Alfred Newman

At 68 years old, Alfred Newman has this physical status:

Alfred Newman (March 17, 1900 – February 17, 1970) was an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music.

He rose to become a well-known figure in film history from his humble beginnings as a musician.

He received nine Academy Awards and was nominated 43 times, contributing to the Newmans' being named as the most nominated Academy Award extended family with a total of 92 nominations in various music genres. Newman created the scores for over 200 motion pictures in a career spanning more than four decades.

Wuthering Heights, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Mark of Zorro, The Book of Bernadette, How Green Was My Valley, The Wrong War From Castile, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Anne Frank's Life, The Sound of Bernadette, The Idea of Soma, The Story of Bernadette, The West Was Told, All About Eve, What The World Was Told, All About Eve, Everybody Knows

He is perhaps best known for designing the fanfare that accompanies the studio logo at the start of twentieth Century Fox's productions. Newman was also known as a conductor, and he arranged and conducted many scores by other composers, including George Gershwin, Charlie Chaplin, and Irving Berlin.

He performed the music for several Broadway musical adaptations (having worked on Broadway for ten years before heading to Hollywood), as well as many original Hollywood musicals. He was one of the first performers to compose and perform original music during Hollywood's Golden Age of films, later becoming a respected and influential music director in Hollywood history.

Max Steiner and Dimitri Tiomkin, two of Newman's fellow composers, were dubbed the "three godfathers of film music."

Early life

In New Haven, Connecticut, the eldest of ten children to Russian-Jewish parents who immigrated shortly before his birth was born on March 17, 1900. 68 Although many sources point to a birth year of 1901, musicologist and composer Fred Steiner revealed that Alfred was actually born in 1900. Michael Newman (born Nemorofsky), a produce dealer, and his mother, Luba (née Koskoff), took care of the family. Her father was a cantor in Russia, which contributed to her love of music. When she was five, she sent Newman, her first child, to a local piano teacher to start lessons. He walked a ten-mile round trip at one point in order to learn lessons. His parents had to sell their dog in order to make ends meet, with barely enough to live on.

He had already established himself as a piano prodigy by the age of eight. In New York, where Sigismund Stojowski and Alexander Lambert, at different times, took him as a pupil, he inspired virtuoso Ignacy Jan Paderewski to host a recital for him. 27 Stojowski begged a ticket inspector to let young Newman fly for free in order to save Newman's commuting expense. After winning a silver medal and a gold medal in a competition, Stojowski offered him a scholarship. With Rubin Goldmark and George Wedge, he also investigated harmony, counterpoint, and composition.

By the time Newman was 12, his parents' meager income was not enough to support his growing family, which resulted in him looking for ways to earn an income from music to helping his family. He began performing in theaters and restaurants, including the Strand Theater and the Harlem Opera House, on a daily basis, with a schedule that involved him attending five shows a day. 27 he was usually accompanying singers as pianists on the shows. Grace La Rue, the star of one of the shows, was captivated by Newman's talent and appointed him as her regular accompanist.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, a young man from 13 years old, attracted the interest of author Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who wanted to attract those who may have aspired to his music aspirations. She adored her ability to perform Mendelsohn, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, and other composers, as Paderewski, and with equal talent, in her opinion. "He had the most unusual moral and physical characteristics," she said.

He began riding the vaino with La Rue's show when he was 13, where she referred to him as "The Marvelous Boy Pianist" at the time. 69 He was occasionally allowed to conduct the orchestras while on tour. 27 This culminated in him achieving his professional ambition, which was boosted by William Merrigan Daly, a veteran music director and composer who taught Newman the basics of conducting. 27 By the time he was fifteen, he was already doing matinee shows. Fritz Reiner, a 27-year-old conductor, was so impressed by Newman that he invited him to be a guest conductor.

He began performing full-time in New York City at the start of a ten-year Broadway career as the conductor of musicals by composers including George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, and Jerome Kern. 69 He conducted George White's Scandals in 1919, Funny Face in 1927, and Treasure Girl in 1929. "I studied music theory and counterpoint because I wanted to be a good conductor," Newman said.

