FROM VIENNA TO HOLLYWOOD
The transmutation of opera into film is neatly—maybe even a little too neatly—epitomized by the career of the Viennese composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957), a composing prodigy on the order of Mozart and Mendelssohn. In 1907, aged ten, he played a cantata he had composed to Mahler, who pronounced him a genius and sent him to Alexander von Zemlinsky—Schoenberg’s former mentor—for study. At the age of eleven he composed a ballet that was performed to wide acclaim at the Vienna Court Opera in 1910, when Korngold was thirteen. From then on he was famous. His Sinfonietta, op. 5, composed when he was fifteen, aroused “awe and fear” in Richard Strauss, who pronounced Korngold’s “firmness of style, sovereignty of form, individuality of expression, and harmonic structure” to be the equal of any living composer’s.
- Citation (MLA):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 9 Lost—or Rejected—Illusions." The Oxford History of Western Music. Oxford University Press. New York, USA. n.d. Web. 7 Sep. 2024. <https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-009012.xml>.
- Citation (APA):
- Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 9 Lost—or Rejected—Illusions. In Oxford University Press, Music in the Early Twentieth Century. New York, USA. Retrieved 7 Sep. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-009012.xml
- Citation (Chicago):
- Richard Taruskin. "Chapter 9 Lost—or Rejected—Illusions." In Music in the Early Twentieth Century, Oxford University Press. (New York, USA, n.d.). Retrieved 7 Sep. 2024, from https://www.oxfordwesternmusic.com/view/Volume4/actrade-9780195384840-div1-009012.xml
