Dimitri Tiomkin

At 85 years old, Dimitri Tiomkin has this physical status:

Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin, a born American film composer and conductor, is a film critic and conductor.

He was classically educated in St. Petersburg, Russia, before the Bolshevik Revolution, then moved to Berlin and then New York City after the Russian Revolution.

After the stock market's decline in 1929, he migrated to Hollywood, where he became best known for his Western films, including Duel in the Sun, Red River, High Noon, The Big Sky, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Gun Hill's Last Train. Tiomkin received twenty-two Academy Award nominations, three for Best Original Score for High Noon, The High and the Sea, and one for Best Original Song for the former film's "The Ballad of High Noon."

Early life and education

Dimitri Tiomkin was born in Kremenchuk and later became a part of the Russian Empire (now central Ukraine).

His family was of Jewish descent; his father, Zinovy Tiomkin, was a "distinguished pathologist" and associate of Professor Paul Ehrlich, and later a prominent Zionist king. Marie Tartakovskaya, his mother, was a pianist who began teaching the young Tiomkin piano at an early age. According to Tiomkin biographer Christopher Palmer, she wished for her son to become a professional pianist. Tiomkin described his mother as "small, blonde, merry, and vivacious."

Tiomkin was educated at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied piano with Felix Blumenfeld, instructor of Vladimir Horowitz, and harmony and counterpoint with Alexander Glazunov, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich, who worked with Alexander Glazunov. He also studied piano with Isabelle Vengerova.

He survived the revolution and gained employment under the new government. Tiomkin, one of the principal promoters of two radical mass spectacles, the Mysterious Labor, a pseudo-religious mystery play for the May Day festivities, and The Storming of the Winter Palace for the third anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (PUR). While living in St. Petersburg, he performed piano accompaniment for many Russian silent films.

Tiomkin was one of many exiles in Russia who immigrated to Berlin after the Russian Revolution to live with his father because the Russian Revolution had reduced opportunities for classical musicians in Russia. He studied in Berlin from 1921 to 1923, with pianist Ferruccio Busoni and Busoni's disciples, Egon Petri and Michael von Zadora. He performed light classical and popular music and made his debut as a pianist in Franz Liszt's Piano Concerto No. With the Berlin Philharmonic, two children will perform.

He and his roommate, Michael Khariton, went to Paris together to perform a piano duo repertory. They did this before 1924, but not until 1924.

Life in America

Morris Gest, a New York theatre company, made the pair an invitation to the United States in 1925, and the pair immigrated to the United States. They appeared on the Keith/Albee and Orpheum vaudeville circuits, where they accompanied a ballet troupe led by Austrian ballerina Rasch. Tiomkin and Rasch's work turned into a personal one, and they married in 1927.

Tiomkin held a recital at Carnegie Hall in New York that featured contemporary music by Maurice Ravel, Alexander Scriabin, Francis Poulenc, and Alexandre Tansman. In 1928, he and his new wife went to Paris, where he appeared at the Paris Opera for the first time.

Tiomkin and his wife, who had been forced to work in New York after the 1929 stock market downturn, moved to Hollywood, where she was hired to direct dance numbers in MGM film musicals. He appeared in several minor films, some without being acknowledged under his own name. Alice in Wonderland (1933), his first major film score project. Although Tiomkin worked on some smaller film projects, his aim was to become a concert pianist. He broke his arm in 1937, but it was afterward that he had to stop considering it for a long time. He began to concentrate on his work as a film music composer.

Tiomkin was given his first break by Columbia director Frank Capra, who opted him to write and perform the score for Lost Horizon (1937). Tiomkin's film received acclaim in Hollywood. It was released in the year that he became a naturalized US citizen.

Please Don't Hate Me! in his autobiography. (1959) Tiomkin relates how Capra's assignment prompted him to first confront a director in a matter of musical taste:

During the following decade, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1938), It's a Wonderful Life (1946). He continued his close collaboration with Capra during World War II by composing scores for his Why We Fight book. The US government ordered these seven films to remind American soldiers of the reasons for the country's participation in the war. They were later released to the general population of the United States in order to increase awareness of American involvement.

Tiomkin lauded Capra for broadening his musical horizons by shifting them from a strictly Eurocentric and romantic style to a more American style based on subject matter and story.

Tiomkin composed the score for Fred Zinnemann's High Noon (1952). "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin" was his theme song ("The Ballad of High Noon"). The film, which starred Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, did poorly at its first preview to the press. "Filmkin" was a flat failure, according to Tiomkin, who claims that "film experts agreed that the film was a mistake... The photograph was refused to be released by the designers. Tiomkin, a singer and actress, purchased the rights to the song and released it as a single for the popular music market, as well as singer Frankie Laine. The record became a worldwide hit.

The studio released the film four months later, based on the song's success, with the words sung by country western singer Tex Ritter. The film received seven Academy Award nominations and four accolades, two for Tiomkin: Best Original Music and Best Song. The evening Walt Disney presented him with both awards.

The score, according to film historian Arthur R. Jarvis, Jr., "has been credited with saving the movie." Mervyn Cooke, another music specialist, acknowledges that "the song's meteoric success was partially responsible for turning the course of film-music history." Tiomkin was the second writer to receive two Oscar nominations (score and song) for the same dramatic film. (Leigh Harline was the first to receive Best Original Score for Disney's Pinocchio and Best Song for "When You Wish Upon a Star"). As he did for "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin," Ned Washington wrote its lyrics.

