Tips for Connecting with Your Young Adult Children Over the Holidays

Tips for Connecting with Your Young Adult Children Over the Holidays

By Kara Powell, Executive Director at the Fuller Youth Institute and Co-Author of Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids

“Home for the Holidays”

If you’re a parent of a young adult, the very phrase tends to fill you with great joy. You might even dream up idyllic pictures of your entire family talking and laughing around the Thanksgiving table, diving into both great food and great conversation.

Yet if you’re honest, you’re also wondering: now that my kids are grown, and I don’t see them as often as I used to, what can I do to really connect with them?

Read more:

http://www.thefishla.com/articles/details/11660394

Dr. Kara E. Powell is executive director at Fuller Youth Institute and a faculty member at Fuller Theological Seminary. She is the co-author of Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids Series (Zondervan, Sept. 2011). Dr. Powell has also authored or co-authored several books, including Essential Leadership, Deep Justice in a Broken World, and Help! I’m a Woman in Youth Ministry. She is the general editor for The Fuller Youth Institute E-Journal and regularly speaks at conferences and seminars. She lives with her husband and three children in Pasadena, California.

 

Philip Lane and the Pantomime for strings

Philip Lane (born 1950) is an English composer and musicologist, who is noted for his light music compositions and arrangements, as well as his painstaking work reconstructing lost film scores.  Born in 1950 at Cheltenham, England, Lane attended Pate’s Grammar School and later read music at Birmingham University, where his tutors included Peter Dickinson and John Joubert. Lane began composing at an early age, and by the time he was at Birmingham was already having compositions played by the BBC Midland Light Orchestra.  While at University he developed a considerable interest in Lord Berners, about whom he wrote a thesis and ultimately became a trustee of the Berners Estate, overseeing the completion of all Berners’ music on to CD. He taught music at Cheltenham Ladies’ College from 1975 to 1998.  During this time, he was a freelance composer for London publishers. He left Cheltenham Ladies’ College in 1998 to concentrate on composing and his film restorations.

After being invited to look after the estate of Richard Addinsell in 1993, Lane began a new career reconstructing lost film scores of Addinsell’s, the first being Goodbye, Mr Chips, and later the full Warsaw Concerto amongst others, the originals of which had been destroyed by the studios as was common practice at the time.  Lane has since performed similar rescue work on film scores such as The Quiet Man, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes and Kind Hearts and Coronets by composers such as Malcolm Arnold, Georges Auric, William Alwyn, Arthur Bliss, Francis Chagrin, Ernest Irving, Clifton Parker, Victor Young, and many others.  In the case of recent scores there are usually soundtrack CDs devoid of extraneous sounds to work from. He has consequently reconstructed music by Jerry Goldsmith, Randy Edelman, and James Horner. He has since been asked to appear and write a number of radio documentaries about his reconstructions of film music.

In 2005, Lane composed a ballet, Hansel and Gretel, for the National Youth Ballet.  In 2007 Lane composed a setting of The Night before Christmas for narrator and orchestra, the commercial recording of which featured Stephen Fry as the narrator. Concert performances have taken place worldwide including the United States and Asia. The sequel, Another Night before Christmas to a text by Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, was premiered in Liverpool in December 2009 with narrators Dame Joan Bakewell and Simon Bates. This was commercially released by Naxos in November 2011 with Simon Callow as narrator.  Also in December 2009 he was commissioned by the Boston Pops Orchestra to write their annual Holiday Pops work, The Christmas Story, which received 38 performances.  In November 2010, Lane received an honorary Doctorate of Music from the University of Gloucestershire.

