Max steiner composer biography for kids

His first wife was Beatrice Tilt of Vienna. They married in September After divorcing Tilt, in Steiner married Audree van Lieu. They divorced in December In he married Louise Klos, a harpist, and had his only child with her. Ronald Steiner, born in , committed suicide in Honolulu, Hawaii in April Louise and Max divorced in Steiner married his fourth and last wife in Steiner died of congestive heart failure in Hollywood on December 28, , at 83 years of age.

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Additional selections of Max Steiner scores were included on other RCA classic film albums during the early s. In , Max Steiner was honored with a star located at Vine Street on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contribution to motion pictures. In , Max Steiner was one of the first to be recognized for Lifetime Achievement by an online awards site.

Max Steiner was the one of the first composers to reintroduce music into films after the invention of talking films. 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. People also liked. Max Steiner often credited his family for inspiring his early musical abilities.

Max Steiner first entered the world of professional music when he was fifteen. Max Steiner took the composition to competing impresario Carl Tuschl who offered to produce it. In England, Max Steiner wrote and conducted theater productions and symphonies. At twenty-seven years old, Max Steiner became Fox Film's musical director in Max Steiner's agent found him a job as a musical director on an operetta in Atlantic City.

Max Steiner "pioneered the use of original composition as background scoring for films". Max Steiner continued as RKO's music director for two more years, until Max Steiner was asked to compose a score for Of Human Bondage, which originally lacked music. Due to the score's length, Steiner had help from four orchestrators and arrangers, including Heinz Roemheld, to work on the score.

Selznick had asked Steiner to use only pre-existing classical music to help cut down on cost and time, but Steiner tried to convince him that filling the picture with swatches of classic concert music or popular works would not be as effective as an original score, which could be used to heighten the emotional content of scenes. Steiner ignored Selznick's wishes and composed an entirely new score.

Selznick's opinion about using original scoring may have changed due to the overwhelming reaction to the film, nearly all of which contained Steiner's music. A year later, he even wrote a letter emphasizing the value of original film scores. The most well known of Steiner's themes for the score is the "Tara" theme for the O'Hara family plantation.

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". Now, Voyager would be the film score for which Steiner would win his second Academy Award. Kate Daubney attributes the success of this score to Steiner's ability to "[balance] the scheme of thematic meaning with the sound of the music.

After finishing Now, Voyager , Steiner was hired to score the music for Casablanca Steiner would typically wait until the film was edited before scoring it, and after watching Casablanca , he decided the song "As Time Goes By" by Herman Hupfeld wasn't an appropriate addition to the movie and he wanted to replace it with a song of his own composition; however, Ingrid Bergman had just cut her hair short in preparation for filming For Whom the Bell Tolls , so she couldn't re-film the section with Steiner's song.

Steiner actually first composed the theme from Since You Went Away while helping counterbalance Franz Waxman's moody score for Rebecca. Producer David O. In , Max married Leonette Blair. Steiner also found success with the film noir genre. In , Steiner scored a film noir Western , Pursued. 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 Dodge City , starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland , is a good example of Steiner's handling of typical scenes of the Western genre.

Steiner used a "lifting, loping melody" which reflected the movement and sounds of wagons, horses, and cattle. The Searchers is, today, considered his greatest Western. Although his contract ended in , Steiner returned to Warner Bros. Steiner still preferred large orchestras and leitmotif techniques during this part of his career. Steiner's pace slowed significantly in the mids, and he began freelancing.

There are also acetates of Steiner conducting the Warner Brothers studio orchestra in music from many of his film scores. Composer Victor Young and Steiner were good friends, and Steiner completed the film score for China Gate , because Young had died before he could finish it. Steiner wrote into his seventies, ailing and near blind, but his compositions "revealed a freshness and fertility of invention.

This memorable instrumental theme spent nine weeks at 1 on the Billboard Hot singles chart in in an instrumental cover version by Percy Faith. Steiner continued to score films produced by Warner until the mid-sixties.

Max steiner composer biography for kids

In , Steiner began writing his autobiography. Although it was completed, it was never published, and is the only source available on Steiner's childhood. Steiner scored his last piece in ; however, he claimed he would have scored more films had he been offered the opportunity. His lack of work in the last years of his life was due to Hollywood's decreased interest in his scores caused by new film producers and new taste in film music.

Another contribution to his declining career was his failing eyesight and deteriorating health, which caused him to reluctantly retire. Tony Thomas cited Steiner's last score as, "a weak coda to a mighty career. Steiner died of congestive heart failure in Hollywood, aged In the early days of sound, producers avoided underscoring music behind dialogue, feeling the audience would wonder where the music was coming from.

As a result, Steiner noted, "They began to add a little music here and there to support love scenes or silent sequences. In order to justify the addition of music in scenes where it wasn't expected, music was integrated into the scene through characters or added more conspicuously. 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, Steiner says it led to a great deal of inconvenience and cost when scenes were later edited, because the score would often be ruined.

As recording technology improved during this period, he was able to record the music synced to the film and could change the score after the film was edited. Steiner often followed his instincts and his own reasoning in creating film scores. For example, when he chose to go against Selznick's instruction to use classical music for Gone with the Wind.

Scores from the classics were sometimes harmful to a picture, especially when they drew unwanted attention to themselves by virtue of their familiarity. For example, films like A Space Odyssey , The Sting , and Manhattan , had scores with recognizable tunes instead of having a preferred "subliminal" effect. Steiner, was among the first to acknowledge the need for original scores for each film.

Steiner felt knowing when to start and stop was the hardest part of proper scoring, since incorrect placement of music can speed up a scene meant to be slow and vice versa: "Knowing the difference is what makes a film composer. Although some scholars cite Steiner as the inventor of the click track technique, he, along with Roy Webb were only the first to use the technique in film scoring.

Carl W. Stalling and Scott Bradley used the technique first, in cartoon music. The click-track allows the composer to sync music and film together more precisely. The technique involves punching holes into the soundtrack film based on the mathematics of metronome speed. As the holes pass through a projector, the orchestra and conductor can hear the clicking sound through headphones, allowing them to record the music along the exact timing of the film.

This technique allowed conductors and orchestras to match the music with perfection to the timing of the film, eliminating the previous necessity to cut off or stop music in the middle of recording as had been done previously. Popularized by Steiner in film music, this technique allowed Steiner to "catch the action", creating sounds for small details on screen.

In fact, 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.