John Crown was a professor of piano at the University of Southern Californa, who passed away at the age of 59 in April, 1972. Crown taught at USC at the same time as Miklós Rózsa, who had a class in film music composition there from 1945 to 1965. In his autobiography A Double Life, Rózsa described Crown, who gave the first performance of his Piano Sonata in 1948, as "my closest friend in Hollywood, a perfect gentleman." This page contains the text from the audio of a TV program called Keynotes, broadcast on KNXT, Los Angeles. The topic discussed over two programs was "Music in Motion Pictures." No specific dates for these programs are available. This transcription has some minor editing.
John Crown: Our topic for today is music in motion pictures. I wonder how many of you have stopped to consider the enormous number of people that go to the movies every week. I believe the figures in our country are something like 40 million a week. Well, if you add the international scene to that, I think you get an astonishing aggregate figure. And why not, while we're about it, add old movies, and sometimes I might add very old movies, on television. And the total number of people going to movies or viewing movies is, of course, huge. And then remember that all these people, whether consciously or unconsciously, are listening, of course, to music, to the scores that accompany the pictures. So I think you can see that the influence of motion picture music can be very great for good or for bad. And therefore, it is most important that the best possible composers anywhere in the world are the men that will be scoring motion pictures, because this can produce an elevation of musical taste.
If, for example, you take a beautiful theme like this from Spellbound. [Crown plays a theme from Spellbound on the piano as he talks.] Millions of people have heard this music. Or you take a current motion picture with a beautiful score, Ben-Hur [Crown plays a theme from Ben-Hur.] Both these scores, by the way, came from the pen of the same distinguished composer. A composer who long before he ever thought of writing for motion pictures was a distinguished composer of concert music, of chamber music, symphonic music, and all the rest. And his name, of course, I think most of you already will know, is Miklós Rózsa. And we're indeed very fortunate to have with us today Miklós Rózsa, the distinguished composer, to discuss with us the role of the composer in motion pictures. Miklós, greetings. I think that the first thing I would like to ask you, on behalf of the viewer, would be rather a personal question. And that is, would you maybe tell us how you came to write for motion pictures at all?
Miklós Rózsa: Well, very gladly. It was purely accidental. In the early 30s, I was living in Paris, and I gave an evening of chamber music with my friend and colleague Arthur Honegger in the Salle Chopin, and our take was about $5 for the both of us, mind you.
JC: Forgive me, you mean you didn't lose $5?
MR: No, no, no.
JC: You actually made $5?
MR: Yes, we were a success. We made about $5. This was a very successful concert. So he invited me for dinner. I couldn't afford it at that time. And after dinner I asked him, now, how do you make a living? You are a considerably older and very well-known composer in Paris, and all we can make in an evening of all works is $5. And he said, well, I'm writing music for films. And I could hardly believe it, and I told him, "Are you writing foxtrots?" And he told me, no, he's not writing foxtrots, he's writing serious music. So the next day I went to see a picture, it was Les Misérables, directed by Abel Gance [actually Raymond Bernard], and I heard excellent, rare, contemporary, great music in motion pictures for the first time. And then, accidentally again, I was in London about two years later, I wrote a ballet, and a French film director, Jacques Feyder, heard my music and asked me to do the next score for his picture [Knight Without Armor]. And that's how I began.
MR: In other words, you made the transference from the concert hall in this very smooth fashion, because all of a sudden you were approached to write a film score.
MR: Yes.
JC: Now, isn't it a curious thing that for some reason, particularly in our country, it seems to me that not enough of our significant composers are engaged in writing motion picture music. I know, for instance, a man like Aaron Copland, of course, and many of the distinguished colleagues you have in Hollywood do this, but if you take the bulk of the composers in this country, it seems to me that compared with, for example, Europe, where nearly every distinguished composer writes music...
MR: Yes. I think this is rather deplorable in a way, because as you say, in Europe, take just England, all the significant composers are writing for motion pictures, such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton, Arthur Bliss, Arthur Benjamin, and we can go on, the list is endless. They're all constantly writing music, dramatic music for operas, and film music, and the same in France, the same in Russia, the same in every country. Here, unfortunately, we have specialists. Yes. And I think, altogether, the whole motion picture industry needs more real writers, real actors, and real composers.
