Alfred Newman
Alfred Newman was a prominent American composer and conductor, celebrated for his significant contributions to film music over a career spanning four decades. Born into a large, impoverished family, he demonstrated musical talent early on, starting piano lessons at five and giving his first recital at eight. Newman's career began on Broadway, where he became the youngest conductor, leading to his appointment as musical director for George and Ira Gershwin's productions. In 1930, he transitioned to Hollywood, eventually serving as music director at Twentieth Century Fox, where he composed numerous scores, including iconic works like "The Song of Bernadette" and "How the West Was Won."
Newman's innovative style is noted for its rich orchestration and emotional depth, often reflecting the dramatic nuances of the films he scored. He is credited with creating the distinctive "Hollywood string sound" and establishing new methods for synchronizing music with film, known as the Newman System. His legacy extends beyond his own work, influencing a generation of composers, including his family members, many of whom also carved out successful careers in film music. By the time of his passing in 1970, Newman had accrued 45 Academy Award nominations and won nine Oscars, solidifying his position as a key figure in the evolution of film scoring.
Subject Terms
Alfred Newman
Composer
- Born: March 17, 1900
- Birthplace: New Haven, Connecticut
- Died: February 17, 1970
- Place of death: Los Angeles, California
American film-score composer
As one of Hollywood’s preeminent film music composers, Newman was instrumental in developing the Romantic symphonic style, typical of Hollywood film scores from the early 1930’s to the 1950’s. As a conductor and musical director, he devised a flexible synchronization method between music and image, allowing greater expression in the musical performance of a film score.
The Life
Alfred Newman’s life began in humble settings. The eldest of ten children in a poor family, Newman began taking piano lessons at the age of five with a local house painter. He gave his first recital at age eight, and his prodigious talent was soon recognized by Polish pianist Sigismond Stojowski, who offered Newman a scholarship in 1914 to study at New York’s Von Ende School of Music. In addition to studying piano, Newman took composition lessons with George Wedge and Rubin Goldmark, and he later studied with Arnold Schoenberg for three years.
Despite Newman’s ambitions as a concert pianist, his family’s poverty forced him into freelance work at New York’s Broadway theaters. He studied conducting with William Daley, and later Newman became the youngest conductor on Broadway. After several unsuccessful shows, George and Ira Gershwin hired the young Newman as musical director for The George White Scandals (1920). The success brought Newman a steady flow of conducting work on Broadway, and he did other shows by George and Ira Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.
A commission from Irving Berlin to work as the conductor in the film musical Reaching for the Moon (1930) brought Newman to Hollywood in 1930. Soon Samuel Goldwyn appointed him music director at United Artists. Though initially working in film musicals, Newman gradually became interested in composing film music scores, and he had enormous success with his film score for Street Scene. He continued working with Goldwyn at Twentieth Century Fox in 1934, where he composed the studio’s logo theme, still in use today. By the end of his appointment with Goldwyn in 1939, Newman had composed close to seventy-five scores and had worked on almost a hundred films.
Newman then began a twenty-year career as music director at Twentieth Century Fox, dividing his time among composing film scores, conducting, and supervising film musicals. In 1947 he married Martha Montgomery, a Goldwyn Girl actress. They had five children, three of whom currently work as music composers in Hollywood. In 1960 Newman retired from Twentieth Century Fox to freelance in Hollywood. By the time of his death in 1970, Newman had composed music for more than 230 films, garnering forty-five Academy Award nominations and nine wins.
The Music
In spite of Newman’s numerous studies in New York and then later in Los Angeles, he was essentially a self-taught composer, acquiring most of his skills on the job. His early years playing and conducting Broadway shows prepared him well for the start of his career in Hollywood. His prolific Hollywood output represents a great diversity of styles, and he was respected for his ability as a musical dramatist, adapting thematic material to follow the overt or the hidden implications of the on-screen action, typical of the leitmotivic procedures of Richard Wagner’s operas. Newman’s use of full-textured orchestration and lyricism, particularly in the strings, shows a close affinity to Richard Strauss’s tone poems. At other times, his small-scale jazz-infused scores demonstrate his familiarity with urban street jazz in the 1950’s.
