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Miklós Rózsa Answers Questions

Ken Doeckel sent 20 questions to Miklós Rózsa on tape, with Rózsa replying in the same manner from his home in Santa Margherita Ligure, Italy. This tape was made July 7, 1977 by Dr. Rozsa. The tape was later misplaced for about a year and a half, but it was eventually recovered and re-mastered April 18th, 1979. Of this project, Ken said: "One of the questions I've long wanted to ask Dr. Rózsa is to state his 15 favorite films which he prefers musically, and he lists them chronologically rather than in order of preference. Then I asked him to list which five of the 15 he most enjoyed composing, and he lists those five also, chronologically, not in order of preference. I hope you enjoy listening to Dr. Rózsa. I think he's our greatest living composer, and certainly one of the greatest composers who ever lived."
Transcriber's note: These questions were transcribed from an audio file via an AI-assisted audio program. The original file contained 20 questions, but the majority of these were not included on the tape, so I had to do some guesswork as to what they were with some help and also where they were inserted in the copy. One of these questions, which had to do with Rózsa's children, is not included, leaving us with a total of 18 questions. Some of the text has been edited. - MQ
CAN YOU TALK ABOUT YOUR MOST RECENT FILMS?
With Providence, I was first interested in the director, Alain Renais. He is a very unusual director, and I had my best experiences in filmmaking with great directors. Wherever there is a guarantee to do something out of the ordinary, I have to mention Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Vincente Minnelli, Fritz Lang, and so on. And Alain Resnais does films in which reality is combined with the the eerie. And although you don't always follow him very easily, there is a very strong method in his madness.
I met Renais in Paris and found him a fascinating man, highly intelligent, far above the intelligence of the run-of-the-mill Hollywood filmmakers. I was delighted with him and also with his wife who works with him, who is the daughter of the late André Malraux, one of the towering intellects of our century. I saw the film and frankly I did not understand it. Not because of the language. It was in English, and I do speak French as I do speak English. But there was something in the long silences in the film that somehow I thought that I can do something with. When the lights went up, I was alone in a projection room in Paris. The door opened and Mr. Renais walked in, introduced himself and asked me, "Are you interested?" I said "I am."
I saw the happiness on his face and that was already part of my inspiration for the film. It belonged to my psychological film category, somewhat like Spellbound, somewhat like The Lost Weekend, although it was something else. It showed the creative process of a writer who in his -- I can use the word delirium, because he is partly drugged -- is dying of cancer and partly he is drinking. Here we are back at The Lost Weekend. And for his last process, the author is creating in his mind his last story. And that's what the film is about. So I thought that it needs something sensitive, something that underlines or explains musically what goes on in the mind of this man. Now this is what I've always done in my psychological films.
I had to go to London to do a recording of Ben-Hur, and I came back for a full-day session with Monsieur Renais, and then I had to leave for Washington for the first American performance of my Tripartita, and from there I came back to Paris to write the film. He had a very thorough scenario about the music. He knew exactly what he wanted. He was, of course, open-minded for ideas, but what he wanted, what was exactly what he wanted to express in the film, pictorially, enhanced, explained, and underlined with the music.
So when we went through on the moviola of the film, reel by reel, scene by scene, he told me exactly what he had in mind, which I wrote down, and these 10 to 20 pages became actually my bible for writing the music, because I knew what he wanted to express musically in his film. As the film is about death, he wanted slow, gloomy, and lugubrious music. And for instance, the opening titles are nothing else but a death march and so are other pieces. It was the first time in my whole career that I could start a title music that the French call "générique" piano [softly] and end a film piano. Maybe this could have been done in Hollywood, maybe possible, but I never got away with it. In Hollywood, you always want a tremendous finale, practically explaining that "happiness is here" and "we shall live ever after with the angels surrounding us," no matter what the film was.
But when John Gielgud, the main actor of the film, goes into the house, we know that he is going to die, and the music ends softly. So all this was possible because in France, the director is the author of the film. No producer or no one else can ever change a frame. It is unlike Hollywood, where the director has only the right for the first cut. From then on, it's up to the studio and they cut it sideways and show it that way. The director has nothing to do with it any more. In France, this is not possible. The actual law protects the director as the author, auteur of the film, and it has to be in every phase of it, exactly as he wants it.
So, Monsieur Renais and I worked together. There was no interference. He came to the recording to London and was happy with every piece. And we finished it in practically half time as he thought it should be. And I am very happy to see that this very un-Hollywood and unostentatious score, where there are hardly any fortissimos during the whole score, gets noticed by the critics when they very often don't notice a two-hour score of tremendous power in other films, including mine. I have just in front of me the review in Milan of one of the leading papers, which is two long columns. And when some of the actors are only mentioned fleetingly once, they are mentioning the music three times and find that it contributes greatly to the merit of the film, which is rewarding.
