FRIEDHOFER
FRIEDHOFER
FRIEDHOFER
HUGO
WELCOME
MUSICAL COLORS
FOR UNIQUE GOLDEN AGE
FILM COMPOSER
THE 19TH
ACADEMY AWARDS
MEMORIAL EVENT
1946
Maxwell Anderson is one playwright whose works have not exactly stood the test of time. Occasionally Hollywood adaptations succeeded, like THE BAD SEED and ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS. But most are now either dated and / or talky historical dramas like JOAN. And yet the conviction of Ingrid Bergman’s performance, coupled with the pageantry and majesty of Hugo Friedhofer‘s score overcome many of the play’s stodgy trappings. It’s my understanding that the original masters are long gone which, if it’s true, is a shame.
Jim Lochner
JOAN
ofArc
From Orchestration
to Composition
The first Hollywood composer to write
distinctively American scores
A prolific composer, Hugo Friedhofer had a career that
spanned early silent film through the sound era, into the 1970s. Friedhofer became the leading orchestrator for Max Steiner,
Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Alfred Newman soon after his
1929 arrival in Hollywood. He went on to compose music for
over 120 films, earning 9 Oscar nominations and receiving the
award for his masterful score to The Best Years of Our Lives in
1946. Friedhofer's life will be examined through essays, reviews
and interviews with film historians and friends
of the composer.
Hugo Friedhofer, was a paradoxical figure. On the one hand, he was surely one of the most learned, most accomplished members of our profession: a fine composer, a master of the orchestra, quick to perceive what was required of the music for a film and sure-footed in providing that music. But there was also the man who knew too much, the virtuoso of self-doubt who never seemed to have learned to
take Yes for an answer. David Raksin
ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK
THE BEST YEARS
OF OUR LIVES
Music composed by
HUGO FRIEDHOFER
Absolute
Honors !
The 19th Academy Awards
The Best Years of Our Lives, a score that
is discussed and analyzed in the great majority of classes on scoring for film;
it won a deserved Academy Award
in 1947. Friedhofer, who was nominated
in the music scoring category nine times, received the award from the Academy
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
on 13 March 1947 at the Shrine Auditorium
in Los Angeles. The movie won six other Oscars.
His music is characterized by a keen sense of the situation, his real musical culture allows him to include on popular canvas a rather unusual richness of tones
