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This chapter examines English author Houston Stewart Chamberlain's thoughts on romantic renewal in relation to the works of Jewish composers. It discusses his 1899 seminal work The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which was incorporated as a philosophical foundation for National Socialist racial dogma, and analyzes the Jewish response to neo-Romanticism. The chapter also compares Erich Wolfgang Korngold's opera Das Wunder der Heliane with Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf.

This chapter examines the works of Jewish composer Gustav Mahler, who it suggests was the musical personality who would provide hundreds of twentieth-century Jewish composers. It discusses how Mahler broke down the barriers that subsequently allowed younger Jewish composers to surge forward with their own ideas and agendas and provided an inheritance of such undeniably great and original music that reconversion to Judaism could be understood as an act of defiance. The chapter also describes his relationship with Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

In 1915, Bruno Walter met the lyric soprano Delia Reinhardt when two staples of German opera, Die Zauberflöte and Der Freischütz, were given under him. Walter developed a deep affection for Reinhardt during his years in Munich. On March 28, Walter gave a double bill at the Hoftheater: Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Violanta and Der Ring des Polykrates. Although Johann Sebastian Bach's Matthäus-Passion was absent from his concerts in 1916, Walter did not neglect oratorios that year. He revived Robert Schumann's Das Paradies und die Peri in mid-March and presented George Frideric Handel's Samson in November. In 1917 Walter gave more premieres with the Musikalische Akademie. In 1918 three orchestral songs by Walter Braunfels—“An die Parzen,” “Auf ein Soldatengrab,” “Der Tod fürs Vaterland”—were performed for the first time under Walter. He gave Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten in 1919 and premiered Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder the following year. A light opera by Paul Graener, Schirin und Gertraude, premiered in 1921, while Handel's Acis and Galatea was presented in 1922.

This chapter lays out a series of conventions toward pitch design that both constrain musical meaning making in film and enable its unique effects. The chapter begins by examining the idiom of late Romanticism in European art music and the ways in which film music conforms to and differs from that model. This exploration is followed by a discussion of three vital aspects of American cinematic tonality: subordination, immediacy, and referentiality. Examples are drawn from an expansive set of filmmaking eras and styles; these range from the early days of the Sound Era to far more contemporary sounds. Beginning in this chapter, the beginnings of an interpretive methodology are constructed, recruiting from approaches as diverse as leitmotivic, atonal, Schenkerian, and audiovisual styles of analysis.

This chapter provides a critical discussion on Copland’s writings about film music, particularly the lecture he delivered at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) but also in his other publications, such as his book What to Listen for in Music and his articles in the popular press. In the MoMA lecture, a reflection of Copland’s initial experiences in Hollywood composing the score for Lewis Milestone’s film Of Mice and Men, he provides a critical assessment of Hollywood’s industrial enterprise and contemporary film composers such as Max Steiner, George Antheil, Ernst Toch, Warner Jansen, and Alfred Newman. Copland’s later writings present a synthesized and theoretic approach to the varied functions of music in film that became influential in subsequent film music scholarship.

Days after leaving Selznick, Steiner became the highest-paid staff composer at Warner Bros. It was a deal he was quietly arranging before leaving Selznick, detailed here for the first time. Steiner would spend most of the next three decades at Warners. This chapter provides a detailed examination of the studio’s music department, and explains why its infrastructure, staff, and varied creative content were ideally suited to Steiner’s talents. The chapter describes his friendly if competitive relationship with Warner Bros.’ favorite freelance composer, Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Steiner works discussed include the Best Picture–winning Life of Emile Zola, the start of his long collaboration with Bette Davis, and his iconic Warner Bros. fanfare. The chapter also chronicles the unexpected death of Steiner’s mother in Vienna, and Max’s frantic—and ultimately successful—efforts to bring his father to America, after Hitler’s annexation of Austria.

Curtiz coped with a variety of tribulations with his daughter Kitty, who surfaced in Europe as a cabaret singer. After his daughter rejected her father’s entreaties and attemptedsuicide, Curtiz eventually helped her settle in London—without ever leaving the soundstages of Warner Bros. He directed The Case of the Curious Bride (1935), a Perry Mason mystery that briefly introduced the newcomer Errol Flynn to the screen.As the studio reorganized for greater efficiency and bigger pictures, Wallis tapped Curtiz to helm Captain Blood (1935). Robert Donat was signed to play the title role, but he fell out because of illness. There was nobody for it but Flynn, who made a smashing debut as the swashbuckling doctor-turned-pirate. Curtiz directed him ably, but his autocratic demeanor alienated Flynn, thus setting the stage for a difficult relationship between director and star. Wallis fought Curtiz for control of the production as the director continued to make the movie in hisown style,which was contrary to that of the executive producer.Emotions cooled when the picture became a hit; the profitable relationship of producer, director, and star boded well for the future.