The Secret Files of J. Edgar Hoover is of course something entirely different. This is a piece of Americana in which the life of a very important American character is portrayed from his early days to the very end. It's an interesting study in a man's character, and that's what fascinated me. There are of course episodes with gangsters like Dillinger, Karpis, and the others from the 20s or early 30s, and the music for this will probably remind you of my approach to the late Mark Hellinger's films, which was my gangster period in Hollywood. You will find the same musical brutality and excitement. But more important is the kind of music I wrote for Hoover, who had such a complex and interesting character which gave great scope for musical explanation and musical characterization.
DO YOU THINK THAT FILM MUSIC MIGHT RETURN TO FULL-FLEDGED DRAMATIC SCORES AS OPPOSED TO POP SONGS?
Yes, I do. After all, there are now scores being written of great importance, like some of John Williams or Jerry Goldsmith, and these are, at least the ones I know, full-fledged, musical scores. I must agree that they are few and far between because pop songs are still being used as well as the four-letter words of the music industry which have nothing to do with art -- rock and roll is still dominating a lot of films. A few years ago, no serious films of any importance were made, therefore no score of any importance was used, and therefore we got trash. Now, we are returning to better films, better music, but it is still a long way until the music of the 40s and the 50s will come back to motion pictures. But I must emphasize again, they go together with great films. When great films will be made, great music will return.
ARE THERE ANY FILM MUSIC COMPOSERS YOU DON'T LIKE?
This question is rather difficult for me to answer because I see very few pictures. I sometimes listen to discs of present day composers, but that's how far I go. So it would be very unfair for me to come up with a judgment who is good and who is bad. By the way, I do not want to say anything bad about anybody, but I intensely disliked Dimitri Tiomkin, which may be an exaggeration. When he was active, I did not particularly like his music, but he was just one of the Hollywood musical establishment that I do not agree with, artistically speaking. But that doesn't mean that I did not acknowledge his musicianship. What I didn't like was that he introduced the song hit as an ingredient of the motion picture music art which I felt was a complete degradation. I did not like his publicity campaigns, I did not like his methods, but comparing him to today's virtuosos on a harmonica or a single guitar who cannot write a single note (nor can they read it), but "write" full scores, I must say that Dimitri Tiomkin was a Beethoven compared to these. In any case, I don't want to go on record that I have intensely disliked him personally or artistically.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF TODAY'S FILMS?
This is difficult to answer because I see very few films, practically none. And I do not see television at all, therefore I cannot comment about the quality of movies today. I read about them and the subject matters do not appeal to me. I don't like horror, I don't like violence, I don't like disasters, I don't like exaggerated sex. So what is left? And why should I go to the cinema to be annoyed and listen to mostly the absolutely insipid music that I sometimes hear on the records or on the radio. So for that reason, I just don't go to cinema anymore. And it would be unfair if I would say anything about them. [19:19]
DID YOU GET ALONG WELL WITH THE DIRECTORS YOU WORKED WITH?
There were many directors and producers I worked with, but not many were knowledgeable, musically speaking. To work with Billy Wilder was always an unquestionable pleasure. He is very erudite, very intelligent, very sensitive, a true artist. And he very often has musical ideas. In other words, he knows what kind of music he would like. Sometimes it's difficult for him to express it in musical terms, but we always work together. And I believe in this, to work together with the director –- after, all the whole picture is his dream. He dreamt up the scenes, the scenario, and everything what you see, and why shouldn't we work closely together? He used to come to my office it was in London when we were working on Sherlock Holmes, he came to my home, and I played the score to him on the piano. I explained the scene and then played the music, and then he sometimes had another idea, and if it was good, I certainly accepted it. After all, he knew more about the picture than I did.
I can give you an example of this: In Sherlock Holmes, there was a famous scene. I think it became famous because it was very nice. When Holmes, Watson, and the girl who later becomes a spy go on a trip in Scotland, Billy said now he would like to have a very Scottish atmosphere. So I got an anthology of Scottish themes, and I wrote a sort of a paraphrase on them, saying to the audience that "Here we are, now we are in Scotland." Well, it was very Scottish indeed, but he didn't like it. I said, "What's the trouble?" "Well," he said, "It's too Scottish." "Well," I said, "you see, you can't be just a little pregnant. If you're Scottish, you're Scottish. This is Scottish. We even have bagpipes in the orchestra." He said, "No, no, no, that takes away from the dramatic action. It becomes just Scotland." Then somebody suggested that because they are bicycling and bicycling for two was a waltz, it should be in a waltz rhythm. Now this was as idiotic as it can be but he came to me and said now could you try it now in waltz rhythm. I said, "But you don't want a Scottish theme." "No, no, let's play the theme of Holmes and play it in a waltz." Now, I did not like this at all, but time was short. I quickly wrote it. There was one more session, and we played it as a waltz. Now, I hated to destroy my theme of the violin concerto as a waltz and I tried to do it as unobtrusively as possible.
