The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold [Hardcover]

Brendan Carroll (Author)

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The dawn of the 20th century heralded an age of continuing progress. In terms of technology, many of the advances were for machines of war; scarcely anyone would have foreseen the grim future of conflict that was to run until near the end of the century. The first decade of the new century also saw the emergence of child prodigy Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose advanced tonal technique seemed destined to win him a place as a major composer. But just as prosperity and peace were absent during much of this troubled time period, Korngold's music went into eclipse in the 1930s and only recently emerged from the tomb to which it was consigned by the main current of 20th-century musical thought.

Brendan Carroll's excellent biography of this composer who was so shabbily ignored by postwar intellectuals is long overdue. From the outset, Carroll focuses on the phenomenal musical ability shown by Korngold. Not only did he produce complex musical compositions from an early age, but these early compositions are adult in style and show the distinct idiom of the composer. Like Mozart, Korngold's distinguishing talent was an inexhaustible supply of melodic inspiration that he skillfully assembled.

The major success in the 1920s of his opera Die Tote Stadt marked Korngold as a peer to Richard Strauss. But by the '30s the dissonant tide was running against him. Unable to renounce melody and harmony, he was branded a reactionary by the haute monde, and scorned as a Jew by the Nazis. Fortunately, his flair for romanticism earned him Hollywood commissions for a series of memorable films--and, incidentally, saved his life by getting him out of Europe during a critical period. But when the smoke of World War II cleared, one of the casualties was interest in his serious musical oeuvre.

Carroll pinpoints three factors that contributed to Korngold's fall into obscurity: controversies generated by his father, the critic Julius Korngold; suppression of performances by the Nazis; and the hostility of the serious musical establishment. However, he seems to weight them equally, and perhaps in this he errs. Korngold's father's influence on the Viennese music world waned by the end of the '20s, and the Third Reich lasted just 12 devastating years. Clearly the dominant factor in the suppression of Korngold's music was the disdain of the art crowd for a composer who wrote movie (gawd!) music, and who wouldn't kiss the book and declare serialism as his personal savior. Luckily for Korngold and his fans, as the century nears its end, composition has finally broken the dogmatic bonds of the "music of the future." No better sign exists of this than the renaissance in Korngold recordings in the 1990s, and the respectful if belated rehabilitation of his reputation betokened by a book like Carroll's. This is a balanced volume well worth reading for anyone who is interested in this seriously underrated composer. --Sarah Bryan Miller

Product Details

• Hardcover: 436 pages
• Publisher: Amadeus Press (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1574670298
• ISBN-13: 978-1574670295
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #324,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #29 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Composers & Musicians > Classical

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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, January 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Hardcover)

Brendan G. Carroll spent over 25 years working on this definitive biography of the Viennese-American composer (1897-1957). This unabashed encomium for the music of Korngold is supported by carefully crafted arguments responding to critics, real and imagined. Carroll is especially exercised about those critics whose prejudicial assessments of the Korngold oeuvre are based solely on a superficial knowledge of Korngold's scores for the motion pictures. Korngold himself was super-sensitive about his reputation when it was based upon his Hollywood fame, though he never disavowed the work he did there for the films, such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, Anthony Adverse, The Sea Hawk, Kings Row, Of Human Bondage, and much more. He mainly feared, and rightly so, that the film scores would over-shadow his earlier career in Europe when his serious music might become lost. He worried, too, that even his film scores would be lost along with the films as they faded from public view. Korngold's complete oeuvre are Carroll's strongest defense.  From the age of 10 (Yes, 10!), Korngold's works began to receive private notice. By 11 and 12, his prodigious first compositions dumbfounded and awed musicians such as Gustav Mahler, Alexander von Zemlinsky (his composition teacher), Richard Strauss, Bruno Walter, Puccini, and a host of other admirers and performers. In 1910, he completed (age 13) his Piano Trio in D Major, Opus 1. In 1911, he met Max Reinhardt (his future collaborator), who brought him to Hollywood, saving Korngold and his family from the concentration camps in 1938. Carroll is convincing that Korngold's greatest achievements are his five operas, especially his Das Wunder der Heliane and Die tote Stadt, for which he is best known in Europe. In 1999, his separate CDs are approaching one hundred, making his music available as never before. Following my own prolonged and extensive study, I predict that Korngold's next career, based upon his recordings, will elevate him into the empyrean of twentieth century composers. Two commemorative postage stamps have been issued about Korngold: In Austria, a stamp recalls his operas (properly); in America, he is included among 5 other Hollywood composers, as he anticipated. Carroll's work is a great deal more than a festschrift: It is a searching, well-written, objective account of the life of his subject: Korngold. (Reviewed by Allan Shields in Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol 15 No 2, Winter 1999-2000. Copyright © by Allan Shields.)