Virtually all of Lane’s orchestral works have been commercially recorded and are currently available worldwide. These are often written in the style of British Light Music, being largely tonal and featuring lush orchestrations. For example, his London Salute was written to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the BBC, and has been adopted as the unofficial theme of the BBC Concert Orchestra.  Other lighter compositions include the Diversions on a Theme of Paganini, Cotswold Folk Dances, Divertissement for clarinet, harp and strings, A Maritime Overture, Prestbury Park, Three Spanish Dances and a number of works themed around the Christmas season – the three Wassail Dances (three orchestral extemporisations based on the Somerset Wassail, Yorkshire Wassail and the Gloucestershire Wassail), Overture on French Carols and Three Christmas Pictures (the latter a compilation of individual original works; the “Sleighbell Serenade”, “Starlight Lullaby” and the “Christmas Eve Waltz”).  Lane’s compositions for television have included BBC drama including The Merchant of Venice and Sir Thomas More and the children’s animated series Captain Pugwash. He has since composed the music for three other TV animation series – Tom, Marco and Gina and Wicked!

My collection includes the following work by Philip Lane:

Pantomime for strings (1971).

Fryer Park School, Grove City, OH

Fryer Park Century Village School

3899 Orders Road

Grove City, OH, 43123

The 110-acre educational and recreational Fryer Park is a destination in itself. With 8 softball diamonds, a preserved wooded area for bird watching or nature walks, a one mile recreational trail for walking or biking, a sledding hill, a space themed all accessible playground, and the turn-of-the-century historic park, Century Village, complete with a renovated one-room schoolhouse (originally the Orders Road school), a log cabin, and a barn, Fryer Park is a must visit for residents and visitors of all ages. Fishing is allowed, no license required, provided the fish are immediately released.  In the summer, there is Fryer Flicks on the Hill, where patrons can catch a family-friendly outdoor movie.

http://visitgrovecityoh.com/attractions/century-village/

Burton Lane and “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever”

Burton Lane (February 2, 1912 – January 5, 1997) was an American composer and lyricist whose most popular and successful works include Finian’s Rainbow and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.  Lane was born Morris Hyman Kushner on February 2, 1912, in New York City, NY, the younger of two sons of Lazarus Levy, a successful New York real estate man, and his wife, Frances Fink Levy, an amateur pianist, and raised on Manhattan’s West Side.  Encouraged by his mother, he studied classical piano when a child and was educated at the High School of Commerce, where he played viola and cello in the school orchestra and where his first musical compositions were marches, and Dwight Academy.

At age fourteen the theatrical producers the Shuberts commissioned Lane to write songs for a revue, Greenwich Village Follies. At fifteen, he decided to quit high school after he got a job as a staff writer for the Remick Music Company.  After meeting George Gershwin, who was then an established composer although not yet thirty, he was a private music student of Simon Bucharoff.  Some later time he became known as Burton Levy, and still later as Burton Lane. He wrote the Broadway stage scores for “Earl Carroll Vanities of 1931.”  Also he wrote the music for the less remembered Broadway shows, Hold On to Your Hats (1940) and Laffing Room Only (1944).

In 1935, the year he married Marian Seaman, Lane is credited with discovering the 13-year-old Frances Gumm (Judy Garland). He caught her sisters’ act at the Paramount theater in Hollywood which featured a movie and a live stage show. The sisters, Virginia and Mary Jane, brought on their younger sister, Frances, who sang “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart.” Lane immediately called Jack Robbins, head of the music department at MGM, and told him he’d just heard a great new talent.  Lane played the audition piano for her.  Robbins got Louis B. Mayer down to listen to her belt out some songs. Frances (Judy) was signed, and that was the start of her career. Because of circumstance, and contractual arrangements, Burton Lane didn’t work with her again for seven years (Babes on Broadway), but it was definitely he who discovered her.

Lane’s first big hit was the Broadway musical Finian’s Rainbow (1947), which ran for 725 performances at the 46th Street Theater. It received wide praise for its clarion score and a book that was socially advanced for its time, constructed around a leprechaun and his pot of gold and a bigoted Senator from the South.  However, Lane mainly wrote music for films, such as Dancing Lady and Babes on Broadway, writing for more than 30 movies, including the film Royal Wedding (1951). Many of his films attracted little attention.  Among them were the movies ”Give a Girl a Break” (1953), starring Marge and Gower Champion, Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse, and ”Jupiter’s Darling” (1955).  He was president of the American Guild of Authors and Composers from 1957 and for the next 10 terms, during which period he campaigned against music piracy. He also served three terms on the board of directors of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP).

