"Music from Hollywood" was created by Hans Haenssler for AFN Radio in Stuttgart. According to Volker Hannemann, the show ran each Saturday evening. The show was 60 minutes long. There were American speakers, Haenssler never spoke by himself. The program below is 90 minutes long and the interviewer is Haenssler, which suggests that he did this privately and it was never transmitted. However, perhaps because this episode of the show contains musical excerpts, maybe that is why the show was longer than normal. This file has been edited.
– M.Q. )
HANS HAENSSLER: Until recently film scores have been generally ignored or given one-line comments by film critics. However, when historians someday reflect upon serious music of the 20th century, the film score and its composers will certainly be considered among the main forces in musical development. From the late 30s and through to the 70s, Miklós Rózsa has provided a rich, varied series of scores. In over 80 films, he has written background music for subjects ranging from paranoiacs, drug addicts and dipsomaniacs to some of history's most memorable men and events. In each case, his thoroughness of research and complete immersion in his subject matter has provided a uniquely memorable score.
Born in Budapest in 1907, Miklós Rózsa could read music before he was able to read words. By the age of five he began studying the violin and two years later was able to play a movement from a Mozart violin concerto. Encouraged by his mother, discouraged by his father, he followed a music study course which eventually placed him in a leading European music conservatory by the age of 21. He was already recognized as a potential composer and a leading music publisher immediately signed him to a contract. In 1934 he became publicly known as an outstanding young composer with a performance of one of his works in Paris. Two years later, his ballet Hungaria was performed in London and seen by a French film director Jacques Feyder.
Feyder insisted that Rózsa compose a score to his new film, but Rózsa had never thought of film scoring and quite frankly told Feyder he didn't want to compose "foxtrots." After much persuasion, Rózsa did do the picture. Knight Without Armour, starring Marlene Dietrich, produced in 1937 by Alexander Korda. And with this film he embarked on a remarkable career which changed the art of motion picture scoring. He scored a number of pictures for Korda including The Thief of Bagdad, Jungle Book, Sundown and Lydia, all of which were nominated for Academy Awards.
His first contract with a Hollywood studio was in 1943 at Paramount Pictures. It soon became evident that Rózsa's approach to a score departed markedly from the norm as he engaged in a great deal of background study into a film's characterization and subject matter before he committed a note to paper. This became dramatically evident in his 1945 composition The Lost Weekend in which he utilized a sound-oscillating instrument, the theremin, to intensify the mood of Ray Milland's Oscar-winning performance as a troubled alcoholic. He used the theremin in again that same year for the David O. Selznick United Artist film Spellbound.
In 1945, Miklós Rózsa was nominated for three Academy Awards: The Lost Weekend, A Song to Remember and Spellbound. He won his first Oscar for Spellbound.
The score for Spellbound is regarded as a landmark in film music, a suspense film on both a mental and physical level. It concerned an amnesia victim and his fear of being a murderer. The eerie sound of the theremin integrated perfectly with the mysterious score and intensified the film's theme of potential madness. The score also contained a theme which has become one of the most popular in history of motion picture music. It was later adapted into an orchestral piece, the Spellbound Concerto, which has been recorded many times and featured in numerous concert performances.
Miklós Rózsa is one of the few composers who has been able to combine two careers: film music and concert music. Many of his classical compositions are both popular and respected. One of them, his violin concerto, was a particular favorite of writer-director Billy Wilder, who approached Rózsa at a party and asked if he had another copy of the record, since he had worn his out. Walter called Rózsa a few months later with the news that he had written a movie to the concerto. The picture was The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970).
The career of Miklós Rózsa has spanned decades and styles. He has composed scores for intimate dramas and for memorable historical epics. During his long and profilic tenure with M-G-M, Rózsa scored films such as Quo Vadis, Ben-Hur, Ivanhoe, Madame Bovary, Lust for Life, The Asphalt Jungle, Adam's Rib and others. For his work he has been honored with 60 nominations and 3 Academy Awards. The rich and varied contributions of Miklós Rózsa has indeed been a powerful force in film music. The impact of Miklós Rózsa on the art of music is and will always be a prominent legend in the annals of 20th century music.
On the 27th August 1975, I talked to Dr. Rózsa on location in Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy, where he spends his summer vacations.
HANS HAENSSLER: Mr. Rózsa, welcome to our program "Music from Hollywood." I'm sure our listeners will enjoy this conversation with the master of motion picture music as much as I do. Most of our listeners identify your name with the music for epic film productions like Ben-Hur, Quo Vadis or King of Kings. But successful accomplishments like this do not come overnight. How and where did it all start for you?