Irving Berlin, a German composer and composer, had been invited to Hollywood to direct his score for the film Reaching for the Moon in 1930. Despite the fact that the musical film was supposed to feature songs written by Berlin, complications between him and director Edmund Goulding soon led to the loss of the majority of his songs. Newman was kept on and received praise for directing the film, which was his first appearance in Hollywood.

: 27

Source

Film scoring career

Producer Samuel Goldwyn offered Newman a deal to continue as a film composer shortly after he appeared in Hollywood in 1930 and finished directing the score for Reaching for the Moon. 69 The score matched the lively and frantic sounds of everyday life on New York's Lower East Side in the 1930s. He later used the music theme in other films, including How to Marry a Millionaire in 1953, which opens with him conducting an orchestra. The theme is also used in Gentleman's Coordination, I Wake Up Screaming, The Dark Corner, Cry of the City, Kiss of Death, and Where the Sidewalk Ends.

Charlie Chaplin hired him to orchestrate his film City Lights in 1931, and Newman was used again for Modern Times in 1936. As Newman conducted the 65-piece orchestra, Hollywood reporter Sidney Skolsky noticed them working together. He praised Newman's ability to finely coordinate music to scenes, including the factory sequence, where Chaplin throws the room into disarray. Chaplin's movements were timed to the music.

With each new film he directed, Newman became Goldwyn's favorite composer, although his style changed with each new film he directed. 74 He wrote numerous adventure stories and romances, historical pageants, and swashbuckling epics, as did his contemporary, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Arnold Schoenberg, a 75-year-old German immigrant who immigrated to the United States from Europe in 1934, began teaching lessons with him.

In 1938, he received his first Academy Award for Alexander's Ragtime Band. He wrote the songs for Goldwyn's Wuthering Heights, starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. His score was unique in that it included various musical styles and created different motifs for the main characters, which aided in the scene's execution. Cathy's theme, for example, was a shimmering pastoral with strings, while Heathcliff's theme, on the other hand, gave a more realistic, more realistic picture. He composed the music for Gunga Din and Beau Geste in 1939.

Films with a religious theme were one of Newman's specialties, though he himself wasn't aware of it. 80 Among the films were The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), starring Charles Laughton, and The Song of Bernadette (1953), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

Newman was hired by Darryl F. Zanuck of Twentieth Century Pictures to create a fanfare to accompany the studio's logo at the start of the film in 1933, although he was still under contract with United Artists. In 1935, Twentieth Century Pictures merged with Fox Film Corporation to form 20th Century-Fox; the fanfare and logo were retained, and the emblem remains in use to this day as one of the most commonly recognized film studio logos.

Newman, a 1940 composer, began his 20-year career as a music director with 20th Century-Fox Studios, directing over 200 film scores, nine of which received Academy Awards. He wore many hats at the studio, including as composer, arranger, music director, and conductor for several films. However, he said he preferred organizing and directing over writing because the former was lonely and demanding work. His heavy smoking throughout his life resulted in his emphysema.

He was known for inventing what came to be known as the Newman System, a way of synchronizing the appearance and recording of a musical score with the film, which is still in use today. The overall mood of each film was influenced by Newman's scores. He also developed specific themes to accompany various characters as they appeared on screen, thus increasing each actor's role. The effects of this style of music produced a powerful yet less jarring score that connected the entire story, thus retaining the film's theme more comprehensible by viewers.

The Song of Bernadette (1943) is one of Newman's most popular scores, despite a four-week absence with an 80-piece orchestra. During the film, the newman used three different motifs to illustrate various problems. The brass chorale to represent Mother Church was one of them, although Bernadette's theme was strings to portray her character's warmth and tenderness. 81 Newman's interpretation gave the song an ethereal quality that complemented Bernadette's visions.

Wilson (1944), a biopic of president Woodrow Wilson, demanded that he devote an unusual amount of time to study, according to Newman. Darryl F. Zanuck, a producer, wanted the film to be a salute to Wilson. Wilson and his family spent considerable time finding out personal information about him and his family, such as the songs they sang and played on their piano at home, the music they liked to dance and listen to, and the songs they performed at political rallies or political functions during his career. As a result, the film had forty realistic American-themed numbers intertwined throughout the film, giving it a strong sense of time.