Early Works. Although Newman wrote some songs and compositions during his time on Broadway, little is known about them. However, the skills Newman acquired as an arranger and conductor working on Broadway influenced his ability as a composer when he moved to Hollywood and started working for United Artists. His first film score (Street Scene) features a title theme in the style of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue (1924), which has subsequently been used in numerous films.
Wuthering Heights.During his ten years working for Goldwyn, Newman gradually incorporated more symphonic elements into his scores. Composed at the end of his appointment with Goldwyn in 1939, Wuthering Heights demonstrates Newman’s maturity as a symphonic composer. The musical score uses character-based leitmotivic procedures to portray the varying onscreen action. Beyond merely repeating associative themes, Newman modifies the actual thematic content through orchestration, metric accentuation, phrase structure, and harmony, showing an extraordinary sensitivity to the emotive states of the film’s characters. Both the film and musical score received positive reviews as masterpieces of the Romantic Hollywood style.
The Song of Bernadette.During his appointment with Twentieth Century Fox, Newman created a unique sonic quality for the studio orchestra that became the studio’s trademark sound, as evidenced by his musical score for The Song of Bernadette (1943). Notable in it is the famous Fox string sound, featuring strings (particularly violins) playing in their upper registers with a significant level of lyrical and dramatic expressiveness, frequently using portamento on large leaps. The vibrato is fast and narrow, giving a direct intensity to the sound. Woodwind lines also feature prominent vibrato, and brass instruments are usually used for sonorous harmonic support. The score for The Song of Bernadette, a film about nineteenth century Lourdes, also features a chorus to add to the ethereal soundscape of the sound track.
How the West Was Won.By the time Newman left Twentieth Century Fox, he was well established as one of the leading composers in Hollywood, and he continued to receive a steady flow of freelance work. In 1962 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer approached him to score its epic Western How the West Was Won. The result is one of Newman’s longest and most enduring scores. It incorporates his orchestral style into typical Hollywood Western elements, such as modal harmonies, brass riffs, and militant percussion. It also interpolates many traditional folk tunes in various arrangements, showcasing Newman’s skill, acquired during his youth, as an arranger.
Musical Legacy
As a composer, Newman is frequently credited with inventing the Hollywood string sound. He was influential during the 1930’s in bringing the splendor of Broadway to film, and over the course of his forty-year film music career, he worked with and mentored such notables as David Raksin, John Williams, Bernard Herrmann, and Jerry Goldsmith. Within his own family, two of Newman’s brothers—Lionel and Emil—had successful careers as film composers, and two of his sons—David and Thomas—are highly respected film composers, in addition to his nephew, singer-songwriter and composer Randy Newman.
As a conductor, Newman’s added expressivity is evidenced by his creation of a new system for synchronizing the recording of a score with the film. Known as the Newman System, it utilizes a series of punches made on every two frames of film at key moments in the music. The result creates a flicker in the film’s projection that lines up with specific beats in the music. This enables the conductor to synchronize those specific beats and also to be expressively flexible elsewhere. The system is frequently used today.
Principal Works
film scores:The Devil to Pay!, 1930; Street Scene, 1931; Night World, 1932; Blood Money, 1933; The Count of Monte Cristo, 1934; Moulin Rouge, 1934; The Melody Lingers On, 1935; The Gay Desperado, 1936; Wee Willie Winkie, 1937; The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1939; Wuthering Heights, 1939; The Mark of Zorro, 1940; How Green Was My Valley, 1941; The Battle of Midway, 1942; The Pied Piper, 1942; Heaven Can Wait, 1943; My Friend Flicka, 1943; The Song of Bernadette, 1943; A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, 1945; Thieves’ Highway, 1949; Twelve O’Clock High, 1949; All About Eve, 1950; David and Bathsheba, 1951; The Prisoner of Zenda, 1952; Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing, 1955; The SevenYear Itch, 1955; The Diary of Anne Frank, 1959; How the West Was Won, 1962; The Greatest Story Ever Told, 1965; Airport, 1970.
Bibliography
Darby, William. Hollywood Holyland: The Filming and Scoring of “The Greatest Story Ever Told.” Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1992. A comprehensive history and partial analysis of one of Newman’s film scores, including its critical reception.
Palmer, Christopher. The Composer in Hollywood. London: Marion Boyars, 1990. This book includes a chapter on Newman’s life, his contribution to film music, and the influence of several of his musical scores.