MIKLÓS RÓZSA: Well, it all started in London in 1936. I had nothing to do with films. I wrote only symphonic music and chamber music before I was educated in Leipzig in the conservatory. I lived for a while in Paris, and I never thought about films. But I was in London to write a ballet for the Markova-Dolin Company in 1935. In 1936, the ballet was already playing in London and I stayed there, and I read in the papers that a friend of mine, a very famous film director, a Belgian, French-Belgian, Jacques Feyder, was in town. So I called him up and he said, "Could you come right away to my hotel?" I said I could and I went there. After I arrived, he said, "I am in big trouble. Could you help me?" I said, "Yes, what is the trouble?" He said, "I do not speak English, and I want to send out my laundry. Could you tell them?" So I told them to take away the laundry of Mr. Feyder. They did.
So by that time, it was seven o'clock, and he said, "Well, let's go out and have dinner." And I said, "I'm sorry, I cannot have dinner, because I have to go to my ballet." He said, "You have a ballet? Can I come?" I said, "Well, all right, we'll go to the ballet, and we'll have supper afterwards." So we went to the ballet, he liked it very much, and we went to a nightclub to have supper. It's still there, Quaglino's in London. Feyder liked his little drink, he ordered champagne. I never drank champagne before, and I hated it, but he loved it. And as the champagne went down, my value as a composer went up. And when he finished the second bottle, he declared that Beethoven was a beginner and I was the greatest composer in the world. Well, who was I to argue with him? And he said suddenly, "Well, would you like to write music for my film?" And I said, w"Well, I'm sorry, I do not write foxtrots." And he said, "Who s foxtrots? I want serious music."
I said, "In films?" I had seen German films like Die Drei von der Tankstelle and Lillian Harvey films with Willy Fritch and there were always songs and foxtrots. But that's not what he wanted, so he said, "Well, we shall discuss it and I'll call you tomorrow when my wife [Françoise Rosay, the great French actress who just died (1974)] will come and we'll have lunch." So I took him home and I thought he would forget the whole thing because of the two bottles of champagne. He said, "My wife is in town, we are expecting you for lunch at 1 o'clock in the hotel." So I was there at 1 o'clock, and so was his wife, another gentleman, a Belgian gentleman who was, later I've heard, a costume designer.
We were all waiting. The time changed from 1 o'clock, to 1:30, 2 o'clock, 2:30, and still no lunch. And they all said, "Well, she'll be here any moment." I didn't know who "she" was. Finally, about 2.30, a lady, very attractive and very elegant, and a gentleman arrived, and they were introduced as Mr. and Mrs. Sieber. Now, they had a German name, and they both had a German accent, but I don't know who they were. So Mrs. Sieber was sitting next to me at the luncheon, and Monsieur Feyder was sitting on my left. So we made polite conversation. Her face was somewhat familiar but I didn't know who she was and then suddenly she said, "Is my song ready?" and I said "What song?" Then I felt suddenly that Feyder on my left side was digging me in my ribs and so I said, "Oh the song ... well. it's not ready, but I'm thinking about it." So the lunch was over and I saw that everybody was coming around and looking at us all the time so I turned over to Feyder and said, "Who is she?" And he said, "You idiot. It's Marlene Dietrich." So I looked at her and there she was. Of course I've seen The Blue Angel and it was Marlene Dietrich.
So the lunch was over and he said, Feyder, he said to me, "Well, she likes you. Now we go to see Mr. Korda at London Films." I said, "Who is Mr. Korda?" He said, "You are absolutely hopeless. He's the director of London Films and he is a countryman of yours because he's Hungarian." I said, "Oh yes, I've heard about him." He said, "From now on, let me do everything. You just shut up, will you?" I said, "All right." So I went to the studio. I said, "First we are going to have tea with his brother Vincent." Now Vincent Korda still arrived (by the way, he's coming here the day after tomorrow from Venice to pay a visit to me in Santa Margherita). And the first time I met him, we never said one word, we spoke French because Federer only spoke French. And when everything was over, Vincent Korda said to me in Hungarian, "Are you Hungarian?" And I said yes. That was our only conversation. So Feyder said, "Now go to my office. The studios were just built in Denham and I'll be back about in an hour." So I went around. He came back in an hour and said, "Congratulations, you're engaged." And I said how? He said, "Well, I went to see Korda, Alexander Korda that is, and told him I want Rózsa as my composer," and he said, "Well, I don't know Rózsa and I want Spoliansky." Spoliansky was a German composer who was living in London that time who worked for Korda but Feyder said, "I don't want Spoliansky, I hate his music, I want Rózsa," and Korda said, "Well, I don't know him," so he told Korda about my ballet and said, "By the way he's the best friend of your brother Vincent. They practically lived together in Paris." So Alexander said, "Well, if he's a friend of Vincent's and you want him, all right, you can have him." Of course, Alexander could have called up Vincent and said, "But you know him, Vincent," and Vincent could have replied, "I just met him." But this didn't happen and I got a contract and the film was Knight Without Armor with Marlene Dietrich and Robert Donat. I'm going to record three excerpts of this film now next October in London, and I hope you'll have occasion to play it on your show.
