On September 21, 1977, a reception was held at the Ontario Film Institute in Toronto before the showing of El Cid, with composer Miklós Rózsa in attendance. Rózsa met Canadian composers Morris Surdin and Harry Freedman, and also people connected with the Institute. There were also fans who asked Rózsa many questions. Unfortunately, much of the recording that was done had people talking over each other, so it's very difficult to hear what is being said, especially for its first part. Because many of the questions for Rózsa are from mostly unidentified people, I have changed most of their questions into italic type, whereas all of Rózsa's responses are in bold face type. This transcription has been edited. – M.Q.
What pieces are in the concert? (Rózsa was to conduct the Hamilton Philharmonic soon.)Well, Spellbound and the Ben-Hur Suite.
Is there a theremin for Spellbound?
No.
What do you use?
Nothing.
You know they have one here downstairs, a theremin. It's in the science exhibit.
Who plays it?
I don't know.
I had hoped that Elmer [Bernstein] would have used it in his recording, but they left it out saying that this was already recorded somewhere, so they recorded everything else.
Is it the same program [at the concert] each night?
Yes.
A number of us will be there.
[..........]
Are you doing interviews while you're here? [There is mention of legendary Canadian interviewer Brian Linehan, Rózsa was not interviewed by him.]
Well, I just did one for Montreal.
Are you tired of them by now? Because you've been interviewed a lot.
You get used to it..
[..........]
You were talking yesterday about recording Ben-Hur. Did I understand you correctly to say that you recorded the marches in Rome and the rest of the score in Hollywood?
Yes, that's right. It's true. In Rome we used a big band, two hundred. They had an 8-track machine in Rome for recording. So [M-G-M] told me, "Oh, that machine is there. Why don't you record the marches there?" So I wrote them there and I recorded them.
It's interesting because somebody suggested in the [Rózsa Society] newsletter that the Victory Parade (Interruption: "That's me!") on the Savina record sounded exactly like the one that was in the film.
That is quite possible, because that was an Italian recording, and that we could have used. If we did it again in Hollywood, they would have had to pay the orchestra again, which they didn't want to do.
[..........]
There was music for scenes that were deleted...
I beg your pardon?
...scenes that were deleted before the release of the film. A ilm of that nature usually has so much material...
Too much.
There seem to be some scenes where things are deleted. Like all of a sudden they introduce Ben-Hur's romance with another woman he meets at a party, Flavia. And you just wonder what happened to her. In the scene where the soldiers find Ben Hur's mother and she turns out to have leprosy, everything's awfully truncated. The music just stops, cut off, as if there was more to the scene. There was no reverse shot.
Well, that whole thing was cut very much, the whole 'Lepers!" scene, because someone said the public is not going to understand it.
It's the old Hitchcock thing, what you don't actually see, you imagine as much worse. When you finally see their faces, it is ghastly.
[..........]
I have to ask what seems probably a stupid question. Maybe you can't answer it, I don't know. I think I've heard just about everything of your work on record. And I very much belied [sic] the so-called love themes, the more intimate material you liked, from the larger epic genre, particularly war material, like time and love, or inner conflict like The Lost Weekend. And it always feels to me as if somehow the intimate material of a love scene is easier for you to do, whereas the bigger stuff is more of a taxing effect for you. Is that in fact how it works? Maybe I'm imposing myself. Maybe I feel more comfortable. But it was something I had to add. (Rózsa does not respond to this.)
One thing I object to in The Lost Weekend is they show the drinking song in La Traviata driving people to drink. (Laughter)
The last time I saw the whole film was in Italy about five years ago on television. They show all films with no interruption, no commercials. And then comes the place with the "Libiamo" (he sings it) which was actually recorded before I came to the picture. So, suddenly I hear them sing this other thing (sings a different tune with the word "Libiamo" in it) and I said, "Why is that here?" I finally came back to America. I called up Wilder (now, this was 20 years after the film was shot), and I said, "What happened there?" He said, "Well, I tell you what, you were already gone. And suddenly they told us that the music is free [not copyright] in America, because Verdi died in 1901, but the text writers, they died later, so in Italy, it's still protected. So as far as the foreign releases were concerned, Victor Young or someone rewrote the same rhythm with different words, you know, and they re-recorded it. It's so idiotic, you know, because the whole thing, the 'Libiamo' is this thing, that's the idea. Bizarre! They rewrote it and so that's why I said there's nothing we could do because you were gone." You know, they do a picture like this, maybe it cost a million dollars. The clearance for this song would have cost maybe a thousand. That's right. But to avoid paying the thousand, they spent fifteen thousand, which killed the whole effect. The effect was the "Libiamo" and he wants to drink.