Lane’s next big hit was On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965).  He shared a Grammy Award in 1965 for Best Broadway Cast Album of the year (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever).  Finian’s Rainbow was also made into a film starring Fred Astaire and Petula Clark, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, in 1968, and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever became a feature film in 1970..  Lane was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972.  His Carmelina (1979) had lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, who had also written lyrics to Lane’s music for On a Clear Day.  Lane’s best-known songs include “Old Devil Moon,” “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?”, “Too Late Now,” “How About You?”, and the title song from “On a Clear Day.”   Though he rarely composed during his last two decades, he worked tirelessly as the president of the American Guild of Composers and Authors.  He died on January 5, 1997, at the age of 84, in New York City, NY.

The following work by Burton Lane is contained in my collection:

On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1965): Come Back to Me.

Francis Lai and “Love Story” Theme

Francis Albert Lai (born April 26, 1932) is a French accordionist and composer, noted for his film scores.  Lai was born on April 26, 1932 at Nice in Alpes-Maritimes, France.  While in his twenties, Lai left home and went to Paris, where he became part of the lively Montmartre music scene. In 1965 he met filmmaker Claude Lelouch and was hired to help write the score for the film A Man and a Woman. Released in 1966, the film was a major international success, earning a number of Academy Awards. The young Lai received a Golden Globe Award nomination for “Best Original Score.”  This initial success brought more opportunities to work for the film industry both in his native France, where he continued to work with Lelouch on scores to films such as Vivre pour vivre (1967), Un homme qui me plaît (1969), Le voyou (1970) and La bonne année (1973), as well as in Great Britain and the United States. He is known for his support of Mireille Mathieu in many compositions and recordings. In 1970 he wrote the score for director René Clément’s film, Rider on the Rain (“Le passager de la pluie”). It sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc in September 1971.

In 1970 Lai won the Academy Award for Best Music, Original Score and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for the film Love Story. In the United States, the soundtrack album went to No. 2 in the Billboard album charts and the film’s theme, “Where Do I Begin,” was a hit single with lyrics by Carl Sigman for traditional pop singer Andy Williams. The song would also be recorded successfully by Lai himself, with a full orchestra, and by Henry Mancini and Shirley Bassey.  Lai’s “Love Story” theme was heard in the 1978 Love Story sequel titled Oliver’s Story, although the main score was composed by Lee Holdridge.

Lai’s other movie scores include films as diverse as Mayerling, Three into Two Won’t Go, International Velvet, Édith et Marcel, and Michael Winner films such as I’ll Never Forget What’s’isname and Hannibal Brooks. Lai has also had success with music written for films like Emmanuelle 2 (1975) and Bilitis (1977). He earned high praise for the latter film’s score and its sound-track sold over a million copies throughout the world.  His composition “Aujourd’hui C’est Toi” (Today It’s You) is probably best known in the U.K. as the theme music for the long-running BBC television current affairs documentary series Panorama.  In a career spanning forty years, Lai has also written music for television programs, alone or in collaboration with others has composed music for more than one hundred films, and has personally written more than six hundred songs. Notably, he penned the music for the Perry Como hit “I Think of You” with lyrics by Rod McKuen.

My collection includes the following work by Francis Lai:

Love Story (1970): Love Story (Main Theme, Where Do I Begin?).

Friedrich Kuhlau and “Kong Christian”

Friedrich Daniel Rudolf Kuhlau (September 11, 1786 –March 12, 1832) was a German-born Danish composer during the Classical and Romantic periods, who was a central figure of the Danish Golden Age and is immortalized in Danish cultural history through his music for Elves’ Hill, the first true work of Danish National Romanticism and a concealed tribute to the absolute monarchy. Kuhlau was born on  September 11, 1786 ,just south of Lüneburg in Uelzen district of Lower Saxony, Germany. At the age of seven, he lost his right eye when he slipped on ice and fell. His father, grandfather, and uncle were military oboists. Even though Kuhlau was born to a poor family, his parents managed to pay for piano lessons. Later he studied the piano in Hamburg where he also had his debut as a pianist in 1804. In 1810, he fled to Copenhagen to avoid conscription in the Napoleonic Army, which overwhelmed the many small principalities and duchies of northern Germany, and in 1813 he became a Danish citizen.