HH: While you were studying music in Leipzig, were you starting to form some ideas of your own that later would be realized in such works as those we've already mentioned?
MR: No, I don't think so. That was another world, because I was living the world of chamber music mostly and some liturgical music I wrote. My great sponsor at that time was Karl Straube, who was the cantor of the Thomaskirche, and he conducted the Thomanerchor. And that was so far from any kind of film music that the two have nothing to do with each other.
HH: In your biography, we can read that you started to study chemistry before you changed over to composition. What was the reason for that?
MR: Yes, when I went to Leipzig, you see, I was 18 years when I finished my high school in Budapest, and I wanted to get away as fast as possible, and I wanted to study music. My father, who was an industrialist and had a very large estate in northern north of Hungary was very much against it. He said he as a composer you cannot make a living and how right he was and so I said, "I also want to study chemistry and I think the study of chemistry in Leipzig is the best in the world." Because he had ideas that we are going to have tremendous chemical things on our estate, we are going to find all kind of minerals and as a chemist this would be good for the family, so he said all right. So I went to Leipzig and I really started out with both. I matriculated at the musicological institute and also in chemistry and I went in 8 o'clock every morning but I had to go on the Nürnberger Straße and I went by a big house which was Breitkopf and Härtel. That was one of the greatest publishing houses of music in Germany which is now 250 years old. I looked it up, thinking if one day maybe I can write something that this house will publish it. Now, to cut a long story very short, soon I left chemistry and I went to the conservatory, the University of Musicology, and chemistry was gone. And in 1928, I signed my first contract with Breitkopf and Härtel in the house in the Nürnberger Straße. And now the firm is very well established also in West Germany in Wiesbaden. They are still my publishers.
HH: Mr. Rózsa, I believe Igor Stravinsky once said that those who compose film music are in it just for the money. How do you react to this claim?
MR: Well, all I can say is that Igor Stravinsky wanted also to compose film music.
HH: He also wrote film music.
MR: No, he did and he didn't. I can tell you the story because I was part of it. Part of it in a way that we were very friendly in that time. And he called me for help very often when he needed. And he was about to write music for films. I must admit, at that time, he needed money. This was about 1940, let's say, 43. Maybe 44. And there was a film, it was called The Commando Strike at Dawn. And it was a film playing in Norway, a war film. and he was writing the music. So he called me and he said, talked about the orchestra, (i) said, "Now listen, before we go any further, have you got a contract?" He said, "It's just being worked out and everything is fine, it's a trusted gentleman and I already started the music." I said, "But is there any film?" He said, "No, no, the filming will start only later." He said, "But how can you start the music?" I said, I read the script, and I know it's about Norway and the war, but that's not enough. You have to see the film. He said, however I have written it, you want to see my music for the title? I said, yes. So I ran over to his house. He didn't live far from us. And that was a piece, very good. I said, but how do you know how long it will be? He said, this is far too long. It was three, four minutes long. No title is that long. the title is usually a minute and a half. Oh, I said, well, they are going to make it longer for my music. Well, I still asked, do you have your contracts? No, it's being worked out. So finally I've heard what the outcome was. They did want him at the beginning, but then he was told that they are very sorry, the film has a budget, and the budget doesn't allow the large orchestras that he used to get. And he, therefore, somebody else has been engaged. So there he was with all this music already written and he published it later as Four Norwegian Moods. And that is actually the music which he has written for this film which he has never made.
HH: Of course, it's an honour to have been remembered as the man who composed the score for Ben-Hur. But do you feel that was almost too much of a success? By that I mean, do you find that others wanted more of the same instead of allowing you to follow your own instinctive creativity?
MR: No, I don't think so. Ben-Hur was a great film, and the story was humanly and emotionally so evocative that I think I did my best and I don't think that it harmed me. But Ben-Hur was not the beginning of my historical film period. It was actually the end. So that I did music for so many historical films is not because of Ben-Hur. I would say Ben-Hur was the culmination of all my historical film period. And as such, I think I did my best.
HH: It might be interesting to hear from a man who has done so much with film music, just which of his own musical score he is most proud. Is there one?
MR: Well, this is a very difficult question because I have written so many different kinds of music. Yes, Ben-Hur I like very much. I like The Lost Weekend I think is a strong score. but the most popular score, at least in America, is Spellbound, I cannot help that. This is what Rachmaninov had with the C-sharp minor prelude. No matter how many concerti and symphonies he wrote, everybody wanted to hear the C-sharp minor prelude. The same with me. I have written Ben-Hur and very serious film and other music, but everybody wants to still hear Spellbound.
HH: This was a new recording, a quadraphonic recording of the original motion picture score of Spellbound conducted by Ray Heindorf. Mr. Rózsa, do you think there's any form of similarity in the two kinds of music, film and classical? Or are they even distant cousins?