[..........]
At this point, Gerald Pratley from the Film Institute introduces Rózsa to Morris Surdin, Canadian composer who scored radio and television programs and the 1971 film Hospital. After this, the discussion with fans continues.
[..........]
Did you ever see the opera Madame Bovary?
No, who wrote it?
I don't know. I forgot the author, but your music is better...
Someone asked me that before, but I forgot who wrote it. I quite like Madame Bovary.
The score or the film?
Both.
[..........]
When you started writing for Korda, was Muir Mathieson a great help to you?
He was a great hindrance to me. He was sort of a … not to be unfair because the man is dead and he was a friend of mine … he was sort of an amateur. He was an amateur, I would say, as far as music was concerned. He was a good craftsman. But music is an art. But he was a good craftsman who was, you know, a pupil of [Sir Malcolm] Sargent and so, he was a good conductor.
Mathieson is sometimes credited with being the person who succeeded in interesting serious composers in composing for films in England.
Yes, he did.
You know what you said just now kind of bears out something Benny said. [Mathieson] had conducted Vertigo because of a musicians' strike, you may remember, and yet when Benny came to England, Mathieson wouldn't even see him.
Well, there are two stories. Mathieson told me that he conducted that and Benny never thanked him and he met him and never even spoke to him. So you don't know, you don't know.
I can guess it was both directions.
Well, probably. But I can understand Benny's point of view. No, Mathieson was not an artist. One thing I objected to, and that was the first album of [Olivier's] Henry V where it says, "William Shakespeare, Henry V. The London Symphony conducted by Muir Mathieson. That's all! That was on the RCA 78s. William Walton was not mentioned. I mean, that goes too far.
[..........]
Of all your material that's unrecorded, what would you most like to see on disc? Because there's still a substantial...
You mean from films or from serious music?
Both.
First of all, I like to see all my concerti on records. I want to start with the piano concerto, the cello concerto and the double concerto. And then the Tripartita, which is a new orchestral work. It has been recorded, but it's not available yet.
[Quality of the taping from this point on becomes better…]
I've just been reading Brian Forbes' life, and one thing that comes out is the number of scenarios he wrote which were rejected. I suppose he must have written about five times as many scenarios that were made into films. Does this ever happen with regard to film music? Have you ever composed film music where that happened?
No, it didn't happen to me, but it happens. Of course not as often as with scenarios. Every studio in the old days had hundreds of scenarios which were perfect, done and never made. But with film music this has happened, even with Mr. Hermann [Torn Curtain] but now it has been recorded – just about two weeks ago. So you can judge now who was right. I'm very anxious to hear it.
A lot of us are.
Well, it happens, not too often.
What about some of your unrecorded material.
Well, there was a very bad film, The Power, but I think it has quite a good score. Nobody will ever recall it's a "power" of what or who is in it. You know, this kind of thing. People write me and I don't know whether The King's Thief should be recorded. Who remembers The King's Thief, I don't.
Edmund Purdom?
Yes, yes.
Did you think the music was any good?
I only saw it once, but I think it was.
I have the impression that if you're turning film music into a recording or a concert, you definitely do a good deal of work on it.
I usually do; my fans object to that very much.
As a rule, do you think it's better to re-orchestrate a score?
It's not just a matter of "re-orchestration."
The original can be pretty scrappy, can't it? I mean, you've got to really work it up a little more than was in the original.
Well, sometimes no, sometimes yes, but there is only one thing, dialogue. You have to write with dialogue always in a subdued way. You can have a big melodic line. In a certain register, you cannot go very high because it covers the dialogue. Now, when it comes to a recording, why not have it in its full bloom? What you hear now in the record of Young Bess, conducted by Elmer, was not exactly like was heard in the film. So it's a sort of a revamping.
Leonard Rosenman said that when he scored East of Eden, he regarded James Dean as a tenor, Julie Harris as a soprano, and Raymond Massey as a baritone, and composed music for those levels when he was dealing with dialogue in an operatic sense. Is that how you…
No, I actually don't think in those terms. I think this is a very good idea, but I don't think I would bother with that. I'm trying to write music.
In other words, you think he's being too specific.
That's too specific, I think.
There's a time factor, too, isn't there? Are you usually under the pressure of two or three weeks? There was a big exception in the case of Ben-Hur.
Well, that was an exception.
Over the years, what was the average amount of time they gave [for you to score a film]?
Six weeks.
Was it enough?
No, no.
[..........]
