An Interview with Franz Waxman

Music from the Films: A CBC Broadcast

Publication: Film Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Winter 1950), pp. 132-137

Publisher:University of California Press Journals

Copyright © 1950, by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

This is one of a series of fifteen programs featuring interviews with prominent film composers, interviews written by Lawrence Morton and recorded in Hollywood for rebroadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The series is referred to by Gerald Pratley in his article Furthering Motion Picture Appreciation by Radio, which appears elsewhere in this issue. This script, broadcast in April, 1950, has been selected by the editors as representative of the series. - Editors.

ANNOUNCER: This is Music from the Films - a program prepared for all who are interested in film music and the composers who create it - arranged by Gerald Pratley and presented by Max Ferguson.

THEME REC: People in Love. (1) Play for 30 seconds and fade under announcer.

ANNOUNCER: Good evening. Tonight, Lawrence Morton, film music critic and writer, discusses the composition of film music with Franz Waxman. This is the fourth of Mr. Morton's series of thirteen interviews with Hollywood composers. Franz Waxman is one of the most prolific composers in Hollywood today. Not only has he scored over sixty motion pictures since his arrival in the cinema capital, but he has also achieved fame and recognition for his achievements in other forms of composition, and as a conductor. His suite from the score of Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca has been presented by symphony orchestras throughout the country. Waxman was born in Germany in 1906. (2) He studied piano as a youth in Dresden and later went to Berlin to study composition, harmony, and counterpoint. His work in Germany received early recognition with the result that he was asked to score many important films for the well-known UFA Motion Picture Company. The year 1933 found him Paris, where he immediately went to work scoring the Charles Boyer version of Liliom. When producer Erich Pommer, who had known Waxman's work both at UFA and in Paris, went to Hollywood in 1934, he took Waxman to Twentieth Century-Fox (3) with him. Waxman remained at Twentieth for only a few months, leaving that studio for more favorable assignment as head of music for Universal Pictures. In 1935 he signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he wrote the scores for such well-remembered productions as Captains Courageous, Fury, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Three Comrades. In 1942 he accepted a contract with Warner Brothers which he recently terminated in order to free-lance. While at Warners, he scored Humoresque, Mr. Skeffington, Old Acquaintance, and Possessed, among others. He has written the music for three of Alfred Hitchcock's films: Rebecca, Suspicion, and The Paradine Case. His score for the last-named film will be played later on the program. His most recent music is that which he wrote for Paramount's Sunset Boulevard, made by William Wilder and Charles Brackett, a picture which brings back to the screen those two great artists of silent movies, Gloria Swanson and Erich von Stroheim. With the coming of summer, Franz Waxman's name can often be found as conductor in the famous Hollywood Bowl. He is also the music director and conductor of the Los Angeles Music Festival, an annual series of symphonic concerts which takes place each May. Mr. Waxman mentions this now in the following interview which he recorded in Hollywood with Lawrence Morton.

RECORD: Franz Waxman interview with Lawrence Morton

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. A few days ago, in preparation for this broadcast, I visited Mr. Waxman in his home high up in the Hollywood hills. It's a very handsome house, and it commands a magnificent view of the San Fernando Valley. The view is framed by a large bay window in Mr. Waxman's study, and I could have been quite happy to contemplate the scene for a long time. But this was what might be called a professional visit, not a sight-seeing tour. And besides, being a musician, I was truly most interested in the musical paraphernalia of a composer's workroom - the books and scores and phonograph records which seemed almost to crowd the furniture out of the room. It was apparent, Mr. Waxman, that your interests are by no means confined to film music.

Indeed not, Mr. Morton. Composing for films is, of course, the main part of my work. This is how I make my living. But a composer has to keep up with the times just as much as a doctor or a businessman. And I try as much as possible to follow the activities of the important composers and writers of our time. And I'm also interested in the discoveries of the musicologists, particularly the new editions of old composers like Haydn and Vivaldi and Bach.

I presume that this is important to your work as a conductor, too.

Of course. I've been giving more and more time to conducting in the last few years. I've just finished my fourth season as musical director of the Los Angeles Music Festival, a series that takes place every spring. In past seasons I've conducted such important works as the Prokofiev Fifth Symphony, Honegger's Joan of Arc at the Stake, Strauss's Metamorphosis, and Stravinsky's Story of a Soldier. This year we presented the Mahler Ninth Symphony and Schubert's E-flat Mass. I'm leaving soon for Europe to conduct again in Paris--I gave a concert there a year ago. And then I'll conduct in Italy this summer.

