Hugo Friedhofer
Hugo Friedhofer ( May 3, 1901 in San Francisco; † 17 May 1981 in Los Angeles ) was an American film composer who - despite its high reputation in film music circles - to this day is unknown to some as colleagues such as Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Franz Waxman and Max Steiner, with whom he co-composer as an orchestrator or very often worked.
Life and work
As a child of the German -born American artist Mathias Friedhofer and the German immigrant Eva King, both at the Dresden Conservatory to professional musicians ( he for cellist, she a pianist ) had been trained, learned Hugo 13 years old cello. After an aborted training as a graphic designer he took lessons in composition with Domenico Brescia. A mere 19 - year Friedhofer was hired as a cellist at the People's Symphony Orchestra and married in the same year the pianist Elizabeth Barrett, with whom he would have two children.
1929 Friedhofer worked for the first time in film music as a pianist in silent movie orchestras, but was already taken in the same year as an arranger at the Fox Studios under contract. When he lost his job there in 1935, he worked as an orchestrator for Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman in 1942, however, by the Director of the newly launched out of the baptism of Music Department of Twentieth Century Fox Studios, obliged as their house composer tenured.
In 1947, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Score for his film score for The Best Years of our lives. Overall Friedhofer should learn nine nominations for the trophy in 1958 even two at once for his film scores to romance the love of my life (1957 ) - which served in part as a cinematic template for Sleepless in Seattle ( 1993) - and the literary adaptation The boy on a Dolphin (1957).
Fried Hofer's work is highly appreciated in the industry today, despite its relatively low awareness and rediscovered. His disco graphically little developed areas oeuvre dedicated to now also record labels such as Naxos, Film Score Monthly, Varése Sarabande, or BYU.