Miklós Rózsa facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Miklós Rózsa
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Rózsa holding his Oscar at the 18th Academy Awards (1946)
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| Born | April 18, 1907 |
| Died | July 27, 1995 (aged 88) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
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| Occupation | Composer, conductor |
| Years active | 1918–1989 |
| Spouse(s) | Margaret Finlason (m. 1943) |
| Children | 2 |
Miklós Rózsa (April 18, 1907 – July 27, 1995) was a famous Hungarian-American composer. He studied music in Germany and worked in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He also spent a lot of time in Italy.
Rózsa is best known for writing music for almost 100 movies. But he also loved writing music for concerts. He called this his "double life" because he did both kinds of music.
He became famous early in Europe with his orchestral piece Theme, Variations, and Finale (1933). He then became well-known in the film world with scores like The Four Feathers (1939) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).
The movie The Thief of Bagdad brought him to Hollywood. He stayed in the United States and became an American citizen in 1946. During his time in Hollywood, he was nominated for 17 Academy Awards. He won three Oscars for his music in Spellbound (1945), A Double Life (1947), and Ben-Hur (1959).
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Early Life and Music Studies
Miklós Rózsa was born in Budapest, Hungary. His mother, Regina, was a pianist who taught him about classical and folk music. His father, Gyula, was a businessman who loved Hungarian folk music.
Miklós started playing music very young. His uncle, Lajos Berkovits, gave him his first instrument, a violin, when he was five. He later learned to play the viola and piano. By age eight, he was performing in public and writing his own music.
He also collected folksongs from the countryside near Budapest. He admired famous Hungarian composers like Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. But he wanted to find his own style.
In 1925, he went to Germany to study music. He first went to the University of Leipzig to study chemistry, but he really wanted to be a composer. The next year, he switched to the Leipzig Conservatory. There, he studied how to compose music. He also learned about choral music. These years taught him to respect German music, which mixed with his Hungarian style.
Rózsa's first two published works were a String Trio and a Piano Quintet. He received his diplomas with honors in 1929. He also wrote a Violin Concerto and a Symphony, but these were not published at the time.
In 1931, he moved to Paris, France. There, he wrote chamber music and a Serenade for a small orchestra. This piece was first played in Budapest. The famous composer Richard Strauss was in the audience and liked it.
Later, his piece Theme, Variations, and Finale became very popular. Many famous conductors performed it, including Charles Munch and Leonard Bernstein.
Becoming a Film Composer
In 1934, Rózsa's friend, the composer Arthur Honegger, introduced him to film music. Honegger told him he wrote music for movies to earn money. Rózsa watched the film Les Misérables and was very impressed. He saw how much opportunity film music offered.
He moved to London, England, and got his first job writing music for the film Knight Without Armour (1937). This movie was made by another Hungarian, Alexander Korda. Rózsa joined Korda's film studio, London Films.
He then scored the big movie The Four Feathers (1939). Korda also asked him to work on the fantasy film The Thief of Bagdad (1940). When World War II started, the movie's production moved to Hollywood, USA. Rózsa went with it and finished the music there in 1940.
His music for The Thief of Bagdad earned him his first Academy Award nomination. Rózsa became a key music director for Korda's films in Hollywood. He worked on movies like Lydia (1940), That Hamilton Woman (1941), and The Jungle Book (1942).
From The Jungle Book, he created The Jungle Book Suite. This music became very popular and was one of the first major recordings of Hollywood film music.
In 1943, Rózsa started working with Paramount Pictures. He scored Five Graves to Cairo and Sahara. In 1944, his music for Double Indemnity and The Woman of the Town also received Academy Award nominations.
Winning an Oscar for Spellbound
In 1944, Rózsa was hired to score Alfred Hitchcock's film Spellbound. The movie was a big hit when it came out in 1945. Rózsa's music mixed beautiful melodies with intense, suspenseful sounds.
He used a special electronic instrument called a theremin in the music. This added to the unique sound and helped him get an Academy Award nomination. He won the Oscar for Spellbound, even though two of his other 1945 scores were also nominated.
Rózsa later turned his themes from Spellbound into a concert piece called the Spellbound Concerto. This piece is still popular today.
More Film Successes
Rózsa worked on three films with producer Mark Hellinger. For The Killers (1946), he wrote a memorable rhythmic tune. This tune later became famous as the theme for the TV show Dragnet.
He won his second Oscar for A Double Life (1947). In this movie, an actor playing Othello starts to act strangely in real life. Rózsa later named his autobiography A Double Life, showing his desire to keep his personal music separate from his movie work.
In 1948, Rózsa signed a long-term contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). This allowed him to take time off to compose his "serious" concert music. He also taught a film music course at the University of Southern California.
His work at MGM led to new musical styles for historical and biblical "epic" films. For Quo Vadis (1951), he researched ancient Greek music to make the score sound like music from that time. Other historical films he scored include Julius Caesar (1953), Ben-Hur (1959), and King of Kings (1961).
Ben-Hur and Later Films
Ben-Hur is often seen as Rózsa's greatest movie score. It is one of the longest film scores ever written. It uses many musical themes that represent different characters and ideas. This score was very important and influenced many composers who came after him.
Ben-Hur was a huge success, and Rózsa's Academy Award was one of its record eleven Oscars. The "Parade of the Charioteers" from the film became very popular.
In the 1970s, Rózsa continued to score popular films. These included The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), the fantasy film The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), and the time-travel fantasy Time After Time (1979). He said Time After Time was the film score he worked on the hardest.
His last film score was for the comedy Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982). This movie was a tribute to the old detective films of the 1940s, a style Rózsa knew well.
After suffering a stroke in 1982, Rózsa stopped composing for films. However, he continued to write concert pieces. One of his last works was a Sonata for Ondes Martenot in 1989.
Concert Works and Legacy
Rózsa's orchestral piece Theme, Variations, and Finale, Op. 13, was a big success in 1934. It was performed by many leading conductors. In 1943, it gained even more fame when Leonard Bernstein made his famous conducting debut with it.
By 1952, his film work was so successful that he could arrange his MGM contract to have three months off each year. This time was for him to focus on his concert music.
Rózsa wrote his Violin Concerto, Op. 24, in 1953–54 for the famous violinist Jascha Heifetz. Rózsa later used parts of this music in the film score for The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). His Cello Concerto, Op. 32, was written later (1967–68) for the cellist János Starker.
Rózsa also received praise for his choral works, which are pieces for choirs. These include To Everything There is a Season, The Vanities of Life, and The Twenty-Third Psalm.
Death
Miklós Rózsa passed away on July 27, 1995. He is buried at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills, California. His wife, Margaret, died in 1999.
See also
