# Erich Wolfgang Korngold



## jurianbai

No Korngold guestbook from my search so I just start one now. I just got his Violin Concerto in D and found that this is my very ideal Violin Concerto (by James Ehnes/violin). A mix of cheesy Hollywood friendly soundtrack for a quite serious violin part.

What do you think of this composer? I read somewhere that his style is inferior to other 'more intelectual' music , again in the label of atonality or avant-garde music.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold May 29, 1897 - November 29, 1957

Youtube video for Violin Concerto in D (so many)..


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## StlukesguildOhio

Well... I've always liked those decadent late Viennese composers such as Schreker, Zemlinski, and Korngold. I think his violing concerto may be the best thing he wrote from his years in the US... but I prefer his earlier works... especially his operas _Die tote Stadt_ and _Das Wunder der Heliane_.

Can anything by Korngold ever surpass this:


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## StlukesguildOhio

Here is another marvelous moment of Korngold... from his opera, Violanta:






For all those who blindly accept the stereotype that Korngold was "more corn and less gold."


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## StlukesguildOhio

Here's an early piece by Korngold:






Not bad for an 11-year-old.


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## jurianbai

The "more corn than gold" is the first sentence in my CD notes, so I guess that's quite universal known. Is there any detail on how he got that unfair statement? I only listen to mentioned violin concerto, yes it's different in the league of other 20th century music, but I think it is a different style altogether, a near movie soundtrack style. I listen to many cheesy movie soundtrack music but his concerto above surely at least a first rate composition.


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## StlukesguildOhio

Korngold's father was Julian Korngold, the the successor to Eduard Hanslick as the most influential critic in Vienna who waged an unremitting war against atonalism as represented by the new thinking of Schoenberg. His often caustic and withering comments gained him many enemies and at length inhibited his son's career as a composer in Europe, tainting his reputation among progressive-thinking musical circles.

Korngold made a career for himself as a composer of Hollywood film scores... essentially establishing the lush Romantic Hollywood sound. Korngold was so admired by, and deferred to, by studio executives that they allowed him the freedom to extend his influence to even the cutting of the film, to blend with the mood and pace of his music; this was unheard of then - and today! With a studio contract that allowed him to keep the copyright of everything he wrote, Korngold turned his pen for the next decade to Hollywood film music, an infant genre that, with his 20 or so scores, he to a great extent created. To Korngold, movies were "opera without singing," and he scored them with music of sweeping grandeur and ardent yearning, vivid action and melancholy contemplation-all rendered with a richness and subtlety that could simulate the roll of the sea, the swirl of a crowd, the shimmer of dew. He employed the techniques of opera and used leitmotifs for his characters. He excelled in writing superbly heraldic passages for the peerless brass section of the Warner Bros. Studio Orchestra. He was extremely meticulous even to the extent of taking a careful note of what pitch or register the actors were speaking in and then he would score carefully so as not to interfere with it! He never looked down on his medium. "Even if I wanted to, I could not write below my standard," he said. All his work-from adolescent concert pieces through Hollywood scores to later symphonic works-had the same qualities of exuberant action, bittersweet reflection and eerie beauty.

Eventually, Korngold grew disillusioned with Hollywood and returned to Europe... to return to the world and career he'd been forced to abandon in 1938. Owning the copyright to his film scores he often built upon motifs from these in composing his more "serious" music. The virtuoso Jascha Heifetz gave the Korngold's violin concerto its world premiere in 1947 with the St. Louis Symphony. Korngold said this concerto was written "more for a Caruso than a Paganini," and its singing nature is declared in a soulful opening strain soaring with nostalgia. In spite of the standing ovation the work had earned at its premier the influential East-coast critics were not kind to this gorgeous music that seemed so out of step with postwar atonalism. "More corn than gold," sniffed the New York Sun's Irving Kolodin. Korngold wrote more classical works, including a cello concerto expanded from a piece in the 1946 movie "Deception," and, flying full in the face of modern fashion, an unabashed First Symphony with a stately, mournful adagio movement that could hold its own with the gloomiest Mahler. Critics here and abroad scorned or ignored these works, too. Korngold retreated to his Warners-adjacent home in Toluca Lake, where he died in 1957.

