Maximilian Raoul Steiner was an Austrian composer and conductor who emigrated to America and went on to become one of Hollywood's greatest musical composers.
88 Facts About Max Steiner
2.
Max Steiner is often referred to as "the father of film music", as Steiner played a major part in creating the tradition of writing music for films, along with composers Dimitri Tiomkin, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, Alfred Newman, Bernard Herrmann, and Miklos Rozsa.
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Max Steiner composed over 300 film scores with RKO Pictures and Warner Bros.
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Max Steiner was the first recipient of the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, which he won for his score for Life with Father.
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Max Steiner was a frequent collaborator with some of the best known film directors in history, including Michael Curtiz, John Ford, and William Wyler, and scored many of the films with Errol Flynn, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Fred Astaire.
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Max Steiner was born on May 10,1888, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, as the only child in a wealthy business and theatrical family of Jewish heritage.
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Max Steiner was named after his paternal grandfather, Maximilian Steiner, who was credited with first persuading Johann Strauss II to write for the theater, and was the influential manager of Vienna's historic Theater an der Wien.
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Max Steiner's father encouraged Steiner's musical talent, and allowed him to conduct an American operetta at the age of twelve, The Belle of New York, which allowed Steiner to gain early recognition by the operetta's author, Gustave Kerker.
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Max Steiner's mother Marie was a dancer in stage productions put on by his grandfather when she was young, but later became involved in the restaurant business.
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Max Steiner's godfather was the composer Richard Strauss who strongly influenced Steiner's future work.
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Max Steiner often credited his family for inspiring his early musical abilities.
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Max Steiner cited his early improvisation as an influence of his taste in music, particularly his interest in the music of Claude Debussy which was "avant garde" for the time.
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Max Steiner's parents sent him to the Vienna University of Technology, but he expressed little interest in scholastic subjects.
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Max Steiner enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Music in 1904, where, due to his precocious musical talents and private tutoring by Robert Fuchs, and Gustav Mahler, he completed a four-year course in only one year, winning himself a gold medal from the academy at the age of fifteen.
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Max Steiner studied various instruments including piano, organ, violin, double bass, and trumpet.
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Max Steiner's preferred and best instrument was the piano, but he acknowledged the importance of being familiar with what the other instruments could do.
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Max Steiner paid tribute to Lehar through an operetta modeled after Lehar's Die lustige Witwe which Max Steiner staged in 1907 in Vienna.
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Between 1907 and 1914, Max Steiner traveled between Britain and Europe to work on theatrical productions.
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Max Steiner first entered the world of professional music when he was fifteen.
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Max Steiner wrote and conducted the operetta The Beautiful Greek Girl, but his father refused to stage it saying it was not good enough.
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Max Steiner took the composition to competing impresario Carl Tuschl who offered to produce it.
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Max Steiner stayed in London for eight years conducting musicals at Daly's Theatre, the Adelphi, the Hippodrome, the London Pavilion, and the Blackpool Winter Gardens.
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In England, Max Steiner wrote and conducted theater productions and symphonies.
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Max Steiner arrived in New York City in December 1914, with only $32.
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In New York, Max Steiner quickly acquired employment and worked for fifteen years as a musical director, arranger, orchestrator, and conductor of Broadway productions.
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Max Steiner's credits include: George White's Scandals, Peaches, and Lady, Be Good.
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At twenty-seven years old, Max Steiner became Fox Film's musical director in 1915.
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At the time, there was no specially written music for films and Max Steiner told studio founder William Fox his idea to write an original score for The Bondman.
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In 1927, Max Steiner orchestrated and conducted Harry Tierney's Rio Rita.
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Max Steiner's agent found him a job as a musical director on an operetta in Atlantic City.
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Max Steiner turned down several offers to teach film scoring technique in Moscow and Peking in order to stay in Hollywood.
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In 1932, Max Steiner was asked by David O Selznick, the new producer at RKO, to add music to Symphony of Six Million.
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Max Steiner composed a short segment; Selznick liked it so much that he asked him to compose the theme and underscoring for the entire picture.
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Max Steiner "pioneered the use of original composition as background scoring for films".
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The studio's bosses were initially skeptical about the need for an original score; however, since they disliked the film's contrived special effects, they let Max Steiner try to improve the film with music.
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Max Steiner took advantage of this offer and used an eighty-piece orchestra, explaining the film "was made for music".
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Max Steiner wrote the score in two weeks and the music recording cost around $50,000.
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Max Steiner constructed the score on Wagnerian leitmotif principle, which calls for special themes for leading characters and concepts.
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For example, when the ship sails into Skull Island, Max Steiner keeps the music calm and quiet with a small amount of texture in the harps to help characterize the ship as it cautiously moves through the misty waters.
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Max Steiner received a bonus from his work, as Cooper credited 25 percent of the film's success to the film score.
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Max Steiner continued as RKO's music director for two more years, until 1936.
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Max Steiner composed, arranged and conducted another 55 films, including most of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' dance musicals.