I have told this story one million times, and so this is time number a million and one – how Stravinsky did not write a score. I told this thing yesterday but, if you haven't heard, I'll tell it to you once again. In 1940, Mr. Stravinsky came to Hollywood, and he had absolutely no income, And somebody told him that M-G-M wants him as a composer. So he said, fine. And he went to see Louis B. Mayer. And Mayer was sitting in his office, and he said, "Mr. Stravinsky, I hear that you are the greatest composer in the world." Stravinsky was a little man and he said, "This is, you know, the greatest studio in the world. Well, the greatest studio should get together with the greatest composer." And Stravinsky was bowing. And Mayer said, "Well, we have a picture for you. Would you like to do the music for it?" Stravinsky said, "Yes, I would be." Mayer said, "By the way, have you seen the biggest desk in the world? This is the biggest desk. See, this desk was built around my body. (He had quite a rotund body, and it was all around him.) He said, "From this desk, I'm controlling the studio, and every producer of mine here has a button. I can call this one, that one, what he's doing. I know everything he's doing." Stravinsky wondered what that had to do with him, but he was still bowing. Mayer said, "I'm coming back to you. Now, how much money would you ask for a film? Stravinsky said, "Well, it depends how much music." Mayer said, "Well, for argument's sake, let's say about an hour of music for a film." Stravinsky thought about it and said, "About $25,000," which in 1940 would be like $100,000 today. And Louis B. Mayer said, "Well, that's quite a lot of money, but if you're the greatest composer in the world, you should have it." Mayer continued, "And how much time would you need for a one-hour score to compose?" Stravinsky thought, "Well, you know, a ballet of one hour, how long did it take him?" and he said, "Well, one year." (Laughter) "Goodbye, Mr. Stravinsky" – the end of the conversation!
There is a similar story about Schoenberg when he was asked to go to a similar very important meeting. He was brought in and told that they wanted him because they thought he was the greatest. When they heard his speech, they fainted. "Why are you so expensive?" "I'm cheap, my music is cheap ... but it's my name that's expensive."
[..........]
Is there any truth in what Oscar Levant wrote in his book, that as soon as any score was published in Europe by a symphonic composer the composers in Hollywood used to get its score flown over to them immediately and unprecedented quotations would appear in the next score they wrote for the studio? I mean, if they are pressed for time, is that a short cut they would take?
No, there is no shortcut. There was only one composer who did this. He was found out and they fired him immediately. And I won't mention his name, he's still around. He's not a composer anymore, he's an arranger. He was never a composer, but he took a symphony by Samuel Barber. And I don't know how they found out, but I found out. And I finally, when I came to M-G-M, I asked the librarian, who was a very fine gentleman, "Well, is that true?" He said, "Yes, it was a copy job." He just took it and copied the whole thing out. He thought "They'll never find out." Somebody did. And M-G-M was in an enviable position at that moment that they had something from Schirmer [Barber's publisher]. So they immediately made another contract asking for the permission to use the music of Samuel Barber, because if they would have used it without permission, they could have been sued for incredible things. But the composer was immediately eliminated. So it didn't happen.
I don't think that Levant meant that large sections were copied, but that ideas or little themes or ideas were...
Well, Levant you never could take him seriously. (Laughter)
What about Tiomkin when he gave credit to composers like Tchaikovsky in his Academy Awards speech?
Well, I resigned for that reason from the Academy, because I thought it was outrageous. Because Mr. Tiomkin wanted to be terribly funny and very clever, but with that he downgraded the whole community of Hollywood composers because the accusation against Hollywood composers was that their work was not composition but patchwork, what the Italians call pasticcio. And there comes a man who gets two Oscars and he said thank you Beethoven, thank you Rachmaninoff, thank you Tchaikovsky. It was great fun and the whole world was laughing about it but I said the man should be censored because he downgraded the Academy, downgraded the composers because we gave an award for that that he's stealing. Nothing has happened. I resigned and I'm not a member of the Academy ever since.
He claimed that he didn't mean it as a joke, that he actually meant to give homage to great masters of the past.
Elwy Yost: Mr. Rózsa, what's your own favorite of all your scores? Or do you have one or are there a number that are?
Well, this is the same thing if you would ask a mother who has five children which one she likes the best. (Laughter)
Elwy Yost: Well then, name the five... I imagine El Cid would really be up there...
Well, El Cid, The Lost Weekend I like, and I like Ben-Hur, and I just re-recorded Quo Vadis after 26 years.
Elwy Yost: Really?
Yes, and I found out that I still like it. (Laughter) I would like all of them … no, that's not true, because there were some very bad pictures which had very mediocre scores.