JC: Well, this, would certainly agree with this. And to demonstrate the meaning of a real composer writing for motion pictures, we have selected a sequence from Ben-Hur, "The Burning Desert," which we would like to present in a minute and for a point of discussion afterwards. And I wonder if you maybe would describe what this scene is so that we would have the viewer more informed.
MR: Yes, this is what we call a silent scene. In other words, nothing is spoken. It's one of the most dramatic scenes in the picture. Ben-Hur is condemned to the galleys, and he goes with other prisoners through the desert, exhausted, thirsty, and they enter a little village, Nazareth, where a carpenter is working and sees them. And the villagers come out and give them water. And Ben-Hur is not allowed the water because he allegedly killed the governor. And he collapses completely exhausted and says, "God help me." And at this moment a hand reaches into the picture and gives him a gourd of water to drink. And this is the hand of Christ. He, of course, doesn't know who that is. He drinks the water, gets to his feet. They go on and his heart is filled with joy, of happiness, and of faith. This is the scene that I had to explain musically because there's no other sound. There's no dialogue. There's no dialogue except for that one phrase, "God help me."
MR: Well, I think what we should do is run this now. Let's listen to it and then we'll have something to discuss afterwards. "The Burning Desert" from Ben-Hur.
[Scene from Ben-Hur is shown.]
JC: Well, I think you should be proud of the beautiful music you wrote for that sequence.
MR: Thank you.
JC: And I might remind the viewer that one doesn't measure quality by quantity, but I would add that you wrote a score here that not only was a score of great quality, but of considerable quantity. I believe this score is about the duration of an average opera, is it not?
MR: A long opera, two and a half hours music.
JC: Two and a half hours of music! That, of course, I think gives the viewer maybe some understanding of the importance of the music in a film, a particular film of this kind, if you supply that much music. Therefore, I would like to ask you a question that sometimes the literal-minded will ask me, if I may, Miklós, and they will say, why do you need music in a film at all? I don't like to suddenly hear a full symphony orchestra right out in the desert. How would you answer that? There was a full symphony orchestra out in the desert.
MR: Yes, so was the camera out in the desert, you know, and they don't object to that. But music is one of the component building elements of a motion picture. It has a very important reason to be there and it's an irrational element, you see, against the rational of the pictorial one. It's something that appeals to your soul. I visualise rather music like a Greek chorus that stands behind the screen and points up the action, underlines the drama, focuses the attention of the spectator to certain things that the director wants to bring out. And some people say that motion picture music is good if you don't hear it. Well, I heartily disagree with this statement because I think that it appeals to you but subconsciously. It's not a concept, actually, you go to motion picture too, but subconsciously you are aware of it and it works on your nervous system.
JC: Yes. I think this is a beautiful description when you say an irrational element.
MR: Yes, that's right.
JC: And of course, in other words, you are psychologically underpinning.
MR: Oh, yes.
JC: Not what some people think of, you know, this kind of cartoon technique where every gesture has a little squeak in the orchestra.
MR: No. The musical illustration is really passé now, by now. It belongs to the old days of motion picture technique, when an organist was trying to catch certain physical happenings and illustrate it musically. I think music has to go much behind this and much far beyond this technique. In my mind, the main reason of motion picture music is to complete the psychological effect in a scene.
JC: Now, something you see that the average viewer never can enjoy is the meaning of this, completing the psychological effect, because he never sees the sequence silently.
MR: Well, naturally.
JC: And for that reason, we are going to conduct a little viewing experiment today, and we have a film clip here from Spellbound, which was also written by Miklós Rózsa, and we are going to run a scene that is a very powerful dramatic scene, and we will run it first without music. I'm going to ask Mr. Rózsa merely to make some remarks while the scene is running silently because there's no dialogue in the scene and then we will repeat the scene and you will, I believe, for the first time have a true feeling of the meaning of the enormous impact of music. Of course I shouldn't be telling you this because I think you're the ones to judge it. So what we should do now is run the sequence from the David O. Selznick production of Spellbound. It was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and Miklós Rózsa wrote the music.
