Hugo Riesenfeld

Hugo Riesenfeld (born 26 January 1879 in Vienna, Austria - Hungary, † September 10, 1939 in Los Angeles, California, United States) was an Austrian - American film composer. As a theater director he started in 1917 his own orchestral compositions for silent films to write and was thus the founders of modern film music, which is one of action appropriate, own composition. Riesenfeld composed in his career about 100 film scores.

His most successful compositions were those Cecil B. DeMille to Joan the Woman ( 1917), The Ten Commandements and King of Kings (1927 ), David Griffiths Abraham Lincoln (1930 ) and the original scores of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Sunrise ( 1927) and Taboo (1931 ).

Life

Hugo Riesenfeld began at the age of seven years with a violin studies at the Conservatory of the Society of Friends of Music in Vienna, where he graduated with 17 years in piano, violin and composition. As a violinist, he played briefly with the Vienna Philharmonic at the Staatsoper. Towards the end of the 19th century, he played with Arnold Schoenberg, Artur Bodanzky and Edward Falck in a string quartet.

1907 emigrated Riesenfeld to New York, where he worked until 1911 as concertmaster in Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera Company. He then spent three seasons Orchestra Musical Director of the company Klaw & Erlanger, followed by a position as concertmaster and conductor at the Century Opera. In 1915, he first worked for the film, as he conducted the musical accompaniment for Jesse L. Lasky's silent film Carmen.

As the successor of Samuel Lionel Roth apple he headed from 1917 to 1925, the Broadway theaters by Paramount Rivoli (2300 seats), Rialto (2300 seats) and Criterion (650 seats), where he introduced the practice of long run movie. The cinemas were among the first, the movies played more than a week - 1923 was " occasionally ten weeks the same piece with undiminished tension - so exactly he knows his audience," the Viennese journal wrote The Filmbote in a 1923 article on the New York cinemas and Hugo Riesenfeld. "He says to know the audience and know what you have to show him is actually the secret of success in the theater and the cinema; you have to just customize and know what there and what there moves. '"

The guided by him cinemas had their own orchestra to silent film accompaniment. This handy then, however, date back to a pre-existing repertoire from opera and operetta music and excerpts of other compositions. Riesenfeld started writing one of the first own compositions for films. He was next to AW Ketelby and Erno Rapée a pioneer of modern, high-quality film music and was also co-founder of the theater bar music - thematically organized collections of music for silent film orchestra and musicians. " Mr. Riesenfeld puts a lot of emphasis on the music in the movies ," wrote The Filmbote in his 1923 published report further. " In his two major theaters orchestra alternates with organ. His organist gets $ 250 a week, the 70 orchestra musicians are well paid, because the lowest salary is 70 dollars a week. [ ... ] Of course, the business expenses in America are quite different than ours. Mr. Riesenfeld explains that he must have an income of 50,000 dollars a week to get his expenses and to this end a week 120,000 spectators, as it it pay otherwise. [ ... ] Always novelties appear in the first week in theaters. [ ... ] Mr. Riesenfeld paid up to 6000 dollars a week for the Erstaufführungsrecht a good movie. "

From 1923, when he set the Western The Covered Wagon, Riesenfeld was one of the busiest film composers in Hollywood. From 1928 to 1930 he was music director of United Artists. Then Riesenfeld worked for independent productions.

Away from the film industry, he worked as conductor of the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra and as a composer in the classical field. He composed the ballet Chopin's Dances ( 1905), the comic opera Merry Martyr (1913 ), the 1921 Music on Broadway listed show Betty Be Good, Children's Suite ( 1928) as well as overtures, orchestral music and songs.

Hugo Riesenfeld died in 1939 after a serious illness. His daughter Janet worked under the pseudonyms Raquel Rojas and Janet Alcorzia in some Mexican films as a dancer and actress and later became the scriptwriter.

Filmography (selection)

Posthumously used:

Awards

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