: 89

Newman produced a number of films during WWII that were related to World War II. A Yank in the R.A.F. was one of those among the many others. (1941) To the Shores of Tripoli (1942), and Twelve O'Clock High (1949), which one historian says is Newman's best dramatic opening theme for a film. 117 Newman also composed or directed the score to some of Frank Capra's Why We Fight films, including Prelude to War (1942) and War Comes to America (1945). He created the music for The All-Star Bond Rally (1945), a Hollywood short film starring Hollywood stars promoting War Bond sales. He had worked on another film, The Fighting Lady (1944), last year.

He often studied period music and assimilated it into his scores. For films like How Green Was My Valley (1941), for example, he used Welsh hymns. How The West Was Won (1962) he took folk songs and turned them into orchestral/choral works of soaring esteem. And for The Grapes of Wrath (1940), he incorporated the folk tune "Red River Valley" into the mix. However, his ability at incorporating familiar traditional music into modern scores was not limited to Western themes. During portions of Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, for example, he produced numbers with a distinct Chinese sensibility, both with instruments and melodies. As he did for The Robe (1953), he would however create his own original melody and make it something haunting and memorable.

He composed the music for Captain from Castile in 1947, which included the famous "Conquest march" as an empassioned score for the Spanish conquistadors. 75 The march was adapted by the University of Southern California (USC) as the official theme song for their sports teams, the US Trojans. The music for a biopic about American composer John Philip Sousa's life (1952), a film in which Sousa is the most well known, was also orchestrated and conducted by Newman.

Newman's subtle use of effects to intensify the anxiety and apprehension portrayed by the actors, principally actress Olivia de Havilland.

: 79

Newman was given his fifth Academy Award in 1952 by a Song in My Heart. Walt Disney gave it to him. The Robe (1953), a New Testament epic, was another of Newman's scores with a religious theme, with orchestration creating depth, grandeur, and simplicity. It was the first film in Cinemascope that had 4 channel stereo sound, which allowed Newman to try out various moods. 85 Demetrius and the Gladiators was one of fellow composer Franz Waxman's favorites, and he incorporated some of the film's songs into his own score.

In 1954, Newman composed additional music for his 20th Century-Fox fanfare, extending it with several bars of warm, soaring strings in order to advertise the studio's acceptance of the new CinemaScope film. This extended version has been in use for as long as can be. This fanfare was re-recorded in 1997 by his son David, who also a composer, and it is this version that is used today.

In 1956, Newman was given his eighth Oscar for The King and Irm. The Diary of Anne Frank was composed by Newman in 1959. Although the film based on a true-life tragic tale of a young girl during World War II, Newman's score focuses on her optimistic temperament, which, as her diary notes, demonstrates, people were still optimistic at heart. 87 The score for the Nazis was a "oppressive march in half time" in comparison to Newman's use of uplifting violins and a hopeful old European sound for the girl. The score, according to music historian Christopher Palmer, is one of Newman's finest, and the emotions projected by the actor's performance are "felt" by the audience. 88 It had been nominated for an Academy Award.

The Best of Everything (1959), Newman's last musical score under Fox's tenure, and after leaving Fox in 1960, he continued freelance, writing the scores for films such as MGM's How the West Was Won (1962), which some regard as his most familiar and best score. It's on AFI's 100th Anniversary of Film Scores. The score and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) had been nominated for an Academy Award. When director George Stevens re-edited the film and score, it was a bitter disappointment for Newman. Other composers were required to help reconstruct musical sections, and George Frideric Handel's two choral finales were replaced by the familiar "Hallelujah Chorus" of George Frideric Handel. Ken Darby, a longtime collaborator and choral director, of Newman, chronicled the filming and screening of "The Greatest Story Ever Told" in Hollywood Holyland (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1992).

Newman remained active until the end of his life, scoring Universal Pictures' Airport (1970) right before his death.

Source