One of the giants of film music, Miklos Rozsa, was born 97 years ago today. Rozsa is one of my favorite film composers, with such brilliant scores amongst his output as Spellbound, Ivanhoe (my favorite score of his -- what a swashbuckler!), King of Kings, and the magnificent Ben Hur. In recent years Rozsa's star has also been rising as a composer of concert music, of which he wrote a lot; his violin and cello concertos, for example, are showing up more often on concert programs. His concert music is a great deal more "nationalistic" than his film music; in his concert work, Rozsa allowed his adoration for his homeland of Hungary to constantly shine through.
Check out Rozsa's filmography; he was one of the hardest working composers in Hollywood. In the film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Rozsa himself appears in an early scene at an orchestra hall (he's the conductor). His autobiography, A Double Life, is supposed to be a wonderful book, but it's long out of print and the copy at the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library is non-circulating, alas.
(And for some reason, I have never been able to remember whether the 's' or the 'z' comes first in his name. I always have to check. And thanks to Lynn Sislo for the reminder.)
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
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