Miklos Rozsa already had a promising career as a composer in the concert hall when he started writing movie scores in the mid-1930s. By the end of that decade, he was working on the most expensive movie being made in England, and by the end of the decade that followed, he was under contract to the biggest studio in Hollywood.

Born into a well-to-do family in Budapest, Rozsa's musical sensibilities were shaped by his contact with the Magyar peasants who lived around his father's summer estate. As a boy he could read music before he could read words, and proved a natural musician, taking up the violin at age six. His earliest influences as a student were Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, who were regarded as dangerous radicals at the time. After studying at the Leipzig Conservatory, Rozsa embarked on a career as a composer and saw early success with his Variations On a Hungarian Peasant Song and his Theme, Variations and Finale — the latter entered the repertory of several major conductors, including Bruno Walter, in the mid-1930s, and Rozsa received encouragement in his career from none other than Richard Strauss. He began writing music for films at the inspiration and suggestion of his friend Arthur Honegger — Rozsa needed the income, and he liked the idea of writing music that would get performed and recorded quickly. Rozsa established himself as a film composer at London Films, the British studio founded by his fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda, and after impressing Korda with his work on thrillers like Knight Without Armor (1937), the producer chose Rozsa as the composer for his Arabian Nights fantasy film The Thief of Baghdad (1940). The latter proved too ambitious and expensive to finish in England once the war broke out, and the production was moved to Hollywood, and Rozsa with it. He spent the next eight years as a successful freelance composer, winning his first Oscar with his score for Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), which broke new ground in movie music with its use of the electronic instrument the theremin (and also yielded a popular piece of light classical music with the Spellbound Concerto). He became known for his ability to score crime movies, particularly the category now known as film noir, psychologically oriented tales of personal and criminal disorder, including The Killers (1946) and The Naked City (1947). In 1948, after winning his second Oscar (for A Double Life), Rozsa joined MGM, then the biggest studio in Hollywood, where he earned a third Oscar (for Ben-Hur (1959)) and a brace of nominations; his music graced some of the biggest movies of the era, including epics like Quo Vadis (1949) and costume adventure yarns such as Ivanhoe (1952), and serious topical dramas like The Red Danube (1949). Rozsa continued writing for the concert hall, although as a post-Romantic composer whose work was rooted in tonality, he found himself out of favor with the critics as early as 1943, when his Theme, Variations and Finale was performed by the New York Philharmonic. That didn't stop the performances or prevent commissions from coming in; he wrote his Violin Concerto for Jascha Heifetz, and into the 1960s and 1970s was writing concertos for piano, cello, and viola that were performed and recorded by such soloists as Leonard Pennario and Janos Starker. Rozsa remained active into the 1980s, composing music for a new generation of filmmakers, including Alain Resnais. At the time of his death in 1995, his concert and film music were in the process of being rediscovered and newly recorded.

Taken from the All Music Guide

This is a composer I do not know well, but I am really beginning to like. I only have two Naxos recordings of him but I find his music to be very appealing and dramatic.

Anyne else know/like him?

__________________
"Music is not philosophy." --Akira Ifukube

Never heard of him, but his music probably lacks individuality.

Edit: I heard the first movement from his "Violin Concerto" and found it to be harmonically stale. Not very interesting music.

Chandos has released Volume One of a brand new mini-Series, Rosza Orchestral Works. Here they highlight rarer works in the catalogue.

(dedicated to Mirror Image)
Violin concerto
Cello concerto
Kaleidoscope for flute and piano
North Hungarian songs and dances for violin and piano
Sonata for solo flute
Sonata for solo violin
Duo for violin and piano.
All very interesting works

Hahaha, you're just saying that because I said that about Tveitt! Only difference is I have heard several works of Tveitt, you've only heard on movement from one work of Rozsa.

I think he deserves to be heard in whole.

Andthe Violin Concerto harmonically stale? I actually find it pretty adventurous in that department.

__________________
"Music is not philosophy." --Akira Ifukube

Okay, okay...yes I was just saying that because you said that about Tveitt. I'll have to listen to some Rozsa.

Yeah, Rozsa is pretty good. A "post-romantic" who embrached a sort of gentle modernism. Tonal works with great orchestration and exciting drive.

That could be a decent enough appraisal of Rozsa... though some of his other works get a little less tonally stable. A piece I know very well is by Rozsa, "Introduction and Allegro" for solo viola. It's downright violent in places, while some moments are extraordinarily serene.