Elwy Yost: Mr. Rózsa, when you're recording, how much do you do at a time? Is it a minute or does it depend, or is it three, or say in a given afternoon, what might you do?
Well, I'll tell you what. For a film, I usually record about between four to five minutes of music in an hour. I just did an album of Quo Vadis of about 42 to 44 minutes music, but not for a film. This is for a record. In two sessions, six hours.
Elwy Yost: But for a film, it's certainly a little more painstaking, isn't it?
[To Morris Surdin] Do you do it here with the film or without the film?
Surdin: We do it with a stopwatch, which is very bad.
I couldn't do it.
Surdin: I find it very difficult.
I couldn't do it.
Do you use click tracks?
No, I don't use click tracks. No, absolutely. I'm an anti-click track man. Music has to live. You can't go by the rigidity of a click track. It's something else with a march, you know, when you have to be exact tempo, that's all right.
I still remember when Muir Mathieson was conducting and we did marches in Four Feathers. He said, "Well, the downbeat has to be on the left foot." Of course, the cutting was wrong. Suddenly it was on the right foot, we couldn't change the tempo. Well, this has to be done before, And then with a click track, that's perfectly all right. Because that's mechanical. But anything else, no.
Surdin: Don't you find that musicians normally play in tempo anyway? Without the click track?
Yes, of course. Of course. When I first heard about it, I didn't know what the click track was when I came to Hollywood. They're always talking about click track. I called them "click track virtuosos." And I said, "But what do you do if you want to make a ritenuto?" He said, "It's very simple. If it's in 2-4, let's say 1-2, 1-2, comes a little note, oh, that's 1-2-3. So that becomes a little note.
Surdin: They showed me a book with click track patterns. And they expected you to learn the whole book within one session while you're conducting it. I didn't learn it.
Elwy Yost: Mr. Rózsa, you're working and they're playing the scene over and you're conducting in front of it?
Well, yes, we rehearsed the orchestra. I usually make a rehearsal just to get the music right. Then I make another rehearsal with a clock. I always have a clock. By the way, if you would be a member of the Miklós Rózsa Society, you would read a very interesting article by Mr. Hamer. Yes. (Laughter) That shows you that I read that paper, you see? And it shows exactly where the clock is, where the conductor is standing, when the film is, you know? The clock is right here, do you put it on the left? And a big clock, you know, like this. And then the clock is going and you have your timing and then you see whether your tempo is right. Sometimes you have to cut a bar, half a bar, something. And then you make a picture rehearsal. Then you see the picture, you have to watch the picture. You watch your clock and you watch your score and you watch yourself too. And when this clicks, when everything is, (I'm sorry about the word click and we mean it.) When this is all right, then you make a take. And if the timing comes out all right, you know, then you have it. If it doesn't, you make another one. You try it until it's right.
Elwy Yost: If it's a good afternoon, how much have you done? Did you say a few minutes to your fourth time?
No, but with this I can make about four to five minutes an hour.
Of all the directors you've worked with, have any really had a sense of what is needed in film scoring? Have any made suggestions that helped you or was it...
Well, yes. For instance, I just did a picture with Mr. Alain Renais in Paris, and he knew exactly what he wanted. And not musically speaking, but in expression, dramatically what he wanted. And I had other people who, for instance, Billy Wilder always knows what he wants. And he also gave me very good suggestions. For instance, in Double Indemnity, I had some theme for the conspiracy, you know, where the two people are conspiring to kill. And he said, 'Well, here I hear something like the beginning of the Unfinished Symphony.' Now, he didn't want me to use the Unfinished Symphony, but I knew what he meant. So I wrote something entirely different, Anyway, I knew what he was after. You find very few examples like this with directors. Very few.
As you say, there must be a few exceptions. And have producers... I know the awful story about the Julius Caesar Overture where it was replaced by Capriccio Italien. Has that happened often?
No.
Have producers come in and tried to force something like this?
This was not a producer, this was actually a musician who did this. In this case, the producer was Houseman, he was totally against this.
So, once you've done a score, you haven't had studio interference coming in and supplanting material like this?
No, no. I have had sometimes difficulty before the score was finished. I don't mind telling you about this, because the gentleman I honor very much and he's a great director, probably the greatest who ever lived, and this is William Wyler, and that was in Ben-Hur.
We understood each other very well in Rome and then in Hollywood, and one day he told me that he had a great musical idea. And I said, "What is it?" (I was trembling.) (Laughter) And he said, "You know the Nativity scene?" I said, "Yes, of course." He said, "We should use Adeste Fideles [Oh Come All Ye Faithful]." (Laughter)
Probably because in Since You Went Away, Max Steiner ended the score with that, and he got the Oscar.