Is there much difference between conducting for concert and conducting for films?

There isn't much difference from a musical point of view. But there are special problems in films: timing, balance for microphones, and so on.

But many of these problems are solved already in the composition of a film score, aren't they?

To a certain extent, yes. When I compose for the films, I try to imagine just what the sound will be in the theatre - not only the sound itself, but its relation to the dialogue and the action on the screen. That is why I often think of the tone color of music before I actually know what the notes are going to be. When I first see a picture in the projection room, certain scenes seem to call for a specific tone color--three trombones, for instance, or a flute or an English horn. In Objective: Burma I underlined General Stillwell's angry words ("I say we took a hell of a beating") with a solo trombone. And perhaps you remember the high string music in the main title of God Is My Co-Pilot, with which I tried to convey the religious feeling that was the underlying motif.

But tone color still leaves the problem of the overall character of the music.

Sometimes this is quite obvious. Just reading a script might give all the necessary clues. In a film like Objective: Burma, you can tell immediately that the music will have to be military, epic; some orientalism might be required by the Burmese locale; there will have to be music for the cruel enemy, and for a lot of violent action. You might say that, on the whole, the music is extrovert. But in a psychological drama like Possessed, a Joan Crawford picture that I scored a few years ago, the problem is more subtle. There are no battles, fires, chases, and so on. There are very few external events to be illustrated. There are mostly states of mind, conditions of feeling. You might say that in Objective: Burma the composer has only to watch the characters, while in Possessed the composer has to get inside the characters.

That's an interesting differentiation, Mr. Waxman. Can you give an example of what you do when you write music for "inside a character"?

In Possessed there was a direct cue given by the picture itself. Let me describe the situation in the film: Joan Crawford plays the part of a young woman emotionally unbalanced, a real psychiatric case. Her condition has, of course, a complicated history, but for our purposes here it is perhaps sufficient to say that it is based on an unreciprocated love for an engineer, played by Van Heflin. A number of times during the picture, Van Heflin plays the piano - plays a passage from Schumann's Carnaval. Frequently, in the underscoring, I used this piece as an expression of Miss Crawford's attachment to Heflin. Now at the point in the film where she realizes that he really doesn't love her, which is the point at which her mind and emotions begin to crack up, Heflin plays the Schumann piece again. Heflin is apparently playing the piece correctly, what the audience hears this time is a distorted version, omitting all the sharps and flats, which suggests what Miss Crawford is hearing. That is, the distortion of the music corresponds to the distortion of normal emotions. What formerly had been a beautiful piano piece now sounds ugly to Miss Crawford because the man who is playing it does not return her love. This illustrates what I mean by getting inside a character.

Isn't it almost a cliche in film music that mental disturbance should be illustrated by dissonances and strange sounds?

Yes, it's a common procedure. I don't know who started it, but there is plenty of precedent in concert music. Smetana, in his Quartet From My Life, used a high harmonic to illustrate the ringing in his ears that was one of the symptoms of his deafness. Religious mystics, like Joan of Arc and Bernadette, often claimed to hear voices and heavenly choirs. So there is some basis in reality for doing this sort of thing in music. I think composers have to take advantage of all these suggestive powers of music. It's one way of reaching audiences very directly.

When you speak of audiences, Mr. Waxman - and before, when you mentioned trying to hear in advance what your music would sound like in the theatre - you are really thinking of the function of music in films rather than purely musical qualities, aren't you?

Yes, I don't believe that music as function and music as art are necessarily opposed to each other. But it is true that film music operates in a set of circumstances quite different from the circumstances in which other music is heard. Film music is heard only once - not many times, as concert music is. The audience comes to the theater unprepared - it is not like going to a concert to hear familiar music of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms. And besides, nobody goes to a movie theater to hear music.

If film music is heard in a special set of circumstances, just what qualities ought it to have?

It should have simplicity and directness. It must make its point immediately and strongly. The emotional impact must come all at once. It's not like concert music which is full of secrets that are learned from long acquaintance and many hearings.

What are the musical equivalents of "simplicity" and "directness"?

For me, music that is simple and direct is music that has strong melodic lines, simple accompaniments; and also a number of musical ideas expressed by solo instruments, even without accompaniments.

When you have a simple style, strong melodies, and solo instruments, you still don't have a score. You have only the materials out of which a score is made.