During his lifetime, Kuhlau was known primarily as a concert pianist and composer of Danish opera, but was responsible for introducing many of Beethoven’s works, which he greatly admired, to Copenhagen audiences. Kuhlau was a prolific composer, as evidenced by the fact that although his house burned down, destroying all of his unpublished manuscripts, he still left a legacy of more than 200 published works in most genres.  Kuhlau had his breakthrough in 1814 at the Royal Danish Theatre with Røverborgen (“The Robbers’ Castle”), a singspiel with a libretto by Adam Oehlenschläger.  His next few dramatic works, including Trylleharpen (1817), Elisa (1820) and Hugo og Adelheid (1827), lacking drama, failed miserably. With Lulu from 1824 he finally once again experienced success with one of his singspiels. He also wrote music for performances of William Shakespeare’s plays.

In 1828 Kuhlau achieved his greatest success when he wrote the music for Elverhøj. It won immediate popularity, especially for its overture and the final royal anthem, Kong Christian stod ved høien Mast (King Christian Stood by the Towering Mast). In the music, Kuhlau made very effective use of Danish and Swedish folk tunes. Alongside his dramatic works, Kuhlau wrote several compositions for flute and a large number of works for piano. Particularly his short pieces, sonatinas, for piano, enjoyed great popularity both in Denmark and abroad.  Beethoven, whom Kuhlau knew personally, exerted the greatest influence upon his music. Kuhlau’s major Piano Concerto, Op. 7 from 1810 displays a strong influence from Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in C major, written 14 years earlier. All three movements of the work are strongly reminiscent of the corresponding movements in Beethoven’s work, making it a musical pastiche.

In addition to the piano concerto were a string quartet and several works for piano that included all the current genres of the day: sonatas, sonatinas, waltzes, rondos and variations. He also created several works for the strings with piano (three quartets and two quintets, and several violin sonatas), works of incidental music and several operas. However, his most-often recorded and played works are several piano sonatinas and numerous works for flute. It is because of these flute works that he was nicknamed “the Beethoven of the flute” during his lifetime. Kuhlau lost both parents in 1830, and the following year his house burned down.  The composer suffered a resultant chest ailment that afflicted him until his death on March 12, 1832, at Frederiks Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark

The following work by Friedrich Kuhlau is contained in my collection

Kong Christian.

An Island School

An Island School
by Jan Herron (from The Link, Volume 5 Issue 6)

Our middle daughter has a button, neatly laminated, that she made herself. It shows a globe of the Earth, and around the edge she has written, in tidy eleven-year-old script, “The world is my school.”

The button dates from our years on the island of Saipan, where my husband and I and our three daughters, Rachael, Christy and Bethany, lived from 1985 to 1987. When we arrived there and began homeschooling, Bethany was in kindergarten. When we left, Rachael was in high school.

Our step into homeschooling was not entirely prompted by the move to Micronesia. Back home, on the central coast of California, Rachael and Christy had been attending an excellent, if somewhat large, elementary school. Both girls were participating in the school’s program for gifted and talented students, and both were benefiting from dedicated, thoughtful and innovative teachers. All this changed when Rachael entered seventh grade and moved on to middle school. Suddenly neither she nor we, her parents, liked anything about the school experience: the overcrowding, the social pressures, the lack of intellectual challenge for a bright child. A combination of research and soul-searching followed, as we considered the pros and cons of homeschooling. My husband, Dan, and I both have college degrees, and I had a little – very little – experience in teaching and tutoring.

Read More

http://www.homeschoolnewslink.com/homeschool/articles/vol5iss6/islandschool.shtml

First school, Amherst, OH

Amherst, OH, first school

278-280 Church St.