Well, we played it with the picture, with the whole orchestra, and again he didn't like it. I said, "Well, now it just goes against the picture." So I told him, "Now, would you mind if I try it another third time away? I would like to have it." And he said, "Well, go ahead. We have one session, and it's in two days, but will you have time to write it while I said we have the whole night. I used the girl's theme which is the second movement from the violin concerto in a rather dramatic way on based on an insistent rhythm. And that goes to the whole scene clashing with the bagpipes that we occasionally hear. And many people have remarked that this was probably the most dramatic scene in the whole picture. Now this is collaboration, even if he was not quite right at the beginning, but we were trying to get something that he wanted and I was very willing to cooperate.
For instance, in Double Indemnity, there we wanted a theme for the conspiracy of these two people who were about to kill Mr. Dietrichson. And Wilder had in mind the beginning of the Unfinished Symphony by Schubert. And it sounds silly, but he was absolutely right … in that whole beginning, before the theme starts, and so on. There was a certain hush-hush insistence. Well, I wrote something which has nothing to do with this, of course, musically, but that suggested the idea for this. Great directors who have musical director ideas can suggest something that dramatically can be very valid, and it's up to the composer to solve it musically. I later had that, to a great extent, with John Houseman.
John Houseman is not a director but a producer. But at M-G-M, in the good old days, the producer was a very important man, artistically as well as financially, so to speak. He took over the picture after the director delivered it, and for instance, in pictures like Julius Caesar, Lust for Life, Moonfleet, I did not work with the directors at all. The directors were already gone by the time I got the picture, but there was John Houseman, and he was a very erudite, a very brilliant, creative man. Later he became an actor, and he came very often to the studio. As a matter of fact, when I finished a sequence, I always called him. He came over, and we listened to it together. Usually it was exactly what he wanted, but if he made some suggestions, which I found good, I gladly accepted it. Well, with Alan Renais, it was more or less the same, but as I told you before, he gave me a complete list of where he wanted the music and what kind of a music he wanted. It was very much explained with non-musical terms, which were very clear, and again, all I had to do was translate into musical terms.
HAS BEING A FILM COMPOSER TAINTED CRITICS' OPINIONS OF YOUR NON-FILM MUSIC?
The hostility of some critics towards my symphonic music worries me much less than it worries some of my friends, for a simple reason: I don't read their reviews. This is not a pose, as some might think, but first of all, there are good ones and bad ones –- reviews, I mean. And if I believe the good ones, I also should believe the bad ones. I know exactly the worth of my music. I write it, I believe in it, that is my expression. And if somebody doesn't like it, that is entirely his own right and business. I believe in something that my late friend, cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, said: "Why should we read what our inferiors think about us?" And there is a lot of wisdom in that saying. We spend a lifetime writing music or playing music, and some nincompoop whose musical education is usually the back cover notes of records, or who takes a class at a university in musical criticism (there are such classes), rolls out and wants to show his editor or his teacher that he knows better, that we, who spent a lifetime doing this, have done, and wants to show that he is erudite, he knows it better, he is provocative, which is so much liked by the editors of newspapers. They want a provocative opinion. It's not enough to go out and to say that Mr. Rubinstein played very well last night and go on to write out all the beautiful things he has done. That's no good. But if you say that he has played quite well, however, in the Appassionata sonata on the second page, the fortissimo would have been actually a mezzo forte and there is an accent he has missed and so on you go down the line then your editor will say well this man I have here on my payroll is a genius he can tell even Mr. Rubinstein off.
I went once to a concert in London where my friend André Previn conducted. I was sitting in the Festival Hall up in the balcony and one could see very well the audience below. And a friend of mine pointed out to me the critic of the London Times, of The Observer, and of The Daily Telegraph. They were all sitting in such a way that they did not actually see each other, and each one had a score. I don't remember exactly what the work was, some classical symphony. Each one had a score with a pencil in their hand. And they made marks on every page. In other words, was this crescendo as good as I have just heard before I came here on a recording of Karajan? Was this sforzando as good as I have heard in another record by Stokowski and so on. I was not listening to the music at all because this site was so fascinating.