MR: Well, they are naturally more than cousins. They're actually brothers. Because although the mother is different, but the father is the same. And although my symphonic music is entirely different from my film music, In form, in contrapuntal technique and the entire symphonic presentation, I am sure there are great similarities, which you cannot avoid, because I don't consider film music something below my dignity. On the contrary, I try to be, in film music, always as good as I can be, but with the exception that when you write symphonic music, this will be heard by a few thousands, but film music is heard by millions. And for that reason, it has to be understood immediately. In serious music, you listen again, you go to a concert, you hear it from this, you hear it from that performer, but in films, you go once, and that's it. And that's one time you have to understand it immediately.
HH: Like many different professions, there are different schools of thought. How does your music differ from other composers?
MR: Well, I don't think I can give this answer. The main thing is that my music is always my music, and I don't think that I am exaggerating that you can hear my music in a hundred films and you would say that this is Rózsa. Now whether this is true with other composers I don't know. Hollywood of course had many very bad composers, or let's say no composers, even in the good old days – mostly amateurs who came from vaudeville, from operetta, from musicals, from Broadway shows, mostly as conductors, and suddenly they were trusted to do the work of writing music. So all they could do was just to repeat the things they have heard before. But apart from that, they were also very good composers in Hollywood. And I must name here, one, Bernard Herrmann, who lives now in England and who is an outstanding composer and again with every score Bernard Herrmann has written or is writing you can hear this is by Bernard Herrmann. But on the other hand you can, I could name and I won't, about 50 composers and their music is interchangeable. They have no face. So when you ask me whether it differs, it only differs because mine is mine. [Music by Herrmann is heard.]
MR: That was music composed by Bernard Herrmann, conducted by Charles GerhardT and the National Philharmonic Orchestra. Music from On Dangerous Ground, The Death Hunt.
HH: Mr. Rózsa, in the last 10 or 15 years we've seen quite a change in movie scripts and production. How has this affected film music?
MR: Very much. The whole aesthetic of films is gone, and it became now sheer commercialism, And for that reason, the aesthetic value and artistic value of the films have suffered tremendously. And for that reason also, the kind of music that I and my colleagues wrote for about 30 years, serious dramatic music to enhance the effectiveness of the film, is not really needed anymore. It's a different kind of music which is taking over, a different kind of scripts and a different kind of subject matter.
HH: Is there any possibility that we may go back to the type of film scores we have heard years ago?
MR: I think so. I think so because at the moment there is a tremendous interest in records of the old scores. I had the distinction in 1942 to be the first American composer whose music was recorded on records. And that was The Jungle Book.
[An excerpt from The Jungle Book recording is heard, spoken by Sabu: My name is Mowgli. It means the little frog. This was the name the wolf pack gave me, for I was brought up by the wolves in the jungle until I was grown up. From the animals, I learned the laws of the jungle. I spoke their speech and learned their ways because I lived with them as a wolf cub in the dark, silent places of the forest where the silence is so deep that the ear can hear it.]
MR: At that time, nobody wanted any records of film music. For instance, when a film like Gone With the Wind came out, which had a very good score by Max Steiner, Selznick, who was the producer and his publicity department, tried everything to have a record made, and nobody wanted it. With this film, with that incredible publicity, and with the incredible success that it had, and a very lovely theme, which is called "Tara's Theme," now everybody knows it – nobody wanted to put it on record because nobody wanted to hear film music on a record. Now my Jungle Book came out in 1942 with Sabu, who was with me in New York that time, and doing the narration. It was a sudden success, and I remember very well, it sold 42,000 albums. That album was three records, you know, 78s. And it was an eye-opener that film music can also sell albums and actually make money. Well, many others followed. And today we are facing a very interesting phase, especially in America and in England, that the young people, those young people who go to see the new films with this kind of electronic music and all kind of tricks instead of music. They are very much interested in the old film scores and buying everything that comes on the market from film music 30 and 35 years back. And I myself have done quite a few albums of old music with new representation. and new recordings and my new album for Polydor is now on the market and I'm doing another one yet now this coming October in London.
HH: Are you composing your scores while the film is still in work or after the final editing?
MR: That is different. For instance in the great films like Quo Vadis or Ben-Hur, I was there from the beginning. The producer, Mr. Zimbalist, was a friend of mine and I was called in for script conferences from the beginning and a lot of music was composed before the shooting of the film actually started. I composed Quo Vadis during the editing when the film was not in its final shape yet. I told them I cannot compose an hour and half of music in two weeks after they finished. I need all the time and they gave me all the time, which was very generous of them. And I composed the music for a day, a picture was made in Rome and by that time I was back in Hollywood. And in Hollywood they made a cut which was not the same as they made in Rome. And I composed to the one in Hollywood and I said, "I don't care, I will change it." I knew there will be a lot of changes, there would be a lot of cuts. I'd rather do the changes, I'd rather do the cuts, than to compose from scratch. And for that reason, when they finished finally their own editing in Hollywood, two weeks later I was on my way to London to record the score, because I was ready.