But time brought Korngold a posthumous revenge-not the Hollywood-style ending he'd craved, but satisfying nonetheless. His marvelous Violin Concerto has endured and been championed by virtuoso violinists including Itzhak Perlman, Philippe Quint, Gil Shaham , Nikolaj Znaider, and Anne-Sophie Mutter.

info derived from:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704804204575069461091400560.html

http://www.musicweb-international.com/korngold/korngold.htm


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## Sid James

I'm not a huge fan of this type of music, but have one of his string quartets, which I occassionally give a spin. Quite memorable & tuneful music, I'll give you that. One can't always listen to the more complex "atonal" stuff, although I prefer that type of music. No doubt the man was a consumate musician and a fine craftsman, as the article above suggests, who learnt many lessons from studying the scores of Brahms & Richard Strauss. But his music still retains an individual voice, which I suppose keeps it being performed and recorded today.


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## TWhite

Very underrated in my book. The film scores, are, of course, pretty ground-breaking, but his earlier works have a great deal of merit, IMO. 

Favorites: His delightful incidental music for Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing"--some of the most infectous 'Shakespearian' music since Mendelssohn, IMO. He also transcribed the music for violin and piano and piano solo. I've played the piano solo version and it's pretty darned delicious. 

His piano concerto in C# for Left Hand. This was written for Paul Wittegstein, who lost his right arm in WWI, and pre-dates the later Ravel masterpiece, but this piece has a lot of merit. It gets a little 'overlong' in the central section, but it contains some incredibly powerful music, and some really telling pianism. 

The three Piano Sonatas are remarkable for having been written so early in Korngold's career. I believe that the First Sonata was written when he was 12 or so. They're extremely well laid out, difficult and very mature. The finale to the Third sonata is an absolute delight. 

The Violin Concerto is a real treasure, IMO. Okay, he uses some of his movie themes ("Juarez" for the lyric theme of the first movement, and the rollicking finale uses music from "Prince and the Pauper"), but they work. And remember, some of his film scores used themes from some of his earlier non-movie compositions ("Adventures of Robin Hood"), so it all works out. Besides, he's hardly the FIRST composer to 'steal' from himself. 

Some of his Lieder needs to be heard more often. And the opera DIE TOTE STADT is absolutely ravishing. 

I like Korngold. A lot.

Tom


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## Animato

does anybody know Korngold's opera "Dead City" (I don't know the english title, in german it's "Die tote Stadt") - it is one of the most bombastic operas I know.


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## Itullian

Post this in the Opera forum and I think you'll get many responses.


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## Marschallin Blair

Animato said:


> does anybody know Korngold's opera "Dead City" (I don't know the english title, in german it's "Die tote Stadt") - it is one of the most bombastic operas I know.


Sorry to hear it.

It strikes me as a quicksilvery regal fusion of Puccini and Strauss myself.


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## Avey

Pardon my harping, but his _Symphonic Serenade_ is a masterpiece. Beside that talking point...

*Korngold's* quartets, sextet, trio -- he _knew_ chamber music. He understood it. Yet, he is famous for film scores. What gives?!

Humor aside, though, the quartets exhibit a similar ethereal and transcendent quality that the _Serenade_ does. Listen to the latter -- a necessity. But the quartets, too, share a particular intrigue. Very similar to *Hindemith*, *Villa-Lobos* material. Please, if you are unfamiliar, delve in.


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## violadude

Avey said:


> Pardon my harping, but his _Symphonic Serenade_ is a masterpiece. Beside that talking point...
> 
> *Korngold's* quartets, sextet, trio -- he _knew_ chamber music. He understood it. Yet, he is famous for film scores. What gives?!
> 
> Humor aside, though, the quartets exhibit a similar ethereal and transcendent quality that the _Serenade_ does. Listen to the latter -- a necessity. But the quartets, too, share a particular intrigue. Very similar to *Hindemith*, *Villa-Lobos* material. Please, if you are unfamiliar, delve in.


I am mostly familiar with Korngold's string quartets and his sextet, and I agree they are great pieces.

I don't see why this thread had to be framed as a "intellectual versus emotional" composers kind of thing and I reject those terms outright. It is a composers intellectual knowledge of how music works that allows them to create such emotionally satisfying music in the first place and I don't necessarily see Korngold as "less intellectual" than the other early German Expressionists of the era.He perhaps doesn't have that undefinable "it" factor that makes the greatest composers the greatest but his best music is very well written and emotionally satisfying from my experience.


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## elgar's ghost

One factor is Korngold's favour is that his very early compositions have an assuredness and maturity which is quite striking - his brilliant opus 1 Piano Trio is the work of a 12-year old and he'd also written two piano sonatas by about the same time. I have most of his orchestral works and all of the chamber and non-transcription piano output and the standard of his post-Viennese output remained high even when film music took up much of his time once he'd settled in the US.