I was looking at these gentlemen who were just like Beckmesser in Meistersinger who makes a point when Walter von der Vogelweide is singing the Prize Song when he points out what is wrong here and there, and makes another point, interrupts the song –- he is seeing all the little trees, but missing the whole forest, missing the beauty, the continuity of great art, and that has nothing to do with one crescendo, sforzando or some missed horn notes which every idiot can hear but the intonation troubles in the horn are likely because the horns are very much affected by the atmospheric changes and especially in London. So much for the general critics as far as far as I am concerned, they have a very snobbish and very superficial and a very idiotic attitude, especially against Hollywood per se. Now, I happen to live in Hollywood and happen to work there for 35 years, but I don't think that I "went Hollywood," if I may use this vernacular expression. I was not terribly well known in America before I came there, because there was actually only one composition of mine, as far as I remember, played, which was in 1937 or 38, with the Chicago Symphony, my Theme, Variations and Finale. However, one swallow doesn't make a summer in one performance, doesn't establish a composer in a country as large as America. So when my film scores started to invade the American continent, my name naturally became known as a film composer. And this is just about the dirtiest thing a New York critic can think of, or a New York musician, though they all would like to come to Hollywood and work there and earn the money that a Hollywood composer earns against the money that they earn teaching in obscure schools in New York. So, Hollywood is anathema. Now, that I had either musically nor personally very little to do with the so-called Hollywood scene, this is now beside the point, but very often I feel like the Agnus Dei, "Qui tollis peccata mundi." I am paying for the sins of others.
WHAT WAS THE HOLLYWOOD FILM MUSIC SCENE LIKE WHEN YOU CAME TO AMERICA?
Hollywood music, when it started, was not the highest caliber. The composers who worked in Hollywood in the early days of the sound film were not composers. They were mostly show conductors, either in Broadway or in cinemas. Their training was, how shall I say, incomplete. They had talent, otherwise they wouldn't have been there. They had something, but that was not composition. Very few, and I wouldn't know who, who had a thorough conservatory or university education as a composer. It's not enough to pick up a few elementary harmony lessons. It is not enough to have heard a few concerts. But as a composer, you have to be trained thoroughly same way as a doctor has to be trained to practice medicine or an architect has to be paid to build a house which should not collapse after the first year. Unfortunately our Hollywood composers were not this kind. They drifted into the compositions because they had to. All they did up to now, and I'm talking for a great percentage of these, there might have been exception if they were, I didn't know them. They were compilers. They worked for the cinema, they had a certain dramatic sense, and they could put together scores from the classics, from the Romantics, and also had actually written music for cinema, but they were not composers.
The Hollywood establishment as far as music was concerned, when I came there, to my mind at least, was absolutely atrocious. It was a pastiche of just what the producer would have liked to hear. The producers, the directors had very little to say in these things. An encounter with Billy Wilder was an exception. The producer was responsible to the head of the studio who was just as a musical as anybody can be and all they liked, they knew what they liked and what they liked the public likes. That was the motto. And the result was the clichés that you have heard a thousand times, and that's what they wanted. There were successful composers like Mark Steiner, like Newman, like Victor Young, and with the exception of Newman, who had of course much more than all the others put together, they wrote sort of a Hollywood cinematographic style, which was largely based on Rachmaninoff, of Broadway tunes, and the obvious dramatic clichés.
Well, you can't blame the fact that this kind of music which invaded not only America but the whole world was not represented by serious composers. Let's take New York as a random example, where these composers thought they could have done better. Maybe they could have, maybe they couldn't. The only man who came to Hollywood and was very successful was Aaron Copland. And you say that they don't resent his excursion to Hollywood. No, because he was quite an established name before, and he did only about three or four pictures, and not very consequential ones, with maybe the exception of one or two. And he did not make Hollywood history with his music. So this was more or less forgotten and forgiven. So Aaron Copland's reputation did not suffer that he wrote music for Hollywood films, and he's a very important and a very great composer, and I thought that his scores for Hollywood were also outstanding.
DO YOU READ REVIEWS OF YOUR MUSIC?
I don't read these things, even if very well-wishing friends sometimes said, "Well, there is a very bad review about your [such-and-such piece], I don't know where, but you … maybe you would like to have it [a copy of the review]." No, I wouldn't like to have it. And even if it's a great review, I wouldn't like to have it because I just would not read it. They would influence me. I'm afraid of that. If somebody for a long time would read that his music, his writing is putrid, he probably either would give up or try to better his style. I do not want to better my style. This is probably terribly conceited, but I, as an artist, have to stick to my guns and do what I think best, and I think I do my best in every work of mine. There might be better ones, there might be worse ones. artist has periods when he's not as inspired as in other periods but this condemnation that here is film composer who ventures into the symphonic field that I resent because I have written quite a few things which were played all over the world and even those days I have collected my reviews because I was young because I needed them for my publishers and I sometimes read reviews about older works like Hungarian Serenade or the Theme, Variations and Finale or the Three Hungarian Sketches not in America but all over the world especially in Germany, and they are absolutely astonishing. And sometimes the same works are played now, and I find out that they are absolutely horrible. Well, I don't know where is the justice, and it doesn't really bother me at all.