Oh, he did? I didn't know that. So I said, "Absolutely no." He said, "Why? This is Christmas. This is the first Christmas." Now if we play Adeste Fideles, everybody knows that this is the first Christmas. I said, "Willy? This is impossible. This is a 16th century hymn." He said, "What difference does that make?" I said, "Everything." He said, "My suggestion will be accepted. This is the music of the period, even if it's hundreds of years later, but it will be acceptable. I interrupted, "But this is well-known..." He said, "No, you're wrong." (This discussion was all very amicable, you know.)
He said, "I will give you an idea, an example. I did a picture once called Dodsworth. You remember? (A beautiful film, and he was a great director.) the picture starts where Walter Houston leaves his office, he closes his desk, puts his drawer back, and he leaves. And my musical director was Alfred Newman, and I told him, "Of course, this is a scene where we should play 'Auld Lang Syne'." (Laughter) "And you know what Al Newman said? He said, 'No'." Wyler said (speaking loudly), "Why not?" So naturally, they played 'Auld Lang Syne,' so everybody knew this is 'goodbye.' Now it's the same thing. We play Adeste Fideles, everybody knows that this is the first Christmas."
So I said, "No, I'm sorry, I can't." He said, "Think about it." I said, "I don't even have to think about it." (Laughter) So this went on for quite a while because the cutting of the picture took about nine months. So we saw each other every two weeks. He said, "Did you think about it?" I said, "Yes, I did. NO." (Laughter) And finally, he was insisting, and I went up to the head of the studio and I said, "I'm sorry, I have to leave the picture." He said, "What happened?" I told him, "Well, Wyler wants Adeste Fideles for the Nativity scene, and I am not going to do it. Get somebody else. Take me off the picture." He said, "Well, take it easy. He will calm down." He didn't. Wyler kept insisting on Adeste Fideles.
Finally, I had a brainwave, and I said, "Willie, let's have lunch. I have an idea I want to discuss with you." He said, "Is this regarding Adeste Fideles? No?" I said, "Well, I'll tell you."
He is partially deaf, isn't he?
He's deaf, one ear completely. It was during the war, he was in a plane. Unfortunately, the other one too. (Laughter) That's him. I said to him, "We had once a discussion with music and you said that musically you don't want to duplicate what you see visually. Is that right? You told me that music should express something else, not duplicating what we see. We talked about the so-called Max Steiner method, when somebody runs up a stair, then music goes [Rózsa sings a scale going up]. When somebody goes down [He sings a scale going down]. You said you don't want that. So why do you want me to duplicate the idea of Adeste Fideles? So I got him with his own words.
He said, "Well, all right, but I want to hear what you're doing." So I said, "Okay." So when I was recording, I asked him to come. He was very nice abut all this, he was an awfully nice man. (Actually he used to play the violin so he thought he was a musician but he hadn't played it for the last 55 years, but that doesn't matter.) He came when we were recording the score and said, "Why do you do those chords that strongly?" I couldn't believe this.
So, I said to the orchestra, "Ladies and gentlemen, you have a new conductor." And I said to him, "William Wyler, you're going to conduct now." And he got red in his face. He said, "No, no, just go ahead." So, finally we came to the Nativity scene. And I played my music and he said, "Well, it's very lovely." I said, "Thank you, William." That was the end of it. This was easy to deal with.
I don't want to name other composers, but there was a very similar case, and a very similar story, you know what I'm talking about. Another composer did not say no, which nearly killed him, because he recorded his music and it was taken out and Handel's Hallelujah was put in. and he made himself ridiculous in eyes of the whole world. But this is not a studio policy. He should have said, "Take my name off the picture and get someone else to do it."
There was another story which also does not have a very happy ending, Benny Herman was quarreling with Selznick over The Portrait of Jenny. Selznick determined because there was a tidal wave at the end, Debussy's La Mer had to be heard. Benny got all worked up; there was no compromise. And he quit. That's right. Absolutely. Benny had conviction. [The film was scored by Tiomkin.] So some win and some lose.
Is it true that Wyler originally suggested you use the theremin for Christ in Ben-Hur?
He had the idea, but I talked him out of this immediately.
Gerald Pratley: Ladies and gentlemen, at this point, I'm going to ask if you'd just like to mix yourselves up a little because several people have come in since we started talking. want to say hello to Miklós and we have to leave about five to seven to go down to the film because it starts at 7. So please carry on.