Winner of three Academy Awards and nominated a further fourteen times, Miklós Rózsa is one of the most significant and influential film composers of all time.
Rózsa was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1907. The son of a wealthy industrialist, he began to study the violin aged five. Having also studied the viola and piano, Rózsa was composing and performing in public at the age of eight.
Rózsa’s father was keen for him to receive a worthy education, so Rózsa went to Leipzig to study chemistry. He had little interest in science and soon dropped it for his true passion. He graduated in 1929 with a degree in music composition from the Leipzig Conservatory of Music.
From ballet to film
His compositions were beginning to get noticed. In 1932, he decided to move to Paris after his chamber music had been performed there. Two years later, he received acclaim across Europe and beyond for his Theme, Variations and Finale Op. 13.
After providing music to the ballet Hungaria in London, Rózsa was approached by the film director Jacques Feyder. Feyder, along with his Hungarian producer Alexander Korda, wanted Rózsa to provide the score for their upcoming feature Knights Without Armour (1937). The composer obliged and his career in film had begun.
Success quickly came to Rózsa. In 1940, he received his first Oscar nomination for the family adventure The Thief of Bagdad. More nominations followed for Lydia and Sundown (both 1941), The Jungle Book (1942) and The Woman of the Town (1943).
Oscars and theremins
Rózsa won his first Oscar for Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), one of three films in which he incorporated the haunting sound of the theremin.
Invented by Léon Theremin in the 1920’s, the theremin is the world’s first electronic instrument. It is notable for using antennae, which require no physical contact, to produce sound. Rózsa used it again in The Red House (1947) and Billy Wilder’s masterpiece The Lost Weekend (1945).
This was a fruitful period for the Hungarian and he provided several iconic scores to the genre of film noir. Double Indemnity (1944), The Killers (1946), A Double Life (1947) and The Asphalt Jungle (1950) all feature his dramatically powerful music.
Historical epics
He joined MGM’s music department in 1948. There, Rózsa worked on a number of historical films like Ivanhoe (1952), Julius Caesar (1953) and the Vincent Van Gogh biography, Lust for Life (1956). His time at MGM is most remembered though for the epics; Quo Vadis (1951), King of Kings (1961), El Cid (1961) and of course Ben-Hur (1959).
Directed by William Wyler and featuring the extraordinary chariot race, Ben-Hur won eleven Oscars at the Academy Awards including one for Rózsa’s score.
Later years
Rózsa’s film career began to tail off in the sixties but he had much to keep him busy. By then he was living in a large house in Hollywood with his wife Margaret, their two children, his mother and sister. Rózsa was also working as Professor of Film Music at the University of Southern California.
He continued to compose classical works, record albums and tour his music around the World. His last film score was fittingly for Carl Reiner’s noir spoof, Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982).
Miklós Rózsa passed away in July 1995 with an extraordinary body of work left behind him.
