Composing for the Pictures: An Interview

Abstract

This chapter provides an interview conducted by noted composer and librettist Verna Arvey for The Etude Music Magazine. Arvey's identifying Korngold from the start as “the Viennese composer” shows that he had not yet become as closely associated with film as he would by decade's end. Indeed, much of the article focuses on the shifting place of music in the contemporary world (this being 1936), including the incredible suggestion—for the age—that film music was developing as a genre unto itself. Even with Korngold as one of its most visible and acclaimed practitioners, film music was still roundly disdained or ignored by music critics, who denied its status as a legitimate compositional form. Indeed, Korngold's eventual turn to composing film music full-time during the war years led many critics to accuse him of having “sold out.” And while Arvey and others still looked at his work in film as a lark or even a whim, Korngold took it quite seriously.