Amherst, OH

This is a brief but as complete as possible history of what is among the oldest buildings still standing in the original downtown Amherst, OH, area. Amherst’s first Town Hall, built about 1830, was moved from its original location and is now next to the current movie theater. Amherst Historian Bertine Foster said that the first Town Hall was originally an old two-story house. Justice of the Peace and the founder of Amherst’s original downtown district, Josiah Harris, owned that building in the early years, then located on original town lot #1 near the present sandstone Amherst Town Hall, on Beaver Court.  Early on, Wolcott and Hall operated a harness shop on the first floor of the old wooden frame structure, and the second floor soon accommodated a lecture room or schoolroom, and the Village’s first Town Hall or government office, before the town was officially incorporated. The Congregational Church Society was organized December 2, 1834, and for a period of a few years, their meetings were held in the Village Schoolhouse or first Town Hall building. Then in the winter of 1838-39, the first Congregational Church was erected.  In 1849 a fire in the “old Town Hall school” as it was called at that time, destroyed the top floor. This floor was repaired a year later. Another fire again wrecked this upper floor, and this time it was not replaced.  Amherst Historian Mrs. F. R. Powers noted that this building was used as a school on its original site until 1849 when it was moved to its present location (278-280 Church St.) and used as the first “centralized school.” In 1849 a Mr. Horn, who was later an Amherst postmaster, bought the building and had it moved to Church Street where it is located today. It continued to remain a one-story affair.  This wood frame building was further used as a school until 1856, when the first Central School (Union) was built – a brick school house measuring 25’ x 40.’  Therefore, Amherst’s first centralized union school house was located in this old town hall building.  In 1994 the Amherst Historical Society recognized the structure as a historic landmark. Because of alterations to the building over the years, and the fact that it has been moved off its original foundation, its overt historic integrity has been challenged. However, it was decided by the Amherst Historical Society Preservation Committee that the structure qualified as an historic landmark. Not only very early decisions for the fledgling village of Amherst came out of this building, but also decisions for the whole township were made here in the early years.   The building was offered to the Amherst Historical Society in 2015, to be moved to the Historical Society grounds.

http://newindianridgemuseum.org/articles/amhersts-first-town-hall-union-school-c/

Vincas Kudirka and the Lithuanian National Anthem

Vincas Kudirka (December 31, 1858-November 16, 1899) was a  Lithuanian doctor, prose writer, poet, publisher, critic, translator, editor of the newspaper “Varpa,” one of the founders of the Lithuanian national movement, and author of the Lithuanian anthem.  Born at Paežeriai in the Paežeriai rural municipality, Lithuania, on December 31, 1858, Kudirka studied at the Paežeriai Primary School , where he was distinguished by all kinds of talents. After completing elementary school in 1871, he entered the Marijampolė Gymnasium.  After completing six classes, he joined the Seynos Priesthood Seminary where he studied for two years but was eliminated due to a “lack of vocation.”

The first Lithuanian work by Kudirka was in 1885. “Ausra” published an insignificant satirical poem “Why do not Jews eat pork?” He was arrested, imprisoned, and removed from the College of Medicine at the University of Warsaw in the same year.  In 1887 he returned to the University, from which he graduated in 1889.   In 1888 he founded the illegal Lithuanian Student Society of Warsaw.  That year, he wrote the original poem “Beautiful, Beautiful and Beautiful” as an improvisation on the occasion of the founding of the Lithuanian Society.  The following year the Society began to publish the “Varpa,” which he edited for several years and wrote the “Homeland Bells” section.

In 1890, along with the “Varpa,” the newspaper “Ūkininkas” was published for peasants by Kudirka’s initiative.   From 1890 to 1894 he worked as a physician in Sakiai.  At Sakiai he brought together a ensemble of string instruments and got acquainted with the young widow V. Kraševskiene, who became his loyal and beloved co-author and later his patron.  In 1895 he was again arrested for pro-Lithuanian activities, but released soon. His health weakened in 1895 and he went to Sevastopol in 1896 but      returned to Lithuania in the spring.  He died at the age of 40 on November 16, 1899, at Vilkaviškis  in  county Naumiestis, Lithuania, on November 16 , 1899, and his remains were buried in Meishte Cemetery.