MR: The scene opens when Gregory Peck, who is a young physicist, who himself is a patient, and suffers of amnesia and paranoia and also a Freudian complex, guilt complex. This is a real Hitchcockian sequence. He wakes up during the night. He is undecided. He has a sort of a seizure, but he doesn't know what's actually happening to him. He looks around and sees Ingrid Bergman, who is also a physicist in this picture, who tries to find him and to find out the real cause of his complex. He aimlessly wanders around in this dark room, goes into the bathroom. He has a certain fixation with the color white which is explained later in the picture. He drinks a glass of water, looks into the mirror. Everything is white around him.
JC: I'm going to interrupt you, because I would like them to look at this for a moment in absolute silence to realize what the music does to this scene, because your narration is so good you're making it exciting. Just hold it for a moment.
[There is a pause here.]
JC: And I think we can go on, because I want them to follow what the music is doing, you see.
MR: He takes out a razor. And wants to shave. The soap is white again. He looks at it. It does something to him. His complex starts. The wash basin is white. The chair is white. The tub is white. He comes back to the bedroom with an open razor in his hand and a white coverlet under which Ingrid Bergman is asleep. Now this is a real Hitchcockian climax. Is he going to slit her throat? He doesn't know himself. She is not aware all of this. He goes nearer and nearer to the bed with the open razor in his hand. He is undecided. He doesn't know what to do. Then he relaxes and goes out from the room. He has not done it.
JC: That's the end of the scene.
MR: This is the end of the scene.
JC: Well, It would seem to me that, in a sense, would it be fair to say that what you have been saying in prose, you actually expressed in music?
MR: That's correct.
JC: And this is what I think the viewer will understand, that after all, music is a language, and it's a language that is really more subtle. And of course, as a musician, we sometimes think far more expressive even than words can ever be, with no offense meant to poets.
MR: Yes, I agree with you.
JC: Maybe in the case of great poetry there would be a similarity, because I might add that sometimes there also the irrational enters into it.
MR: Yes, but I think where words end, music starts.
JC: Now, I noticed in here, of course, and everybody does, that to add to this irrational quality, you introduced an electronic instrument.
MR: Yes, I used the first time the theremin. It's an electronic instrument and is a eerie whining sound. and I needed a new sound to this, you know, when this complex starts with this young man, and I used the theremin, and it became quite famous after that, and was used many times. And you will hear the music, and music really tells you what is happening in the mind, in the sick mind of this man, and which he cannot act. Hitchcock did it extremely well with his shortcuts of the picture, but what is actually happening in his mind, this is the music.
JC: Well, now the viewer will be able to determine this. We will run this now with sound.
[There is a pause here]
JC: Well, I think the viewer will have formed his own judgment as to what the music has accomplished. And the point that it raises in my mind is what we referred to earlier, and that is the meaning of true composers writing motion picture music. last year we were visited by a delegation of Soviet composers, Shostakovich, Kabalevsky, and others, and Kabalevsky was sort of baiting me a little, and he said, why is it in your country you have this division between people who write motion picture music and people that write serious music? He said, we don't believe in it. So I replied back at him, and I said, this is equally untrue of our country because good composers are the very best composers for motion picture music, except, curiously enough, we have not tapped the real composition talent of this country to the degree, I think, that Europeans have.
MR: I agree with you because I think that motion picture of the 20th century is the same as in the 19th century the opera or oratorio was, and the composer in the last century wrote operas or oratorios, in other words, dramatic music, should write.
JC: Hear, hear. Thank you very much, Miklós Rózsa, for being with us. Next week, I'm happy to say that we will be able to have Miklós Rózsa with us again, where he will discuss with me, this time not the psychological aspects of scoring, but he will discuss with me the question of the pragmatic elements of writing music, the actual factual elements involved, how well this can be taught. We will show you timing sheets, and I will have the pleasure of playing some of Mr. Rózsa's concert music. And I hope that you agree with us as to the psychological aspects, and I hope next week we will go into the practical aspects of film scoring.
[Part Two of "Music in Motion Pictures" follows.]