HH: So the film score for Quo Vadis was recorded in London?
MR: Yes, it was, because it was a foreign-made film. They had the rights to do it in London, and in London I got the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, nearly 100 men, and I needed a very large chorus. This is for the scenes of the Christians in the arena, when they meet the lions and so forth. And I needed to accompany thousands of men there singing, so I needed at least 100, and this was so expensive in Hollywood and much cheaper in London and because it was a foreign-made film I could go to England and that is why I recorded everything in England.
HH: If you have a contract to do a film score, how much time do you have to compose, orchestrate and record the music for the film?
MR: This is different from film to film. Usually they allow about six weeks. Six to eight weeks is the usual time for a normal film. But my films are usually abnormal. Ben-Hur has close to three hours of music, Quo Vadis about an hour and a half or two hours, and El Cid had well over two hours. And I could go on. And for that, of course, I needed much more time. For instance, in Ben-Hur, actually I had nine months to compose the score because the same thing happened. I went to the end of Ben-Hur, back to Rome. I composed all the marches. I composed them in the Forum Romanum. While I did this, I was thinking this is where the whole thing happened and something must be still in the air even 2000 years later and some inspiration has to come from somewhere. I went up on the Forum Romanum on a Sunday and there I was completely alone. It was in December, the end of December when there were no foreigners whatsoever and the Italians of course are not interested in Roman antiquities. I was walking under the Via Sacra where the great parades with their marches used to be, and I was thinking of the parade of the charioteers which now every American band plays, but this was in 1958. I was walking up and down, marching, I thought myself as a Roman soldier, and singing a march and writing it down and suddenly I saw two young women and they looked at me and one of them said to the other "pazzo," which means "madman." I looked around and felt terribly embarrassed. I quickly left the place because I thought they were going to call the police!
HH: If you are offered to compose music for a film, what are the criterion after which you're selecting the production?
MR: This is a different thing. I was under contract to M-G-M for 14 years. In my contract, it gave me the right to choose films I wanted to work on; it was up to me to select. In other words, I could refuse. And I did this very often. So the criterion is that can I, with my abilities, with my beliefs in musical and other values, do my best for this kind of a subject matter. Now I was once given a film which was about a Hollywood producer who was a very bad man. I was not interested in Hollywood producers because I knew too many of them and I disliked them intensely. I thought I can't force myself to spend three or four months to write music for a bad Hollywood producer – who cares? My answer was that I would prefer to compose music to the Los Angeles telephone book. But it turned out that the picture [The Bad and the Beautiful] was a tremendous success and a colleague of mine [David Raksin] wrote the music which was also very successful. That was okay with me. I cannot work without being convinced about something that I'm going to score.
HH: Do you have a chance to go back to some material you wrote for a film earlier?
MR: No, I never used the same material again, with very few exceptions. For instance, my so-called fans remind me all the time that I wrote a waltz once to a film, Madame Bovary. Now, this was a waltz which I have then reused, at least I am told, six or seven times. In a film if you see dancing, the people in charge of it would say, "Well, some orchestra should play something." So they would say, "Okay, put in the Madame Bovary Waltz." "Why should I write something? Nobody's listening to that. It's in the background." So I have committed this crime about six or seven times. I really didn't even remember. Somebody told me once there was a gavotte.
HH: A gavotte in Madame Bovary?
MR: Yes, and that was also used again. I said, why not? I could do this in the same studio because they had a copyright, they had the same publisher, so there was no question about using this music again. Under some other circumstances, I couldn't have done that. I mean, I couldn't use the same music again that I wrote for an M-G-M film for a Universal film . That would be impossible. But there, in the background, it saved time, and, you know, time is such an essence that reminds me you asked me about The Knights of the Round Table. That was the first M-G-M widescreen movie after 20th Century Fox just came out with their first such film, The Robe, and that was a big success so M-G-M was rushing to catch up to them. How do you call that kind of movie?.
HH: Four channel stereophonic sound and Cinemascope.