Me and my publishers have stuck together for over 40 years. They believe in my music, they publish it, it's being played, and what the so-called critics who were appointed by somebody, but I don't know by what authority, think about it, that does not bother me at all. A hundred years ago, the great Austrian critic, Hanslick, attacked the music of Wagner, Liszt, and Bruckner because of their grammaticism, so-called modernism, and formlessness. Now we know that Hanslick's name is anathema. In music, he was the man who was holding back the genius of Wagner. One forgets completely that Hanslick wrote beautiful criticism about the four symphonies of Brahms, when he first heard them. These opinions should be reprinted even today, a hundred years later. Now, today, no critic wants to be another Hanslick and go down in music history that he did not understand the music of our times.
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT MUSIC WHICH IS NOT "TONAL"?
I'm a tonal composer. I can't help it. That's my belief. I think tonality cannot be taken out from music. It can be extended, it can be used very freely, but it's there. We have been born with it, same way that we have been born with one nose and two ears. We cannot have that. Now tonality is regarded as something terribly old-fashioned, because according to school books, which some of the critics have read, but some don't even read books, Schoenberg has changed music, and music became atonal. Now anything that is not that is considered as old fashioned and déjà entendu. So there is an odd situation between the composers of today who dare to write tonal music, no matter how dissonant that can be, and those who are just using sonorities -- the avant-garde.
This is very much like today's artists and painters who are using flat surfaces. In other words, you have a surface of pink, a surface of blue, surface of yellow, and you have a picture. And you will find a lot of museum directors or art critics who should know better and declare it just unheard of modernism and this is what art is for. Well, compared to that a painting that represents something is naturally old hat and this is not the same thing and we are facing the same problem in music where we are hearing now sonorities. This has been opened up with the so-called electronic music which is very little music in it but a lot of interesting sound effects and we are hearing sonorities probably unheard of, sonorities which are rather interesting but I wish that somebody would use them musically but the critics again they don't dare to say anything against it they don't want to be another Hanslick who's pointed out that he was retarding music, but he did not accept the new aesthetics of Richard Wagner.
So, here we are, listening to cacophonies and chaos in music, mostly with electronic sounds, electronic sounds imitated by the orchestra and new tricks are popping up every six months and the tendency of new music is changing in the festivals of Europe and they have their American imitators immediately and the critics are hailing it immediately as something new music and that's where the trend goes and if they hear a theme that is recognizable if they hear a harmony which makes sense musically if they faced with a musical form that stays on his own feet they are shouting loudly that is passé, this is gone, this is the music of yesterday and then they come to the conclusion which is in their language is the worst, this is film music. But even in film music you find hostility as everybody who has a so-called public life you'll find hostility. I still remember, because the good reviews I used to get I forget completely, but the few bad ones I was reading in my earlier days I still remember.
And when there was a periodical, I think it was a monthly, Film Music News, and that had lot of criticism about Hollywood composers and their work and there is a gentleman in Hollywood who set himself as the Pope of modern music. I don't know what he understood of it but he was the chief propagator and he wrote that I have failed twice with psychological films such as Spellbound and The Lost Weekend, and therefore he suggested an absolutely non-consequential composer whose name people even wouldn't know if I would mention it, but I don't. And this gentleman should score this kind of films. Now all I can say that I would like to fail once more with such two films like Spellbound and The Lost Weekend, which actually opened up my so-called career in Hollywood. Here is the list of the films which I prefer musically, but I give it to you rather chronologically than picking the best first. The Thief of Baghdad, The Jungle Book, Spellbound, The Lost Weekend, The Red House, A Double Life, Madame Bovary, Quo Vadis, Julius Caesar, Young Bess, Diane, Lust for Life, Ben-Hur, King of Kings, and El Cid. Now if you ask me which I enjoyed writing the most, I would pick first The Thief of Baghdad, which was a sheer joy, The Jungle Book, The Lost Weekend, Quo Vadis and Ben-Hur. I think these are my preferences.
WHICH CONTEMPORARY COMPOSERS OF CONCERT MUSIC DO YOU ADMIRE THE MOST?
This is a bit difficult, but I think it's Bartok, Stravinsky, Britten, Honegger, Copland would be my preferences, but not Charles Ives and none of the so-called Second Viennese School. [Rózsa already mentioned Prokofiev elsewhere.]
WHY ARE THERE SO FEW CONCERT COMPOSERS WRITING FILM SCORES?
Well, to tell you the truth, a very simple reason: they are not being asked. In Europe it is, or it was, right from the beginning, an entirely different thing. There were many people who wrote concert or operatic music and at the same time wrote film scores. Just think of Honegger, of Darius Milhaud, of Jacques Ibert, of Vaughan Williams, of Arthur Benjamin, of William Walton, and Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and we can go down all the countries, probably with the exception of Germany, where film music is regarded even more snobbishly than in America, all the composers have written music for films.
