Max Steiner

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For other uses, see Max Steiner (disambiguation).

Maximilian Raoul Walter Steiner (born May 10, 1888 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary; died December 28, 1971 in Hollywood, California) was an Austrian-American composer of music for theater production shows and films.

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[edit] Life

The grandson of Maximilian Steiner (1839-1880), influential manager of Vienna's Theater an der Wien, and son of Gabor Steiner (1858-1944), important Viennese carnival and exposition manager, he was a child prodigy in composing. He was the godson of Richard Strauss. He received piano instruction from Johannes Brahms and, at the age of fifteen, enrolled at the Imperial Academy of Music (now known as the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna), where he was taught by Gustav Mahler among others. His supernormal musical aptitudes enabled him to complete the school's four-year degree in only one.

At the age of 16 Steiner wrote and conducted the operetta The Beautiful Greek Girl. At the opening of World War I, Steiner was working in London. There he was classified an enemy alien but was befriended by the Duke of Westminster and given exit papers. He arrived in New York in December, 1914 with $32 to his name.

Steiner worked for 15 years in New York as an arranger, orchestrator and conductor of Broadway operettas and musicals written by Victor Herbert, Jerome Kern, Vincent Youmans and George Gershwin.

In 1929, Steiner went to Hollywood to orchestrate the film version of the Florenz Ziegfield show Rio Rita for RKO Radio Pictures. The score for King Kong in 1933 made Steiner's reputation; it was one of the first American films to have an extensive musical score. He conducted the scores for several Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals, including Top Hat and Roberta. He scored hundreds of Hollywood films, and was the most prominent composer in the music department of Warner Brothers Studios, where he wrote the famous fanfare that introduced most of Warner's films from 1937 through the early 1950s. Steiner continued to score Warner Brothers films until the mid 1960s; he usually worked with orchestrator Murray Cutter.

[edit] Awards and honors

Max Steiner received 26 Academy Award nominations for his work, winning 3 Oscars. He did not win one for what is perhaps his most familiar score, that of Gone with the Wind.

In 1954, RCA Victor asked Steiner to prepare a suite of music from Gone with the Wind, which Steiner also conducted, for a special LP, which was later issued on CD.

Steiner has been called "the father of film music." He is entombed in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

After his death, Charles Gerhardt conducted the National Philharmonic Orchestra in an RCA Victor album of highlights from Steiner's career, titled Now Voyager. Additional selections of Steiner scores were included on other RCA classic film albums during the early 1970s. The quadraphonic recordings were later digitally remastered for Dolby surround sound and released on CD.

In 1995, he was inducted posthumously into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Steiner has a star on the Walk of Fame, located at 1551 Vine Street, for his contribution to motion pictures.

[edit] Selected filmography

[edit] External links

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