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Additionally, Max Steiner wrote a sonata used in Katharine Hepburn's first film, Bill of Divorcement.
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Max Steiner was asked to compose a score for Of Human Bondage, which originally lacked music.
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Consequently, Max Steiner directly influenced the development of the protagonist, Gypo.
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Victor McLaglen, who played Gypo, rehearsed his walking in order to match the fumbling leitmotif Max Steiner had created for Gypo.
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Max Steiner helps portray the genuine love Katie has for the main character Gypo.
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Selznick set up his own production company in 1936 and recruited Max Steiner to write the scores for his next three films.
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Max Steiner frequently worked with composer Hugo Friedhofer who was hired as an orchestrator for Warner Bros; Friedholfer would orchestrate more than 50 of Max Steiner's pieces during his career.
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In 1938, Max Steiner wrote and arranged the first "composed for film" piece, Symphony Moderne which a character plays on the piano and later plays as a theme in Four Daughters and is performed by a full orchestra in Four Wives.
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Max Steiner was the only composer Selznick considered for scoring the film.
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Max Steiner was given only three months to complete the score, despite composing twelve more film scores in 1939, more than he would in any other year of his career.
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Max Steiner ignored Selznick's wishes and composed an entirely new score.
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Max Steiner explains Scarlett's deep-founded love for her home is why "the 'Tara' theme begins and ends with the picture and permeates the entire score".
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Max Steiner received his third and final Oscar in 1944 for Since You Went Away.
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Producer David O Selznick liked the theme so much, he asked Max Steiner to include it in Since You Went Away.
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Max Steiner portrays this scene through the jangling of wind chimes which crescendos as the wife emerges through opium smoke.
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Max Steiner uses the contrast of high strings and low strings and brass to emphasize Philip's feelings for Vivian opposed with the brutality of the criminal world.
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Max Steiner had more success with the Western genre of film, writing the scores for over twenty large-scale Westerns, most with epic-inspiring scores "about empire building and progress", like Dodge City, The Oklahoma Kid, and Virginia City.
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Dodge City, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, is a good example of Max Steiner's handling of typical scenes of the Western genre.
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Max Steiner used a "lifting, loping melody" which reflected the movement and sounds of wagons, horses, and cattle.
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Max Steiner showed a love for combining Westerns and romance, as he did in They Died with Their Boots On, starring Flynn and de Havilland.
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Max Steiner still preferred large orchestras and leitmotif techniques during this part of his career.
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Max Steiner's pace slowed significantly in the mid-1950s, and he began freelancing.
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In 1954, RCA Victor asked Max Steiner to prepare and conduct an orchestral suite of music from Gone with the Wind for a special LP, which was later issued on CD.
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Composer Victor Young and Max Steiner were good friends, and Max Steiner completed the film score for China Gate, because Young had died before he could finish it.
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Max Steiner continued to score films produced by Warner until the mid-sixties.
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Max Steiner scored his last piece in 1965; however, he claimed he would have scored more films had he been offered the opportunity.
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Max Steiner died of congestive heart failure in Hollywood, aged 83.
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Max Steiner is entombed in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
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For example, a shepherd boy might play a flute along with the orchestra heard in the background, or a random, wandering violinist might follow around a couple during a love scene; however, because half of the music was recorded on the set, Max Steiner says it led to a great deal of inconvenience and cost when scenes were later edited, because the score would often be ruined.
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Max Steiner often followed his instincts and his own reasoning in creating film scores.
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Max Steiner, was among the first to acknowledge the need for original scores for each film.
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Max Steiner reportedly spent more of his time matching the action to the music than composing the melodies and motifs, as creating and composing came easy to him.
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Max Steiner was known and often criticized for his use of Mickey Mousing or "catching the action".
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For example, in Of Human Bondage, Max Steiner created a limping effect with his music whenever the clubfooted character walked.
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Max Steiner was known for writing using atmospheric music without melodic content for certain neutral scenes in music.
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Max Steiner designed a melodic motion to create normal-sounding music without taking too much attention away from the film.
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In contrast, Max Steiner sometimes used diegetic, or narrative based music, in order to emphasize certain emotions or contradict them.
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Three of Max Steiner's scores won the Academy Award for Best Original Score: The Informer, Now, Voyager, and Since You Went Away.
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Max Steiner originally received plaques for Now, Voyager and Since You Went Away, but those plaques were replaced with Academy Award statuettes in 1946.
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Max Steiner won a Golden Globe for Best Original Score for Life with Father.
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Additional selections of Max Steiner scores were included on other RCA classic film albums during the early 1970s.
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In 1975, Max Steiner was honored with a star located at 1551 Vine Street on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to motion pictures.
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In 1995, Max Steiner was inducted posthumously into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
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In 1990, Max Steiner was one of the first to be recognized for Lifetime Achievement by an online awards site.
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Max Steiner was the one of the first composers to reintroduce music into films after the invention of talking films.
88.
Now referred to as the "father of film music" or the "dean of film music", Max Steiner had written or arranged music for over three hundred films by the end of his career.