The Eighth Tribe, 1976 (3. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1976-05-01 / 5. szám
May, 1976 THE EIGHTH TRIBE Page 3 MIKLÓS RÓZSA Of all the Hungarians who have contributed to America’s musical life, Miklós Rózsa may well prove to have been the most influential. For a quarter of a century now he has enriched our concert halls and cinemas with a highly distinctive brand of music that reflects in every note the influence of the Magyar ethos. And because of the extent of his film work (almost ninety scores), there can be very few Americans who have not been exposed to this music. Rózsa was born in Budapest in 1907. This fact defines one aspect of his musical personality: he comes a generation after Bartók and Kodály and follows in their tradition of basing art music on the authentic melos of the peasants as opposed to the gypsy inflection of the famous “Hungarian” music purveyed by Brahms and Liszt. Unlike his predecessors, however, Rózsa found Hungarian musical life constricting. His father was a wealthy landowner with an estate near Nagylócz at the foot of the Mátra mountains, and there Rózsa spent a happy boyhood studying the music of the local peasants, imitating it, and, very early, writing out his own. A miniature violin had been an early gift, and Rózsa took to inventing and composing (if not practicing) before he could w'rite words. Chemistry studies at Leipzig held much less attraction for the young man who in 1926 fixed his life on a musical course by enrolling at the famous Conservatory in that city. The traditional Germanic training he received there is another key to his musical style: the folk spirit and romantic inclination of youth were wedded to a strong respect for classical forms. Rózsa became what has come to he called a neoclassicist: “I believe in the formal and architectural values of the classics, hut on the other hand I try to speak my own musical language. I do not avoid dissonances if I can use them as an intensification of my artistic expression and I am not afraid of consonant writing either when it suits my purpose.” This style suited Rózsa and the times. Even in his Conservatory days, Breitkopf and Hartel began to publish his chamber music. This soon met with success and by 1931 Rózsa was living in Paris enjoying, if not financial security, at least the beginnings of a reputation and the friendship of composers like Arthur Honegger. His op. 6 Symphony was considered too long by leading conductors, hut Bruno Walter recommended and championed the shorter Theme, Variations, and Finale of 1934, which went on to great success with performances by Münch, Böhm, Solti, Ormandy, Bernstein, and many others. Th is and the subsequent Three Hungarian Sketches earned Rózsa the Franz Josef Prize of Budapest, Hungary’s highest musical honor, in both 1937 and 1938. He was a critical success. By this time financial success had come too. Rózsa moved to London to produce a ballet, Hungária (now lost), which was based directly on folk material (unlike the concert music for which Rózsa always invents original themes). It was here that the French director Jacques Feyder and the Hungarian producer Alexander Korda, whose London Films was the leading studio, chose him to compose the music for Knight Without Armour (1937), a spy story of the Russian Revolution. Marlene Dietrich was the star, but Rózsa was so ignorant of the movie world that he had never even heard of her at the time. One learned fast in those days, however; good music was respected in British films, and Rózsa soon became one of the leading practitioners of the new art. The Four Feathers, Lady Hamilton, Lydia, and The Jungle Book are prominent among his early works for the screen, but it was The Thief of Bagdad (1940) that brought him the widest acclaim. It is full of exotic color and singing melody of a simplicity and directness that Rózsa had never revealed before and it is still one of his most popular works. Production on this film was interrupted by WWII and a
