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The Last Prodigy: A Biography of Erich Wolfgang Korngold

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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.)

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.

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.

Mention the name of Korngold to most people, even musicians, and the response will usually mention his film scores, especially his Errol Flynn scores. "The Last Prodigy" is a well-written, smoothly flowing (and long overdue) biography of a very fine composer whose operas, sonatas, symphonies, and so forth are finally gaining a concert stage foothold after years of neglect. Not only does this book give us an excellent biography of an almost forgotten composer but shows how the two world wars changed the social structure that previously nutured prodigies. Korngold was one of the fortunate few who were able to leave Europe, find both employment and artistic nuturing in the US during the war, and return to pick up the threads of his artistic life. Highly recommended.