JC: You will recall last week I was discussing with Mr. Miklós Rózsa, distinguished composer certain aspects of motion picture music. We have established the obvious fact that countless millions of people are listening to music by motion picture scores and obviously their musical habits are going to be conditioned to a certain extent by the quality of this writing. We also established the fact that particularly in Europe it was current practice for the most distinguished composers of the day to be writing film music. There is, as it were, no dichotomy. There is no split between the concept of one composer writes for motion pictures and another composer writes concert music, because this split cannot really exist. You write good music or you write bad music, and a composer will write the same music. So the composer that is writing for the concert hall, as Mr. Rózsa is, who has written so many works for the concert hall, who has recently contributed a magnificent violin concerto that has played all over the world with great success, and Mr. Rózsa, who has also contributed some of the most notable film scores; the total aggregate number is quite astounding. It reaches something like a hundred scores. But never let us measure things by quantity, but by quality. And when I remind you that these scores will have included A Double Life, Lady Hamilton, Spellbound, Ben-Hur, Quo Vadis, I could go on and on and on and give you some idea of the output of this man. And what I would like to establish now first is the fact that I believe that every true artist has a clearly defined style of his own. Now, this is true of painters, this is true of poets, of writers, and certainly of composers. You can recognize the very nature of the man, as it were, through the way he writes. He has a profile that you will recognize, and so it is with the music of Miklós Rózsa. Whether you hear a film score or whether you hear a concert piece, you invariably can identify the style of Rózsa. And so to establish this very premise, what I would like to do now first is play for you one of Miklós Rózsa's concert pieces. It is an extract from his piano sonata written in 1948. This piece has been played all over the world with great success, and I will play the Andante movement. And I want you now to listen for the certain style of Rózsa, and when you hear his film music, as you will later, compare the two and draw your own conclusions. I think you will recognize that it's quite obvious that there is no basic change in the man, because you cannot write two kinds of music. You can change your music for the dramatic situation, but you will always remain true to yourself, and true, in other words, to your own style. This is the Andante movement of the Rózsa Piano Sonata.
[Crown plays the Andante from the Sonata.]
JC: Now those of you that know Rózsa's film music will, I think, recognize the affinity between the two. It would become far too technical if I were to break down the reasons for this, the reasons, of course, for style are the vocabulary of a man, the musical vocabulary, that is. But I think you can just use your ears and decide for yourselves.
Now, I'm lucky once again to have Miklós Rózsa here as a guest today, and I'm going to go over and have an interview with him and ask him to answer some questions. Welcome once again to Keynotes.
MR: Thank you for this lovely playing, John.
JC: Well, thank you. It's always a bit of a responsibility, you know, when the composer's in the room, the performer is apt to be very careful of what he's doing.
MR: Yes, but you gave the first performance of this work some years ago, so you should know it. And you do.
JC: Well, what I'd like to ask you is the following. We discussed the psychological aspects of film scoring last week, and today we were going to discuss the more particular practical operations involved. Now, I know that you initiated what I would call, rather, an historical class at the university quite a few years ago, and that is a class in music for motion pictures. isn't it?
MR: Right. Composition for the Cinema.
JC: Composition for the Cinema. It's a two-semester class. Would you give us some idea of what you try to achieve with this class?
MR: You see, when I started out to write music for motion pictures, which happened in London some years ago, I had absolutely no idea how to go about it. And I was engaged to write music for a picture, but I didn't know what to do. I bought two books, only two books existed about motion picture music, and I learned exactly nothing from them. So I felt that there is a necessity for telling young people what to do, and that's all I'm trying to do. I'm just trying to share the little knowledge I have acquired in these last 25 years in the motion picture studios. The requirements are completely new for them. You know, these are young people who have been writing concert music up to now, using their own imagination, their own timing, we shall talk about it later, and the timing in this case only the normal development of music, form and content. Now, this is entirely different in a film studio where you are given a certain rigid, unchangeable time. This is one thing. The other one is the general approach, the aesthetics.
JC: Why don't I interrupt you here and ask you that you use the term aesthetics. Would you define it a little more clearly for me?
MR: Well, I have to do it very shortly because we are spending actually a whole semester on this question. Well, the general approach to film music, I usually classify it in two main categories. That is, it can be passive and can be active. It can be impressionistic and it can be expressionistic. Now let me explain. If you want to establish a mood in a scene, an atmosphere musically, which is a very important function of motion picture music, and that is the passive approach. This is rather impressionistic, and I'm not using the term in the French impressionistic...