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## Avey

violadude said:


> I don't see why this thread had to be framed as a "intellectual versus emotional" composers kind of thing and I reject those terms outright. It is a composers intellectual knowledge of how music works that allows them to create such emotionally satisfying music in the first place and I don't necessarily see Korngold as "less intellectual" than the other early German Expressionists of the era.


I love this post, because ever since I first heard Korngold's music, I have had difficulties getting over some technical, structural tendencies of his -- especially in his chamber music, all of it. Definitely a unique, but also precise style.

When I first saw "intellectual," or when I first read this, I immediately was like "Oh, yeah, Korngold is an *intellectual* composer of music. How dare someone say otherwise!" And then, I reread, and see that you weren't saying that all, but you were making the precise point that these labels are arbitrary, maybe even subjective (at least I think so).

And thus, the *revelation*: my original view of Korngold as this unique, meticulous, precise composer _technically and structurally_ only affirms your point -- that *these labels are insignificant*. They mean nothing. They express nothing.

However a composer organizes his work, he has some sort of _intellectual_ base from which to produce _emotion_, art, passion, etc. Like, this stuff is not simple, else we would all do it.

So, in sum, I find Korngold's _intellectual_ and _technically precise_ style particularly conducive to the emotive capacity of his music. His music is GOOD. Dig it.


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## Avey

I have read that Korngold was one of the most _performed_ composers during his day. No idea how to confirm that. But listening to his music, absolutely devouring all of his repertoire, *I GET IT*.

Another rambling expose? No, because I don't even know where to begin.


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## Vaneyes

"The Violin Concerto is a real treasure." Amen, and amen. :tiphat:


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## Avey

Hard to get beyond this. Way too intense for one man lying in the hospital, recovering and maybe sedated.

Here, I find it intriguing to hear it played a little quicker than later recordings. Why? Because it makes no difference. The passion is still painfully apparent. Internal and profound regardless.


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## Avey

Another adagio for the record:


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## Avey

Animato said:


> does anybody know Korngold's opera "Dead City" (I don't know the english title, in german it's "Die tote Stadt") - it is one of the most bombastic operas I know.





Marschallin Blair said:


> Sorry to hear it.
> 
> It strikes me as a quicksilvery regal fusion of Puccini and Strauss myself.


Wow, how wrong. Bombastic is not in the realm of potential labels I would place on _Die Tote Stadt_. And hearing Strauss or Puccini here? Jeez.

I cannot help but wonder whether either of these comments arise from actually listening to the piece, or just reading opinions, maybe _Marietta's Lied_, and the final minutes.

*For other notes:*

The _prelude_ to the second act is truly marvelous. I cannot help but note a certain phrase in the high strings toward the end that not only resemble, but very likely _quote_ (without a score here, difficult to confirm) another Austro-Germanic composer that Korngold has some communications with, and that composer's _Ninth Symphony_ has a dramatically similar phrase in the high strings in the first movement, right before a certain C-C#-F#-A chord in the horns, right at that _Pesante (Hoschste Kraft)_ marking before the Note 15 in the score. That latter composer's hanging on that high C is just slightly more brief than the former's (read: Korngold's) passage in the later part of his prelude to the second act.

Whew. In short: compelling, dramatic music. Was it a quote, a nod, a mere recognition? I dunno. But I definitely hear it.


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## brotagonist

The local opera company is putting on Korngold's Die Todte Stadt at the end of January/start of February. The only tickets I could even consider are the $36 ones; I'd be sitting in the last two rows of the first balcony or any but the first row of the second balcony.

I haven't a clue about Korngold's music. I'd have to sample on YT. I have to admit, it would be kind of exciting, assuming I'm interested in the work. All things considered, I'm pretty easy, as far as classical music is concerned. I've got my favourites, of course, but that doesn't preclude enjoying a 'new' composer.


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## Pugg

Korngold masterpiece:

​


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## Avey

Animato said:


> does anybody know Korngold's opera "Dead City" (I don't know the english title, in german it's "Die tote Stadt") - it is one of the most bombastic operas I know.





Marschallin Blair said:


> Sorry to hear it.
> 
> It strikes me as a quicksilvery regal fusion of Puccini and Strauss myself.





Pugg said:


> Korngold masterpiece:
> 
> ​


Yeah, I was _just_ listening to this recording a few days ago, after finding it last week. Overall, a fine recording. Marie often sounds distant, however, almost off-stage. I am not aware of any intentional indication as such. Though, the realized sound fits squarely with the narrative, so maybe it was an intentional choreography/staging aspect after all.


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## Larkenfield

I'm a great fan of Korngold-a ravishing performance of his _Violin Concerto in D_ that's full of great sentiment and emotion . . . beautiful!


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