My collection includes the following work by Vincas Kudirka:

Lietuva.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold and the Captain Blood Overture

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (May 29, 1897 – November 29, 1957) was an Austrian-born American composer and conductor, who not only was a noted pianist and composer of classical music, but also  became one of the most important and influential composers in the history of Hollywood,  the first composer of international stature to write Hollywood film scores.  Korngold was born to a Jewish family in Brünn, Austria-Hungary (present-day Brno, Czech Republic), the second son of eminent music critic Julius Korngold. A child prodigy living in Vienna, he could play four-hand piano arrangements alongside his father at age five. He was also able to reproduce any melody he heard on the piano, along with playing complete and elaborate chords. By the time he was seven he was writing original music.  Korngold played his cantata Gold for Gustav Mahler in 1909; Mahler called him a “musical genius” and recommended he study with composer Alexander von Zemlinsky. Richard Strauss also spoke highly of the youth, and along with Mahler told Korngold’s father there was no benefit in having his son enroll in a music conservatory since his abilities were already years ahead of what he could learn there.

At the age of 11 Korngold composed his ballet Der Schneemann (The Snowman), which became a sensation when performed at the Vienna Court Opera in 1910, including a command performance for Emperor Franz Josef.   He continued composing with great success throughout his teens.  He composed a piano trio, then his Piano Sonata No. 2 in E major, which Artur Schnabel played throughout Europe.  During these early years he also made live-recording player piano music rolls for the Hupfeld DEA and Phonola system and also the Aeolian Duo-Art system, which survive today and can be heard.  Korngold wrote his first orchestral score, the Schauspiel Ouverture when he was 14. His Sinfonietta appeared the following year, and his first two one-act operas, Der Ring des Polykrates and Violanta, in 1914.  In 1916, he wrote incidental music to various chamber works and songs, including Much Ado About Nothing, which ran for some 80 performances in Vienna.

Korngold was active in the theatre throughout Europe while in his 20s. After the success of his opera, Die tote Stadt, which he conducted in many opera houses, he developed a passion for the music of Johann Strauss, Jr., and managed to exhume a number of lost scores.  He orchestrated and staged them using new concepts.  Both A Night in Venice and Cagliostro in Vienna are Kornfield re-creations, and it these works that first drew the attention of Max Reinhardt to Korngold.  By this point Korngold had reached the zenith of his fame as a composer of opera and concert music. Composers such as Richard Strauss and Giacomo Puccini heaped praise on him, and many famous conductors, soloists and singers added his works to their repertoires. He began collaborating with Reinhardt on many productions, including a collection of little-known Strauss pieces that they arranged and titled Waltzes From Vienna.  It was retitled The Great Waltz and became the basis for a 1938 British film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and a film by the same name in the U.S, starring Luise Rainer. Korngold conducted staged versions in Los Angeles in 1949 and 1953.

Korngold completed a Concerto for Piano Left Hand for pianist Paul Wittgenstein in 1923 and his fourth opera, Das Wunder der Heliane four years later.  In 1924, Korngold married Luzi (Louise) von Sonnenthal (1900–1962), granddaughter of actor Adolf von Sonnenthal, an actress, writer, singer and pianist, with whom he had fallen in love at age 19, and they had two children, Ern[e]st Werner and Georg[e] Wolfgang.   By 1931 he was a professor of music at Vienna State Academy.  He started arranging and conducting operettas by Johann Strauss II and others while teaching opera and composition at the Vienna Staatsakademie. Korngold was awarded the title professor honoris causa by the president of Austria.  After Max Reinhardt’s success in producing Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the stage, using incidental music by Felix Mendelssohn, and due to the rise of the Nazi regime, he invited Korngold to Hollywood in 1934 to adapt Mendelssohn’s score for his planned film version.  Korngold would also enlarge and conduct the score.  The film, which was released in 1935, was a first for Warner Brothers studio, by producing a film based on a 400-year-old work of literary art. As a result of the score’s elaborate tailoring, the film and Korngold’s music left a strong impression on the film industry.  Korngold returned to Austria to finish Die Kathrin. He came back to Hollywood to score the film Give Us This Night, with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, a film which introduced mezzo-soprano Gladys Swarthout and the Polish-born tenor Jan Kiepura, who had starred in several Korngold operas in Europe.