Now in America this is not case and this is I am sure not because Roy Harris or William Schuman to just to name two wouldn't like to but for the simple reason nobody wants them. Yes, there is a prejudice in Hollywood against Carnegie Hall as I have once pointed out when this word is an extremely dirty word in the film studios in the early 40s. This was thrown at me by the musical director of Paramount Studios, that my music belongs to Carnegie Hall and not for the film studios. Somehow I won, and he lost, but this is the general attitude. I have once read a book about Gershwin. Now, there is no more popular composer from the point of view of public than Gershwin, but he also wrote music for the concert hall, and he just had a premiere. I don't know exactly what it was. Was it the American in Paris? Was it one of his overtures, or was it a second Rhapsody? but around that time I don't think it was the opera, Porgy and Bess, but anyway it was in all the papers that he has done a concert work which was a big success in Carnegie Hall, and the head of RKO Studios whose name again I don't want to mention, was just about to conclude a deal with him and his brother to do a musical for the studio -- I think for Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. And there is a letter which I read that he is extremely worried that Gershwin is not going to compose one of those concert music type for his films. So even with a man with Gershwin, Carnegie Hall and concert music was something to be afraid of.
CAN A GREAT SCORE IMPROVE A BAD FILM?
I have to agree with you that no music can make a rotten film a brilliant one. Let me give you an example. I think I wrote quite a good score for The Power. It was a bad film. It didn't make sense, and with music, you cannot supply logic and meaning. Probably I made a more exciting and a more mysterious film out of it, but I couldn't explain to the public with my music what was missing in the film. Mr. Armbruster, who was the musical director of M-G-M Studios at the time, told me that I have elevated the film with my music to a higher level. Well, it was kind of him to say so, and it might or might not be true. But still, I could not give to the film something which was missing from the beginning. Music is just one of the building elements of the film art. And if, for instance, the photography is bad of a great story, great acting, it still will come through. However, the most brilliant photography cannot make a great film from a bad story, bad acting, and bad direction.
What do I think makes good film music? Well, my credo is that Music should be music. No tricks, but music. It should stand on its own feet, and it will apply to the public. For that reason, I don't go along with all the tricks now with synthesizers and all kind of electronic elements, which are just effects, but not music. This has no emotional value whatsoever. Maybe if we want to frighten the public, this is better. But I remember a film of Bernhard Hermann where he, with a single string orchestra, and I tell you, string orchestra, not even percussions or anything else, in a film called Psycho frightened the people much more than others would have done with all the synthesizers put together from the whole world. Therefore, again, it should be music. It should be good music, emotional music, dramatic music, and this appeals to the public, to the listening public in the film, whether they listen. Consciously or subconsciously that is beside a point, but they get a message from the composer whether they want it or not, and this is only possible if the music is per se good music.
HOW CAN SOMEONE BECOME A COMPOSER THESE DAYS?
I only can say that I wonder whether you would read a novel from Hemingway if it were true that Mr. Hemingway couldn't read or write, that he was just talking something and somebody wrote it down [which, of course, is not true]. Well, for someone with basic intelligence to become a musician, you have to know how to read or write. But apart from that, you have to know much, much more. And as I have said before, a musician, or an instrumentalist, or a composer, has to undergo to a very thorough and methodic study for years and years and years, and you just cannot pick it up or fade into it as some of the Hollywood composers did, because they just had to, there was no way out once the the sound film took over and sound composers were in demand. So I do believe that you have to study, you have to be a full-fledged musician before you can attack any kind of music writing, be that film or concert or anything else. I once remarked that when I came to Hollywood, My greatest surprise was that I was told the names of a lot of composers who were studying with Arnold Schoenberg or with Ernst Toch or anywhere else. And I asked myself, "What are they studying?" And I was asked, "Well, they are studying composition." I said, "But aren't they already composers?" "Well, yes, but they are composing, but they never studied before." So I said, "Well, the difference between the European and the American composers apparently that here in Europe we studied and then we have been applying for jobs which we either got or not but in America they first get a job and then they start studying.
DID YOU EVER CONSIDER DOING SOMETHING OTHER THAN COMPOSING?
Well, I became a composer because since a very early age I knew that this is all I can do in life. Apart from my training, even before my training, I composed music rather than doing algebra or geometry or subjects I hated in school. I orchestrated during my classes, and from my 15th year on, I would say, I just lived for and in music. Obviously, I knew that there is nothing else for me. It's a beautiful life. It's a free life. If you make it. I have taught for 20 years at USC, and each year I had about 15 pupils, which would make 300 pupils in total. And of the 300, not more than about five have made it. And only one became really famous. That shows you clearly what a difficult profession it is. I had very talented pupils who became teachers. I had less talented ones that knew the right people. They succeeded. So it is very difficult to say.
