Franz Waxman - Between Film Music and the Concert Hall

Franz Waxman (19061967) was among the most prominent figures of the so-called classical era of Hollywood film music. However, unlike his contemporaries Mikls Rzsa, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, or Max Steiner, Waxmans legacy has been so far insufficiently explored. The monograph Franz Waxman Between Film Music and Concert Hall offers a new, comprehensive perspective on Hollywood film music in the 1930s and the 1960s, going beyond mere biographical or music-analytical considerations. Waxman operated in an international context, not only as a film composer but also as a festival organizer, conductor, and composer of opera and concert music. Consequently, Franz Waxmans career can be seen as paradigmatic for the complexity of musicians careers in the twentieth century that took place in a variety of working and environments. Despite these various interconnections, careers such as Waxman, have been studied primarily from the perspective of the composing individual. The titular focus of the monograph, between film music and concert hall, aims not to highlight seemingly opposing spheres in Waxmans career but, in line with contemporary practices, to illustrate the manifold medial and aesthetic transfers between film music and concert hall as an integral part of a musician`s career in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. These transfers occurred amid a press discourse emphasizing the contrasts between "highbrow and lowbrow music" within the tensions of modernism, canonized concert culture of the long nineteenth century, and contemporary popular music, as well as fundamental political, social, and technological upheavals that left no aspect of musical practice untouched. The monograph explores the following aspects and the interconnections between them, lying between film music and concert hall, using the example of Franz Waxman: (1) Migration of film composers from Europe to the United States in the early 1930s. (2) Waxman as the founder and musical director of the Los Angeles Music Festival in the context of the United States cultural diplomacy. (3) Inter(-national) reception and self-promotion of Waxman as a festival organizer, conductor, concert, and film composer between film music and concert hall. (4) Intermediality in Waxmans work: concert adaptations of film music, theme songs, and soundtrack albums. By incorporating and connecting different methodological perspectives (historical source criticism, reception aesthetic, discourse analysis, (film) music analysis, mediality, music sociology), the monograph on Franz Waxman fills a research gap in twentieth-century music history.