MR: Cinemascope and stereo. So it was a revolution in Hollywood that they thought this is the answer against television. There will be tremendous screen and stereophonic sound. So they told me that would I write the music and I liked the subject matter. I hadn't seen the film yet, and the film was made in England, and would I write the music? So I said I would. And then suddenly I saw the film, which was also about two and a half or three hours long, and it was around the end of October, and Iwas told, "We have to bring out the film for Christmas." So I said, "Well, this gives me about two months to write the music." I said yes but then I realized I couldn't do it and then the head of the studio, Mr. Mannix, who was a lovely Irish man, I loved him dearly. He was so honest, he was one of the nicest men in I met in Hollywood. He was not an educated man but he was growing up in this business and became an executive at M-G-M and people said with Eddie Mannix you don't need a contract, it's enough if he smiles at you and it was so I found him all the time. What he said that was absolutely 100% correct. So Mr. Mannix called me up and he said, "Now look here, we need this fiLm in a big hurry, can you do us a favor?" Now what can you say? I said, "Eddie, I'll do my best." So my best was I had to spend about 20 hours composing and losing a lot of sleep. And then at the end, we were running out of time, and I said, "If I'm going to conduct that much music, it would take about a week. I cannot spare a week." So I asked someone else at M-G-M, other conductor who could help out while I'm at home composing. Sometimes they called me up with a telephone, I listened to my music for two minutes, I put it down and said, "Okay, go ahead, just do it." And I went on composing my music. That's how I've did it in less than two months. And the film was out by Christmas and I know that Eddie Mannix was happy and that was enough for me.
HH: Do you have the original soundtrack recordings from all of your compositions on tapes or records?
MR: Unfortunately, I don't. This is maybe one of my own mistakes, maybe it was not to be helped, but all the soundtracks remained in the studios, and all the scores remained at the studio. That was their property. I didn't ask for them. I know that they wouldn't have given out the scores. I might have been given a photocopy, but as for the soundtracks, they just remained there. I never asked for any of this material, and unfortunately this is now all gone. I thought, and I'm sure my colleagues thought, that if we left these things with M-G-M, they had a tremendous archive, they had a music library, they had everything to keep, just like they kept the films, the other material would also be kept. We didn't know that in the meantime M-G-M will be sold, M-G-M will stop producing films, and all the scores, all the soundtracks were just thrown out.
HH: Why was the original soundtrack recording from Ben-Hur never released on records?
MR: Well, that is a very good question and let me give you the honest answer. This was, I must say, a result of stupidity of the studio and money matters came up in it. Again, it was a foreign produced film because the whole film was produced in Rome. Therefore, with the understanding of the American Musicians Union, they had the right to record the music in Europe, where the film was produced, or anywhere else in Europe, which was much cheaper. Now, if you use the soundtrack according to the contract that the studios have with the musicians' union, they have to repay the musicians. In other words, if the music, and it was recorded with a large orchestra, over 80 men, is used, these 80 men are going to have a new payment for the record, which was a large sum. But considering the film cost $15 million, a few thousand dollars here or there wouldn't have made that much difference. But this was now M-G-M Records and not M-G-M Studios. And M-G-M Records said we have the right to do the music in Europe, it will cost us much more, therefore our profit will be higher and we won't insist that it should be made in Europe. But the union said it's true that you have the right to make in Europe, but Rózsa is a member of our union and he's not going to conduct it. So there I was begging that they use my soundtrack. They said no, it costs too much money for the repayment of the musicians. We can do it in Rome cheaper. I said but I can't conduct it. They said never mind, somebody else will conduct. And the head of M-G-M, I remember that very well, went up to Mr. Petrillo, who was the head of the musicians union and begged him to consider to give me the permission to conduct. He said no. I'm going to teach you that he is not going to conduct. He is a member of our union and we don't allow him to conduct in Europe. So I couldn't because if I would have conducted, the union could have kicked me out. That means that I couldn't have conducted an American orchestra ever again. The orchestra would have said, "Walk out. He is against you. You can't play for him." This happened often. So what happened, I went to Rome. I was sitting in the booth listening to the music and Carlo Savina, who's a friend of mine, was conducting. That is the reason.
HH: And the second album?
MR: The second album was made in Nuremberg and it was Erich Kloss, a very fine German musician, who has since passed away [1898-1967], was conducting and I was listening in the booth. And I said, "A little faster, a little this, a little that." They couldn't prevent me from doing that, but I couldn't conduct.
HH: What do you think about arrangements of music from Ben-Hur or El Cid by various orchestras? Most of these scores are re-recorded in a more modern style.
MR: Well, some are terrible, I must say. Especially, I objected to one, and that was of King of Kings, which has the great theme of Christ, and they made a sort of a bolero out of it. I don't want to mention the gentleman who did it. I thought that was sacrilege, but there's nothing I can do about it. Once they get permission from the publisher, they do their own arrangements. But there are very good ones, too. There was just one by Ron Goodwin, who has recorded three sections from Ben-Hur, The March of the Charioteers is the last, and I think it's first class. He listened to my own, followed my tempi, but he had a larger orchestra and a more modern recording now in stereo and I think it sounds first class.
MR: As a great actress once said, "I don't care how they pronounce my name as long as they say it." And more or less the same thing when it comes to film music, I don't care how they play it, the main thing is that they play it.
HH: Well, Ron Goodwin, he's also a film music composer. If you would had your own orchestra, you never would play music by, let's say, Alex North or Dimitri Tomkin or someone like that.