The other day I read a resume of the life of the great Hungarian violinist and teacher, Jeno Hubay. He was a teacher, and not only in Hungary because he had pupils from all around the world, including American ones, and he cites very triumphantly just towards the end of his life, and it was a long life during which he taught, I would say taught 20 years, 50 years, he had about five to six outstanding students. By outstanding I mean that they became world-renowned violin virtuosos, and for the American audience I only could name one, and that is Joseph Szigeti. There are another five, six names which were known in Europe in their time, but that's all.
Kodály was teaching well over 30 years. From about 1906, I would say easily taught many pupils for about 40 years at the Academy, and he had the best of the crop of Hungarian talents. What is the result? Name me one present Hungarian composer who is world renowned as a composer and a pupil of Kodály. None. So, very few made it.
But, with due modesty, just thinking of all the Miklós Rózsa societies around the world, I think I made it. And how? I worked. Why did I work? Because I just had to. Why did I have to? Because I just cannot do anything else. For me, composing music is the same for somebody else to eat and drink. That is my normal function in life, that I get up in the morning and work. It's absolutely unimportant whether this is now film scores, whether this is choral music, orchestral music, chamber music, or even if I have to write a popular song in the vein of the 1940s. I had to do four for the Hoover film in the background, and I had no idea how to do it, but I had to do it. And this has been absolutely unimportant. It doesn't matter, but that's what I do. And with that, you have a satisfied life. You do what you want, and it keeps you going. And this is the main thing. That is why I very often am bitter about that, that composers are terribly badly paid. I'm not talking about film composers, of course, and kind of commercial work, for which you're getting paid, but of serious music. And with that, to make a living, it's a complete impossibility. A few composers who wrote music for the stage, like Verdi, Massenet, later Wagner, Strauss, they made a very comfortable living. But apart from that, if you wait to make a living on the few sonatas you have written, I can assure you that is an impossibility. So you have to do something else, and something else is mostly teaching, teaching the youth actually how not to make a living with the stuff you are teaching them.
So you have to face facts. You have to do something that keeps you going, and that is so-called commercial music, and in our time these are films, which after all can be great artistic expression, and you can write, if you are in a position, anything you want, and you are getting decently paid for it, And you have time then to write your own music as well. Now why don't Hollywood composers write more of their so-called own music? Well, the answer is very simple, because they have no "own music." Very few. I hate to say anything bad about my colleagues. After all, I was president of the Screen Composers Association for ten years, but I have seen that for them, or let's say 99% of them, this is just a way to make a living and music, they are supplying for films as a commodity, the same way as they would use, or produce shoes, or if you want celluloid and sell it for the films.
It is very sad, but maybe there is just such a metier as the film composer. But I don't think it could and never would satisfy me. It never has. Even in years when I had to make five, six films a year, I found sometimes, somehow to do one or at least one piece for myself. And well, that is the secret of my life, or if you want to call it my double life. I again cannot comment on this a lot because I see very few of the present day films and the ones I'm doing, a few I am doing occasionally, I'm doing it the same way as I always did, and there is not too much music in it. I do believe that music should be only there when it is needed. It is a very difficult question actually for a composer, because very often you feel that there is absolutely no music needed here, but either the producer or the director asked for it. And what do you say? If you say, no, I don't want it or don't see it, they would think, oh, he doesn't want to do it because he wants to save himself the work. He's getting paid anyway. So you agree. At least I do, unless I feel very strongly about it. But when I feel that it doesn't need it, and they do, I say, "Well, all right. All right, I'll write it." And I just hate the idea that somebody thinks that I want to get out of some work for which I'm very well paid.
Before I start a film, I make innumerable sketches, Just the same way as I make sketches to any serious compositions. Themes, ideas, for weeks. And actually, when I have three, four, or sometimes even six pages written full of these short ideas, sometimes two bars, sometimes eight bars, ten bars, sometimes just a melodic line, sometimes harmonized, Then I have my basic material. From then on, the work is much easier because you don't fish for ideas when you have already a supply of it. And I am a great changer of themes. I think this is the only thing I have common with Beethoven, who went through agonies for days, months, sometimes years and changed his themes around, an interval, a bar line, a harmony, have been, as we have seen from his sketchbook. Things have been altered many, many, many times until he finally got what he wanted. Very much so with Rembrandt, especially with his etchings you can see many times harmony in the different states how much he changed he took a figure back away he added something to it he changed the expression I envy the composer or the writer or painter who just sits down and does it immediately and that's it for instance like Mozart but there the other kinds of artists who are fighting with the element. Michelangelo was one like that. And I very well understand this fight because it's very necessary.
DO YOU THINK THAT MUSIC IN FILMS CAN ACTUALLY DESCRIBE SOMETHING?
