# Franz Waxman



## Tapkaara

Waxman was born Franz Wachsmann in Königshütte (Chorzów) in the German Empire's Prussian Province of Silesia (now in Poland). At the age of three Waxman suffered a serious eye injury involving boiling water tipped from a stove, which permanently impaired his vision.

Waxman orchestrated Frederick Hollander's score for the 1930 film Blue Angel and then wrote original scores for several German films. With the Nazis in power from 1933, he worked briefly in France, composing the music for Fritz Lang's French version of Liliom, but arrived in the United States by 1935. He was commissioned to write the score for Bride of Frankenstein, his first American film, by director James Whale who had admired his score for Liliom. During his career, Waxman received 12 Academy Award nominations, winning in consecutive years for Sunset Boulevard and A Place in the Sun.

In addition to his film scores, Waxman composed concert works and, in 1947, founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival, which he headed for twenty years. During his tenure, the festival served as the venue for world and American premieres of 80 major works by composers such as Igor Stravinsky, William Walton, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Dmitri Shostakovich and Arnold Schoenberg.

According to the autobiography of fellow composer Miklós Rózsa, Waxman conducted a performance of Stravinsky's work Greeting Prelude (based on the song Happy Birthday). The performance lasted exactly sixty seconds. In this book, A Double Life, Rózsa stated that Stravinsky gave precise instructions that a performance of this piece should last exactly sixty seconds. Consequently, Stravinsky was very happy with Waxman's conducting of the work.

Franz Waxman worked with the director Alfred Hitchcock in four films, including Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), The Paradine Case (1947), and Rear Window (1954). Bernard Herrmann, Franz Waxman, Louis Levy, and Dmitri Tiomkin are the only composers who often worked with Alfred Hitchcock. Although Miklos Rozsa wrote most of the music for Spellbound (1945), some of Franz Waxman's music was also also used, especially the scene the where Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman are skiing. Franz Waxman had two Oscar Nominations for his scores with Alfred Hitchcock: Rebecca and Suspicion.

Waxman died of cancer in Los Angeles, California, at age 60.

--From Wikipedia

Anyone else familiar with this composer? I have to admit, I know only his Bride of Frankenstein score, which is amazing. (One of my all-time favorite film scores.) He wrote a cantata called Joshua that is supposed to be very good. Has anyone heard it, or any of Waxman's other scores?


----------



## ShyBelgian

hehe I didn't even know that he wrote movie scores. I only know his Carmen Fantasy for violin and orchestra


----------



## Delicious Manager

His film scores are magnificent.

A very strange coincidence exists in that a fugal section to Waxman's score to _A Place in the Sun_ in 1951 sounds almost EXACTLY the same as a similar passge in the second movement of Shostakovich's Eleventh Symphony of five years later. It is very unlikely, however, that Shostakovich would have heard Waxman's music. A case of 'great minds think alike'?

See for yourself:

Waxman (scroll forward to 4:49):
[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDdY5Bv3a0o#t=4m49s[/YT]

Shostakovich (from 0:26):
[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n2tKOATj-A#=0m26s[/YT]


----------



## Falstaft

What a great find, Delicious Manager!

Incidentally, I saw Williams conduct that arrangement back in 1998 I think, with Grover Washington on sax. Magical.


----------



## TWhite

That's quite a similarity. Having seen A PLACE IN THE SUN numerous times, now I know why that passage in the Shostakovitch 11th sounded so 'familiar' the first time. 

Waxman's film scores are extraordinary, I think. Besides the ones already mentioned, his scores for EDGE OF DARKNESS, THE FURIES and TARAS BULBA are just top-notch film music. There's a great deal of similarity in the intensely rhythmic opening themes of both THE FURIES and TARAS BULBA, written about 10 years apart, but it works--especially considering that the former is a Western and the latter a film about 16th Century Cossacks, LOL!

Tom 

Tom


----------



## TudorMihai

Franz Waxman (1906-1967) was one of the most celebrated film score composers during the Hollywood Golden Age along with Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Miklos Rozsa and Dimitri Tiomkin. He was born in Konigshutte, Germany. In 1934 he came to Hollywood to work on Jerome Kern's "Music in the Air". Among his most famous scores are "The Bride of Frankenstein", "Rebecca", "A Place in the Sun", "Sunset Boulevard" and "Peyton Place". He won two Academy Awards (1950 and 1951), becoming the first composer to win the award two years in a row; he held this record for 40 years, until Alan Menken. In 1947 Waxman founded the Los Angeles International Music Festival, being the head of the festival until his death.

Apart his film scores, Waxman composed a few classical works, though not as many as his contemporaries (Herrmann, Rozsa, Korngold). His most famous classical work is Carmen Fantasie (1946) for violin and orchestra.

Here is Waxman's Carmen Fantasie, performed by Jascha Heifetz





The Paradine Case, Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra (1947)


----------