In 1935 Warners asked Korngold if he was interested in writing an original dramatic score for Captain Blood. He at first declined, feeling that a story about pirates was outside his range of interest. However, after watching the filming, with a dynamic new star, Errol Flynn in a heroic role, alongside Olivia de Havilland, who had her debut in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he changed his mind.  After he accepted, however, he learned that he needed to compose over an hour of symphonic music in only three weeks. The short time frame forced him to include about ten percent of the score using portions of symphonies by Franz Liszt. And not willing to take credit for the entire film score, he insisted that his credit be only for “musical arrangement.”  Captain Blood became an immediate hit, with an Oscar nomination for the score.   As Korngold’s first fully symphonic film score, it marked a milestone in his career, as he became the first composer of international stature to sign a contract with a film studio.   It also launched the career of Flynn and gave a major boost to de Havilland’s, who did another seven movies with Flynn. Korngold scored six more films starring Flynn. In addition, Captain Blood opened the way for other costumed, romantic adventures, which hadn’t been seen since the silent era.

After scoring Anthony Adverse, another Warners picture, this one starring Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland, for which Korngold was awarded his first Academy Award, Korngold’s career in Hollywood developed quickly.  In 1938, Korngold was conducting opera in Austria when he was asked by Warner Brothers to return to Hollywood and compose a score for The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.   Before Korngold began composing the score, Austria was invaded by Germany and annexed by the Nazis. His home in Vienna was confiscated by the Nazis.  And because it meant that all Jews in Austria were now at risk, Korngold stayed in America.   Korngold noted that the opportunity to compose the score for Robin Hood saved his life.  It also gave him his second Academy Award for Best Original Score.  Other scores include Juarez (1939) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939).   The Sea Hawk (1940) was Korngold’s last score for swashbuckler films, all of which had starred Errol Flynn.  In scoring The Sea Wolf (1941), based on a story by Jack London, Korngold’s film career went in a different direction.

Kings Row (1942) was followed by The Constant Nymph (1943), Between Two Worlds (1944), Devotion (1946), Of Human Bondage (1946), Deception (1946), Escape Me Never (1947), Adventures of Don Juan (1948, unused score), and Magic Fire (1956). For Magic Fire, he was asked to adapt the music of Richard Wagner for a film biography of the composer. Korngold wrote some original music for the film and is seen during the final scenes in an unbilled cameo as the conductor Hans Richter.  In 1943, Korngold became a naturalized citizen of the United States.  Overall, he wrote the score for 16 Hollywood films.  During his years scoring films, he still composed some non-film works, such as Passover Psalm, Opus 30, for chorus and orchestra (1941); Tomorrow When You Have Gone, Opus 33, for chorus and orchestra (1942); and Prayer, Opus 32 for chorus and orchestra (1942).  In 1946 he composed an opera, Die Stumme Serenade, which he recorded privately hoping to attract interest in making a full production.

Around the time World War II in Europe drew to an end, at this stage in his career Korngold had grown increasingly disillusioned with Hollywood and with the kinds of pictures he was being given, and he was eager to return to writing music for the concert hall and the stage.  Since World War II prevented him from returning to Europe, he stayed in the U.S. after retiring from film composing in 1947. He spent the last ten years of his life composing concert pieces, including a Violin Concerto, a Symphonic Serenade for strings, a Cello Concerto and a Symphony. At the time of his death, he was working on his sixth opera.  Korngold died at his home in Toluca Lake, California, aged 60, on November 29, 1957. He lived a few blocks from Warner Brothers Studio, where he worked. He was survived by his wife, two sons, his mother Mrs. Josephine Korngold, a brother Hans Korngold, and three grandchildren.[67] His remains were interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

The following work by Erich Korngold is contained in my collection:

Captain Blood (1935): Overture.