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meet the man who invented film scores (among other things)., July 3, 1999

By 

William F. Flanigan Jr. (North Potomac, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Hardcover)

If you are fascinated by film music (or just plain enjoy it), meet the man who is responsible for much (possibly all) of this art form as we know and enjoy it today--Erich Wolfgang Korngold (EWK)! Though some wags have suggested that operatic composer Richard Wagner "wrote" the first film score, it was EWK (himself a renown operatic composer while still a teenager!) who took opera's use of distinct themes and musical IDs for characters and environments, and composed film symphonies around them--"opera without singing," as he is quoted as often saying. This was a radical departure for music on the sound tracks of films (that only five years previously had had none). Such a revolutionary technique was immediately adopted by all other composers of "classic film scores," and this process is prevalent today, especially in the work of our most accomplished composers of film music (you've probably heard several already this Summer). Mr. Carroll's book ("twenty-five years in the making") is not only the definitive biography of EWK to date, but also loaded with fascinating historical information and antidotes from the author's personal encounters and correspondences (it's one of the few books I've read where I immensely enjoyed even the footnotes!). Reading the Introduction was down right eerie, since I discovered EWK the same way as Mr. Carroll--from watching late-night movies on TV! I've read many hundreds of books about films, but Mr. Carroll's took the longest to get through. I read it very slowly, since I just didn't want it to end. The book also includes the most extensive discography of EWK music I have ever come across. Many of the CDs (but, alas, not all) are still available today--and new ones (thankfully) keep being released. A final note about footnotes. They really belong at the bottom of the page--as engrossing extensions of the text--rather than being squirreled away at the back of the book. My sole complaint.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Melody back in fashion, November 16, 1998

By 

John H. Flannigan (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (Hardcover)

Brendan Carroll's "The Last Prodigy" is an overdue tribute to Erich Wolfgang Korngold and to the musical culture from which he sprang. Just as it took modern listeners, orchestras, and performers many years to recognize Gustav Mahler's genius, so too has Korngold awaited the same kind of rediscovery.

Korngold, like his much-admired mentor Mahler and his friend Giacomo Puccini, felt no shame in crafting melodies that any listener could recognize, hum, and ultimately grow to love. Like his older contemporaries, Korngold never forgot that the cerebral element in music could never take the place of the emotional. For example, his friendly but deadly serious battles over atonality and serial compositions with Arnold Schoenberg are key to understanding Korngold's philosophy of composition and are well treated in Carroll's book. I came away from the text with renewed interest in music that can be grasped by non-musicians and musicians alike.

Even though Korngold's scores are endlessly fascinating for musicians and scholars, the real sign of the composer's greatness is in how many "general" listeners can surrender to the beauties of the "Lautenlied" from "Die tote Stadt." "The Last Prodigy" is therefore a welcome exploration of the problems experienced by the classical music establishment, which, through its unfortunate abandonment of melody and tonal consonance, has failed to reach, or to try even to cultivate, an enthusiastic, self-renewing audience. A better understanding of Korngold's career and of his mistreatment by his contemporaries would help reassert a missing link in 20th century musical culture. Carroll's book helps enormously to restablish the centrality of this musical genius to our own confused times.