MR: If I would be asked, I don't see why not. Some of the music is very good that these people have written, but I usually conduct my own music and that's it.
HH: If you prepare to re-record a film score for a record release, is it very hard to get the original sound of the film back or do you sometimes like to change the instrumentation?
MR: I do like to change the instrumentation sometimes. Very often you have to follow a scene and as you do that the music makes a lot of sense with the visual effects. But when taking the visual away, the music alone doesn't stand on its own. So that has to be changed. Another thing is very often you write music for a dialogue scene. Then you have to be extremely careful that you do not disturb the dialogue. Usually you write it only for strings, it has to be rather slow, and you have to be careful not to get an accent or something in the middle of the dialogue. So when you hear the music alone, without dialogue, there's no reason why not to play this music in its full glory, with the full symphony orchestra as it should sound, as it would have sounded if the dialogue wouldn't have been in the way. So for that reason, I think that film music has to be adapted for listening purposes, and it has to make sense, but also for the people who have never seen the film, who don't know what is actually happening, and the music should give you pleasure on its own.
HH: If you would have to compose the music for Ben-Hur once again today, would you use the same compositions again, or would it be a completely different score?
MR: Well, this is a very difficult question. Actually, I was asked to compose practically the same score again after I finished Ben-Hur. They told me that the next picture they want me to do is King of Kings! This was again the story of Christ with the same scenes, so I had to rescore the same scenes twice, differently What would happen now if I had to do it a third time? I don't know – I think I would try to be again different. Whether I would succeed, I don't know. However, this is a very difficult question because – just to compare – let's say, Richard Wagner composed his Parsifal, and somebody would have told him, now compose a second Parsifal immediately after, but it should be entirely different. Now, how could you?
HH: Let's listen now to music from Ben-Hur and King of Kings. Both selections are entitled "The Way to the Cross."
HH: Mr. Rózsa, do you ever had the chance to listen to compositions by other composers like Alex North, Dimitri Tiomkin or Alfred Newman?
MR: Oh, yes, of course, yes.
HH: Especially in my active days in Hollywood, I listened to the works of my fellow composers, and the three you have named are excellent composers on their own, especially Alex North, I think he's a very good composer. Tiomkin is on the popular side. He's the one who has put the theme song back in pictures. This actually started back with The Jazz Singer [1927], the Al Jolson film where the theme song was "Sunny Boy." I saw it when I was a child. And from then on, every picture had to have a theme song. That's all they needed. One song, somebody wrote a song, and then they repeated it again and again. They sold records, they sold music, and it took years and years until it grew out from that and then the music in films became symphonic and dramatic. However, Mr. Tiomkin, in one very clever stroke, washed away all that in the film "High Noon". "High Noon" had a big tune, I'm told it's a Russian folk song, but I don't know. And from a Russian folk song to a western song, it's only just one step and he found this tune swept the world, it was sung everywhere in the whole world and then he made a second film (I forgot what the name of it was) just as successful a big – it was a western.
HH: Rio Bravo?
MR: No, no, it doesn't matter, but anyway, he did it three or four times so film people saw that there is with a byproduct as they call the music – there is money in it. You can make records, the artists will sing it, you can sell sheet music, and actually that was the beginning of the end of the great scores. For instance you don't mention Franz Waxman. He is a forgotten man. He was a very fine composer and he did excellent scores. North is fine and Newman in his own way wrote very sensitive, melodious, listenable and dramatically strong scores.
HH: For the film Quo Vadis you tried to write the music in an authentic fashion. How did you know about music during the first century before or after Christ?
MR: That was a very interesting problem. That was my first historical film and for that reason I was full of enthusiasm and wanted to show and do my best. To write music for a period of which we know very little, or actually nothing, was even more challenging. It is very interesting that we know about Roman architecture of the first century, of Roman literature, of Roman sculpture, of Roman painting, everything, because they are still here. But we know nothing about Roman music. There is nothing left. We know that they had a lot of music because Seneca, for instance, writes somewhere that during lunch, music was so loud that one couldn't hear the conversation. We know that they had instruments because the Vatican Museum is full of beautiful statues with lyres and so forth, as well as the double flute and all kind of instruments so we know that there was music.
So my first problem was what was that music? I had to do it by deductions. We knew that the culture of the Romans was based entirely on the culture of the Greeks. The religion was taken over from the Greeks and the whole cultural life which in the first century was extremely developed because when we think of that – the highest period of Greece under Pericles was five centuries before Christ. So we know quite a lot about Greek music. It is very interesting that we know something about older Greek music, but about the more recent music we know nothing. First of all, three theses were written about the theories of their music, so we know about their instruments, we know about their musical theories, and actually we have 13 fragments of musical writing they had a musical writing which can be found on tombstones as well as hymns to Apollo, hymns to Diana the Huntress and hymns to many kind of gods and goddesses including the words. Now this music had all the musical notations so we can reconstruct the actual tune, but didn't have any rhythm because the Greeks did not write this down. However, the text was under it, so from the text we can reconstruct the rhythm.