That is another problem - the problem of what to do with your materials. I regard a film score as essentially a set of variations. In concert music, variations are usually written around a single theme. But film music, where there are many themes, the variations turn out to be variations on a group of themes. Another difference is that in film music the variations are not motivated by purely musical considerations, as they are in concert music. The motivation comes from the screen action.

I've noticed in your own scores, Mr. Waxman, that you follow screen action very often by attaching musical themes to characters or ideas of the drama, and then varying the themes as the dramatic situations change. That is, you employ what is commonly known as leitmotif technique.

Yes, I find this very practical in writing film music. It is an aid in composition, and an aid to listening. Motifs are characteristically brief, with sharp profiles. They are easily recognizable. They permit repetition in varying forms and textures, and help musical continuity.

On the other hand, Mr. Waxman, the use of leitmotifs often results in rather complicated counterpoint-as it does in Wagner, for instance. Do you think this contributes to simplicity and directness?

There are many kinds of counterpoint, and each has varying degrees of complexity. I think this can be evaluated only by the final effect it makes. I have used the fugato, for instance, very frequently. Now I don't expect an audience to stop looking at the picture and say, "Ah, Waxman has written a fugato." But I think an audience will notice that somehow the music is growing in tension and excitement--because the reiteration of a single short motif, in a contrapuntal style, is a fairly obvious way of driving toward a climax. The technique of a fugato is strictly my own business. The dramatic effect is the audience's business. I don't think an audience will miss the dramatic intention if the composer has written a good fugato.

That seems to me to be a fair division of responsibility, Mr. Waxman. Perhaps we might say that the ideal situation will be reached when good composers write good music for intelligent audiences.

Don't forget one other factor, Mr. Morton - we composers feel that the situation, to be ideal, requires also good critics.

That is another matter altogether, Mr. Waxman. And before you make this an opportunity for reversing our positions, with you asking the questions, I think I should quickly say goodnight to our CBC audience, and then thank you for having come to the studio tonight.

Thank you, Mr. Morton. It's been a great pleasure.

ANNOUNCER: Franz Waxman's score from The Paradine Case has been arranged and recorded as a symphonic poem for piano and orchestra. It's described as a "recomposition" of the thematic material from the score presented in rhapsodic form for piano and orchestra. The main theme, which runs throughout the piece, is a rather haunting nocturne which pictures the sphinx-like beauty and strange attractiveness of the film's main character, Mrs. Paradine (played by Valli). This theme is heard in many variations and in different rhythmical patterns. Toward the end of the suite the introduction of the "Keane Theme" as a horn solo is heard. This plaintively portrays the emotion of Gay Keane (played by Ann Todd) when she realizes that her almost idyllic marriage is slowly being destroyed because her husband, Tony Keane (played by Gregory Peck), has become fascinated by the beauteous Mrs. Paradine. Near the end of this symphonic poem comes a short piano cadenza. This is joined by the woodwinds, which drive the cadenza to a final climax in a recapitulation of the theme. Franz Waxman's music from The Paradine Case then concludes with a short and brilliant coda.

RECORDS: The Paradine Case.

ANNOUNCER: Writing in Film Music Notes of January-February, 1950, Lawrence Morton said of Waxman's music: "In general, it has the grandiloquent expressiveness, the splendor and luxuriousness of texture that are characteristic of late German romantic music. If one had to ally him with any established 'school' of composition, it would perhaps be that of Richard Strauss. To this basic style he has added some of the elements of a more contemporary music-sharp dissonances, motor rhythms, angularity of phrase. He is fully aware of the new trends in music, for he is a thoroughly alert and trained musician; but they do not happen to correspond with his own feelings about the emotional content of music, nor with his convictions about structural principles. Nevertheless, he has such technique and facility that one feels he could easily absorb these later 'systems' if he wished to. Waxman's music may be summed up as being that of grand gesture and expansive emotion. His themes are strong, positive, clearly drawn, and calculated to communicate their ideas in their first statement. Considering these principles together with the variety and extent of Waxman's activities, they show him to be a musician of intense intellectual curiosity and boundless energy."

Good night.

Notes

1. Recorded extract from the score for Woman Hater (Lambert Williamson).
2. Original surname ‘Wachsmann’ born Königshütte, December 24, 1906. Franz Waxman died in Los Angeles February 24, 1967.
3. Waxman was invited to work on Music in the Air at Fox Film Corporation in Hollywood. He sailed to New York City from Le Havre on the SS Ile De France May 16 1934. After arriving in California he was obliged to cross over the Mexican border and back into the U.S. in order to qualify to apply for U.S. citizenship.