The song's lyrics tells High Noon's entire story arc, a tale of cowardice and conformity in a small Western town. Tiomkin composed his entire score around this single western-style ballad. He also stripped violinists from the ensemble. To give the film a "rustic, deglamorized sound that suits the film's anti-heroic sentiments," he added a subtle harmonica in the background.

According to Russian film historian Harlow Robinson, the score was constructed around a single folk tune, as was typical of many Russian classical composers. Robinson continues to believe that Tiomkin's score, if indeed folk, is not backed up. "The Encyclopedia of Modern Jewish Culture, page 124, states: "The fifty-year period in the United States between 1914, the First World War and the year of Irving Berlin's first full score, Watch Your Step," is informed by a rich musical legacy from Yiddish folk tunes (for example Mark Warshavsky's "Di milners trem," the premiere of Bock and Harnick's Fiddler on the Roof," "High Noon" - "... "

Tiomkin received two more Oscars in subsequent years: for The High and the Mighty (1954), directed by William A. Wellman and starring John Wayne; and The Old Man and the Sea (1958), which were both based on an Ernest Hemingway book. Tiomkin thanked all of Beethoven's predecessors who had inspired him, including Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other European classical composers.

On The Sundowners (1960), the composer appeared on The Sundowners again.

Many of his scores were for Western films, which were extremely popular in this period and for which he is best remembered. King Vidor-directed Duel in the Sun (1946), his first Western (1946). Giant (1956), Friendly Persuasion (1956), Gunfight at the O.K., in comparison to High Noon. Corral (1957), and Gun Hill's Last Train (1959). Rio Bravo (1959), The Alamo (1960), Circus World (1964) and The War Wagon (1967) were made with the participation of John Wayne. Tiomkin received Academy Awards for his performances in both Giant and The Alamo. Giant's score, according to TV host Gig Young, was intended to capture the "feelings of the great land and great state of Texas."

Tiomkin was influenced by European music traditions but he was trained as a film director by himself. Billy Mitchell (1955), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), and Great Catherine (1968) were among his film credits, including historical dramas like Cyrano de Bergerac (1954), and Town Without Pity (1961); and suspense thrillers such as 36 Hours (1965).

Tiomkin contributed to four of Alfred Hitchcock's suspense dramas: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Strangers on a Train (1953), and Dial M for Murder (1954). Here he used a vivacious style relying on solo violins and muted trumpets. He supervised the score for the science fiction film The Thing from Another World (1951), which is described as his "strangest and most experimental score" by the author. He spent time with Howard Hawks on The Big Sky (1952) and Land of the Pharaohs (1955), as well as with Nicholas Ray on 55 Days at Peking (1963).

Tiomkin produced for television, as well as Rawhide (1959) and Gunslinger, two of the film's most popular theme songs. (In the musical film The Blues Brothers (1980), a cover version of Rawhide's Theme From Rawhide was performed; the joke that the composer was a Ukrainian-born Jewish American was lost on the crowd at the cowboy bar). Although Tiomkin was hired to write The Wild West (1965), the designers rejected his music and eventually hired Richard Markowitz as his replacement.

Tiomkin has also appeared on television shows for a few cameo appearances. These include: Being the mystery challenger on What's My Line? An appearance on Jack Benny's CBS show in December 1961, in which he tried to help Benny write a song. On the 20th October 1955 episode of the TV quiz show You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx, he appeared as a contestant.

The music to the album "Wild Is The Wind" was composed by Hector. It was first recorded by Johnny Mathis for the film Wild Is the Wind (1957).

Although Tiomkin was a classical pianist, he adapted his music experience in Russia to the fast-growing Hollywood film industry and taught himself how to create effective film scores for almost every story form. Despite Tiomkin's indebtedness to Europe's classical composers, he will go on to say more than any other composer, "the American spirit, its frontier spirit, anyway—in film music," says film historian David Wallace.

When compared to classical composers, Tiomkin had no doubts about his talent and the quality of his film work. "I am not Prokofiev; I am not Tchaikovsky." However, what I write about is fine for what I write about. Please, boys, please help me. He became the first composer to publicly acknowledge the great European masters, including Beethoven, Strauss, and Brahms among others, after receiving his award in 1955 for The High and the Mighty.

Christopher Palmer, a music scholar, says Tiomkin's "genius lay in coming up with themes and finding innovative ways of expressing sonic color appropriate to the story and visual image, not in his ability to weave the themes into a complex symphonic framework that could stand on its own." In addition, he wonders how Tiomkin, a Russian-born pianist who was educated at a respected Russian music conservatory, would have been so popular in the American film industry.

Tiomkin's autobiography refers to this closeness: : Tiomkin alluded to this ties in his autobiography:

Musicians have investigated and described Tiomkin's process of scoring a film score. Tiomkin will then outline the film's key themes and movements, according to musicologist Dave Epstein, for one. After the film itself was shot, he would make a comprehensive review of scene timings, using a stopwatch to ensure precise synchronization of the songs and scenes. After assembled all the musicians and orchestra, rehearse a few times, and record the final song, he will finish the score.

When composing, Tiomkin paid close attention to the voices of the actors. "I discovered that in addition to the timbre of the voice, the pitch of the speaking voice must be very carefully considered." Tiomkin said on filming: "To accomplish this, he will go to the set and listen to each of the actors." He'll also speak directly to them, noting the pitch and color of their voices.

Tiomkin explains why he took the extra time with actors:

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