I've heard of his viola concerto... and that it's really really difficult. I'll need to check it out anyway. His viola music, at any rate, needs to enter the standard repertoire in my opinion.

__________________
"Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n
wirst du, mein Herz, in einem Nu!
Was du geschlagen
zu Gott wird es dich tragen!"
-Gustav Mahler

I have not heard all of Rozsa, so perhaps there are other works that are less stable in the tonality department that I have yet to hear. But tonally unstable is different from atonal, and Rozsa appears to stick to tonality more than he echews it. At least so far...

The Viola Concert is one of the Naxos discs sI have and it's super. I'd love for you to hear it, Violist, since you yourself play the instrument in question!

__________________
"Music is not philosophy." --Akira Ifukube

Thanks Tapkaara, for making this thread. I've thought about doing this in the past, but wasn't sure how seriously people would take Rozsa, who I imagine is often dismissed by serious classical fans...

I've also got the Naxos cd with his Viola Concerto & Hungarian Serenade. The concerto is a pretty dark work, with shades of Bartok. Lots of Hungarian folklore. I find it very engaging. It should definitely be better known, especially since the Viola Concerto repertoire is not a very crowded field. The Hungarian Serenade, an earlier work, is much lighter, more in the vein of Kodaly's Hary Janos.

I also have his String Quartet. Again lots of Hungarian folklore & shades of Bartok. I agree that, at times, this music sounds like it's at the edges of tonality. It's probably one of my favourite C20th string quartets.

All in all, he was not only a great film composer (I especially like the Spellbound Concerto from the movie of the same name), but quite a good 'serious' classical composer as well. His style can be compared with other modernist neoromantics like Barber & Walton.

There are certainly shades of Bartok in Rozsa.

The String Quartet sounds like a good one. I will have to seek it out.

I suggest the disc with the Violin Concerto and the Symphony Concertante for Violin and Cello. Also fairly dark works with great moment of rhythmic drive.

Why shouldn't people take Rozsa seriously as a composer? Because he wrote for films? I once said in another thread that this has always puzzled me. Film music is "incidental music" of the 20th century. Composers who composed music for staged plays before the days of the moving picture are not put down for writing play music. It's an interesting double standard.

I think that, even around here, there's quite a bit of elitism & snobbism. Like, a while back, I made a thread about George Gershwin & some members reacted very negatively, saying to effect that he was nothing more than a composer of show tunes. This is ridiculous, because he composed many serious works as well. The same can be said of Rozsa, he had two types of output - film and 'serious' music. But that's not a problem for me, escpecially considering how all that I've heard of him is of excellent quality.

I also find it interesting how, even though he moved first to Western Europe then to the USA, his concert music always retained an essentially Hungarian flavour. At the same time, his film scores sounded more 'international' for want of a better term. So I suppose he was conscious about dividing his output stylistically in this way...

Anyone who says that Gershwin wrote nothing but show tunes obviously hasn't listened to his "Piano Concerto," "Rhapsody in Blue," "An American in Paris," "Cuban Overture," or "Porgy and Bess."

Well, I may be able to understand the negative sentiment for Gershwin. I, personally, cannot stand Gershwin. His light and jazzy style does not appeal to me in the slightest. So, I can, I admit, understand his lack of popularity around here. I think it hase to do more with his STYLE vs. whether or not he wrote for films or the concert hall, and he did both.

Rozsa's style is more "traditional" in the sense it sounds like serious concert hall music more than show tuney (to coin a phrase). With the similarities to Bartok and perhaps Kodaly, this is more "sure ground" for the average classical fan. At least this applies to me.

Notwithstanding, regardless of the composer's style, the fact that they write (or wrote) for films should not have anything to do with their classical "street cred." Some of my favorite composers wrote for films (Khachaturain, Shostakovich, Ifukube, Kilar, etc.) but they are all clearly great concert hall composers, too. Again, they supplied incidental music to one of our newst forms of media. Who knows...perhaps even Mozart would have written for films had he been given the chance. And had he, I doubt that would affect the general opinion of his concert output. He was, after all, the genius to end all geniuses.

Yeah, we know you dislike anything remotely jazzy. I think you made that perfectly clear a week or so ago when you blirted out "I hate jazz!"

I'm just curious where your dislike for jazz comes from? Did you get bullied in school by somebody who loved jazz music?