JC: Forgive me for interrupting you, but just for clarification of my own thinking. When you say impressionistic, then, in this sense, you mean to create the impression of the scene.
MR: To create the impression of certain feelings or certain atmosphere. Let me just give you an example from the current Ben-Hur. For instance, when Ben-Hur goes to his homeland, Judea, and you hear the music creating the atmosphere of this country 2,000 years ago, this music doesn't take part in the action, you know. It's just creating a mood. This is the passive kind of music, the impressionistic style. The other one, for instance, the music we heard last week, and we'll hear a little bit of today, when he goes to the desert, and he grows to the agony of thirst and all that goes with it, then the music becomes dramatic.
JC: Now I understand this, this is rather an interesting thing to me. In other words you're making a definition here between an active moment and you might say an inactive, well, it's not exactly the right word, say inactive. In other words the impression is providing the mood, but the expression, the expressionistic moment, that is now involved in it. Because as I remember you used this beautiful phrase last week that the music of course adds an irrational quality.
MR: Yes, of course.
JC: Well now when you take your students, and many of them are very talented of course, they have had no experience with this kind of writing at all, and they're faced for the first time with the discipline of writing against time limitations, is that correct?
MR: Yes, first we start out on general ideas, and for instance in this semester I asked them to write a pastorale. And you would be surprised, this is a very simple thing to do, and there are very talented people, about 15 of them this year, but more than half of them failed, and could not write a very simple pastorale, because it's very difficult to be simple, as you know. The second assignment was a nocturne, with a threatening mood. As you see, we are moving through the dramatic expression. And I was very pleased to see that all 15 students came up with wonderful pieces.
JC: Do you think this is an indication that today we are more used to coping with menace?
MR: I'm afraid so. It's as if we have forgotten to write peaceful music.
JC: Well, you know what would be a good idea would be to show the viewer what a timesheet looks like that you've been talking about.
MR: Yes. Now the timing sheet is something that the composer is working with. Since the picture is broken down into sequences for which he's going to compose music, and then an assistant prepares a timing sheet. Now, this I could compare to a timetable of a train. You know, exactly as given, you will see it in a moment, what happens at any second, and it's broken down to a third of a second. Now, with this timing sheet, and with a stopwatch, naturally, the composer goes home and starts to compose his music.
JC: And what a problem to write continuous music that will underline these time changes.
MR: Yes, now I call these are the booby traps of a timing sheet that the composer doesn't fall into the temptation to illustrate every second or every five seconds as the timing sheet shows what's happening, but keeps a continuity and a normal development of his music.
JC: Of course, that's cartoon technique. Somebody runs upstairs. [He sings someone musically running up stairs.]
MR: Boom, that's right. And then he runs down.
JC: Right, that's how you sing it. My voice is not terribly good this morning. And to avoid this trap, you write a continuous kind of music that nevertheless will illustrate. Well, I think that we should now show a timesheet. And then the viewer can look at it, and we will add the music behind it afterwards. First he can see the timesheet, and then he can follow the actual directions of a timesheet and hear the music that you have written for this sequence. This would be an excellent illustration. Why don't we do that now? Take a look at the timesheet.
MR: Now, this is a scene from Ben-Hur. It's called "The Burning Desert." And this is when Ben-Hur is condemned to the galleys. And he goes to the desert with his fellow prisoners. Now, can we see it?
JC: Yes, we'll have it on in a moment.
[Music is heard. Rózsa describes what is happening on screen in relation to the music, but some of the discussion here is garbled.]
JC: And you have this beside yourself while you're writing?
MR: The guard and horse follow them with the prisoners. Now, we dissolve to another angle of the scene, which is the prisoners and the guards. Now we come to the plodding of the prisoners through the desert, featuring Ben-Hur. You hear the plodding music?
JC: Of course, it is pretty strange.
MR: This is a silent sequence where no word is spoken.
[The example eventually ends.]