No, I don't. I mean, let's take an absurd idea that music should describe a camel. Well, how would you do it? You can characterize it, as I have characterized animals in the Jungle of Book, or in another film, Jakare. But actually describe it, that a blind man should go to the cinema and hear my music and say, "Ah, this is a camel". This would be, of course, absolutely impossible. Music is a strong enough art that does not have to imitate anything. It stands on its own feet, has its own logic, has its own way of expression, but describing it's not one of its main functions. I know that some composers have tried, for instance, take the battle with the windmills from Don Quixote by Richard Strauss. And again, I wonder whether somebody who would not know that this is the battle with the windmills and you hear the sheep and the wind would ever know from the music what it is. And for that reason, These kind of imitations and descriptions have ceased for a long time, and I think music should be just music and not overstep its own domain.
DO YOU LOOK BACK FONDLY ON YOUR CAREER?
Before the recording stage I have all the control. Then comes the beautiful moment when you hear your music and a symphony orchestra is doing their best to give all the expression and going to all the dynamics from piano to fortissimo and then it is dubbed in a picture usually at a level that a string quartet would be much stronger playing with mutes. This is something that I have no control about. When I was still with M-G-M it was expected that the composer goes to the dubbing session. However, when a reel was dubbed, the producer or a representative came in and the usual answer was the music is too loud. I have never heard one executive who came in and would have said raise the music here or there. The music is kept down to a bare minimum -- it disturbs them. These people really don't understand their function. There are very few people who do, and actually I must say that Providence is very bad with that too, because where there is long silences, the music does play a very important part, but it's, and I agree this is a dream, and a dream you don't hear a complete symphony orchestra playing at you. But it should be absolutely 100% understandable what they play but I think it's only 50% that remains. However this 50% apparently impresses people so I cannot complain. I think I've already mentioned about the song mania in films and I'm 100% against them. I mean this is again sheer cheap commercialism and if we want to elevate the film art to a level then we have to do an artistic work regardless whether it will make money.
I'm talking now about whether this by-product is going to produce extra money to the company or not; it has very often been proved that these theme songs sung at the beginning with the main titles and every in opportune and inopportune moment by somebody, they actually ruined the film. They have ruined many films. But this was the trend as I was at M-G-M and once I was asked to use it, I used a chorus. But I think it belongs now to the past, I hope, and this is one reason I was against the musical methods of Mr. Tiomkin. It was because he started this up again because the whole film music scene started with this, with Al Jolson, the jazz singer. I remember as a kid I saw this picture and everybody was singing "Sunny Boy" and "Mammy." Now this was a great thing. It was from the film and from then on in every film there had to be a song. And this was a theme song, this had to be played through all the way from beginning to the end, and that's why there was no serious and effective dramatic music in the film whatsoever. It was only commercialism to make money. And it has another reason, especially in France. In France, for instance, the production company has no budget whatsoever for the composer. The budget is taken over by a publisher. The publisher is paying the orchestra, the hall, and so on. And all the music costs for this, are getting the so-called publishing share, actually for publishing nothing. And naturally this man or this company wants to make some money, and if there is a song in the film and they can make separate money on this, well, all the better for them. But what has that to do with the artistic reason?
WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?
My only hobby is art, every kind of art. I love to go to museums and I love art, especially painting, but same goes for every kind of art, it doesn't matter. For instance, in bronzes, I am admiring them from the all the Etruscan periods up to today of the bronzes of Hans Arp, so, or Brancusi. And this is my hobby and as you know probably I am a collector myself and I adore the paintings I have. I'm also a collector of musical letters, manuscripts, and I have them from practically by everybody.
WHICH ORCHESTRAS DO YOU THINK ARE THE BEST?
Well, the most professional orchestras for concert, number one would be without any question the Philadelphia Orchestra. I would also mention the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Orchestra many years ago, and for recordings the best orchestra for me is the Royal Philharmonic in London the second best is the National Philharmonic they are only not as good as the Royal Philharmonic because they don't play together all the time but great artists individually. I'd rather not mention the not too professional orchestras for a while. The M-G-M Orchestra was fine but it was a compromised orchestra for jazz and symphonic music and therefore for my purposes they were not only exactly what I wanted. To answer your last question, I somehow feel like little Abu in The Thief of Baghdad who was asked by the genie for his three wishes and they will be granted. And he immediately threw away the first one. I think I would be satisfied with only one if that would be granted. I would like to go on living the same life I have lived up to now. I still would like to write a lot of music as I do know that I still have a lot to say and I have said I have not said the last word yet!
Rozsa concluded: "I hope I answered most of your questions. This was done in Santa Margherita on the Italian Riviera in beautiful Italy. It's a Sunday today and occasionally you hear the cars going by because my little house is on a main street coming from Genoa and goes down to the sea and many cars pass by. Sometimes I'm asked whether this doesn't disturb me. Not at all. I really don't even hear it when I'm writing, and I'm writing here the whole day. A telephone at home disturbs me, but I'm happy to say that in this house, there is no telephone. Bye bye."