventures of Robin Hood, he stayed. That score won the Academy Award, following his earlier Oscar-winning score for Anthony Adverse.

At Warner Bros. Korngold treated each film as an opera without singing, writing richly melodic scores built on recurring themes and full late-Romantic orchestration. His swashbucklers for Errol Flynn, including Captain Blood, The Prince and the Pauper, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and The Sea Hawk, practically defined the sound of Hollywood adventure.

After World War II Korngold returned to concert writing, reworking film themes into his beloved Violin Concerto, premiered by Jascha Heifetz. Postwar audiences were less receptive, and he died in Hollywood in 1957 believing himself forgotten. Since then his reputation has soared, and generations of film composers, John Williams among them, have drawn on the style he created.