JC: I think that illustrates it perfectly. Let me ask you a kind of surprise question and see how you answer it. I remember many years ago, the writer Emil Ludwig made a statement that we heard together. It was at a lecture he was giving us that a composer could never write good music for motion pictures because he never could restrict his inspiration to prescribed time. In other words, he said, suppose his inspiration lasts 3 minutes and 50 seconds and the scene only runs 2 minutes and 40 seconds, that this would kill any artistic endeavor. What would you answer to that?
MR: Well, I would compare it to fresco painting. When a painter is painting a fresco, he is given a certain space, and he has to compose his fresco within this space. For instance, when Michelangelo was called to Rome by Pope Julius II to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel, where he has painted, as you know, the incredible frescoes of the creation and the Last Judgment. Now, he was given, I think if I remember rightly, it's about 134 feet long. Now these are 130 feet, it's the same thing if I get a certain timing in a motion picture film. He couldn't say that, "Yes, but my imagination wants another five feet, or I don't go that far and I stop here." He composed within this space. And what is space for a painter is time.
JC: I was just going to say that, of course. How graphic. It's time for a composer. Music takes place in time, and painting takes place in space. One displaces, as it were, space, and the other displaces, as it were, time. Yes.
MR: So when you are you composing, you are composing actually within limitations. But you need a certain self-control. You can do it.
JC: Well, of course, because after all it is a fact that operating within a limitation is a necessity to any creative person. And what is the difference? After all, if a poet is going to write a sonnet, he has to subscribe to the form of a sonnet. This is a limitation. You can't just ramble around in freewheeling associations.
MR: Or a fugue.
JC: Yes, I should say so.
MR: Or a passacaglia.
JC: This, by the way, I think I'm getting a little off the track by saying this, but I think this has some bearing what we're discussing with the mania for over-evaluating improvisation. Because improvisation, any good musician can improvise, and there is no composer from the beginning of time that wasn't an excellent improviser, except this was the source of their own private inspiration or an entertainment for their friends, but they wouldn't inflict it upon all because I mean this is not a worked-out product this is a form of amateurism you have to operate within disciplines and within restrictions right?
MR: Absolutely.
JC: And I should hope society would too. Now returning back to your class, got you off the track there I'm afraid, returning you back to your class you now set up a laboratory situation for them I assume.
MR: Yes it's actually a sort of a workshop. They are working on dramatic ideas and later with timing sheets in the first semester. And in the second semester we usually compose music for a picture produced by the university. And these are documentaries which the cinema department of USC is producing. And my class is writing the music to it. That means that we are getting a picture which is about 10 or 20 minutes long and each sequence is composed by the 15 students. Each scene is the same by the students and then we select the best sequences and we record them. They have to less orchestrate it, often they have to copy the parts which is the less pleasant part of it.
JC: This of course is more of a discipline of the composer writing for the concert hall because he's more used to maybe having to do this than in the so-called "commercial field."
MR: That's right. And then they have to conduct. We either use the university orchestra if it's a bigger film. For smaller films we use smaller groups, students mostly from the university, and they have to conduct their own music. In other words they go through the same phase as a conductor does in our commercial film studios. So when they finish this course, at least they know what the whole thing is about, and technically, naturally, they know practically everything.
JC: Well, you've really established a kind of concept of education that is terribly important, and that is the apprenticeship. It's nearly like an apprenticeship.
MR: Yes.
JC: Because I believe certain things can only be learned, as it were, through an apprenticeship.
MR: Well, naturally.
JC: You can't talk about it.
MR: No, you have to do it.
JC: You have to do it. That's right.
MR: I usually tell my students that in these two semesters I will try to teach them everything that is possible to learn, mostly technically, speaking about the requirements to write for motion pictures with one exception, and that is how to get a job.
JC: Yes, this we will reserve not for another program, but we will reserve for a whole series of programs. Miklós, many thanks to you. It was wonderful having you here.
Well, I think that we covered the two aspects of motion picture writing, the psychological aspects last week, and we discussed the practical aspects of writing today. And I trust that maybe because of the presence of Miklós Rózsa, you gained a keener appreciation of the meaning of the composer writing for motion pictures. And I repeat again because it's a hobby horse of mine, x`that the more great composers that write for motion pictures, the better it will be for music taste in general. not just for the motion picture score itself, but for taste in general, because it's obvious that any media that reaches as countless millions as motion pictures do must have an effect upon taste.