I found about eleven fragments. Some parts of the hymns were missing, but there was a beautiful song, the song of Seikilos, which I used as the song of Nero. And I used this material as the beginning, as the point of departure of all the music. We also know that the music was unharmonized, they didn't know harmonies. So most of the music is unison; of course all the songs are in unison. And then I had to find a very simple modal harmonization, which of course was not quite correct, but we cannot go through musicological experiences for two hours in a movie. Now the other problem was, especially in Quo Vadis, the music of the early Christians.
I remember we had an audience with the Pope at that time, led by my friend Eddie Mannix, on a beautiful Sunday in May 1950, just 25 years ago. The Pope wanted to see the people who would do the first great Christian film after the war, Quo Vadis. So we went to the Vatican and there was Robert Taylor with us, the actor who played Marcus Vinicius, and Deborah Kerr, the actress. And there was the producer, Sam Zimbalist, and the head of M-G-M, Mannix, and about five or six other people. This was a so-called private audience, because the Pope usually gives audiences for 100 people, and then once a week for about 1,000 people, but this was a small room. Well, first we were in the throne room, which is a beautiful room full of gold, and then we were standing there in a corner, Swiss guards in beautiful uniforms were standing around us. Suddenly I've heard one of the guards saying "Look, that is Robert Taylor." They recognized Bob Taylor and the other said, "Gee, it's Roberto Taylor," and this was quite amazing. They were so excited about Robert Taylor in the Vatican and one of them finally came over and said "Could you give us an autograph, Mr. Taylor" and he was a very sweet man, Robert Taylor, of course he gave autographs. Nobody took any notice of Deborah Kerr, she was practically unknown at that time. Finally a monsignor came in and took us to another room which was smaller. All the ceiling was decorated with gold, with the gold that Columbus sent from America to the Pope. It was the first gold which Columbus actually sent to Ferdinand, the King of Spain and Ferdinand sent it to the Pope. And this room was decorated with that gold, the first gold from America that came to Rome. I must say especially since the Second World War a lot of other gold came from America to Rome, not put to a good use as this was. Then the Pope came in and Mr. Mannix kissed the ring and introduced his friends and told them about everybody what he was doing. Then the Pope came to me and I said, "I'm a musician writing music." And he said, "What kind of music are you going to use for the early Christians, Gregorian. And I said, "No, Holy Father, that cannot be Gregorian, it's because we are in the first century, and the Gregorian music starts in the sixth century." "Oh," he said, "then it will be Ambrosian." I said, "No, that is the fourth century, I have to go before that." And he looked at me, said, "Yes, you have your problems." Well, that was the end of his questions, then he spoke to somebody else.
I had my problems because as I told you, Gregorian is 6th century, Ambrosian is 4th century and we are in the first. Now what was the music of the first early Christians in about the year of 64 when Nero was reigning in Rome? So again I had to go by deductions. We know that much of the Ambrosian and Gregorian music comes from two sources. The early Christians were partly Greeks in Rome and Hebrews. So the two sources were actually the influences. There was a Jewish musicologist, who went to Palestine, Babylon, Yemen, at the beginning of the century, and collected their music, which he published about soon after this. He found, especially in Yemen, because there were Jews living in Yemen who had nothing to do with other Jews in the whole world, including the ones in Palestine, who lived their own life. They intermarried, and one could say that they kept the tradition going back 2,000 or 3,000 years. Their music is entirely different from the other kind of music. He found their liturgical songs or melodies, which later became part of the Roman Catholic service and this became one of the melodies which the early Christians are singing in a cavern when St. Paul is coming to visit them.
Now whether this was one of the songs or melodies they sang is beside the matter. This couldn't be. And so that is more or as the way I have reconstructed the music. Then there was the music of the so-called Roman Empire. All the people who the Romans conquered were brought to Rome, the Africans, the Babylonians, and so forth, and they brought their own music. I went back to sources, whatever I could find of these people. And so this was the sort of a recreation of the music of the first century.
I must say that I have followed this method in my later films too – for instance in El Cid, I studied the Spanish music of the 11th century very extensively. And so I think that I have done something, but I must say I am my only disciple. I did not make a school and other composers did not follow my method, they couldn't care less. But I thought that when in a picture they are spending thousands and thousands of dollars to recreate exactly the same architecture, trying to find an archaic language, I should be very careful not to do one thing that would be impossible from the historical point of view. Why should the music always be the same? As you said, one composer who was famous for his westerns wrote western music for a Roman film. Now, why should that be? Why shouldn't the music also be as authentic as it can be? That's the way I try to make it.