Sonic Spectacle in Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Score to Max Reinhardt’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)

Abstract

Max Reinhardt’s productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (dozens of stage productions, beginning in 1905, culminating in a 1935 film) were notable for their privileging of the forest realm over Athens. Although much has been written about the spectacular visual effects that brought about this bias in the film, little attention has been paid to the role of music, since the film does not have an original score. Erich Wolfgang Korngold arranged its score from Mendelssohn’s incidental music as well as various other works by the composer. Most discussions of Korngold’s work on the film emphasize his fidelity to Mendelssohn. However, attempting to following the soundtrack with Mendelssohn’s scores reveals few direct quotations. Like the sleight of hand of a magician, Korngold creates the illusion that one is hearing Mendelssohn unadulterated, yet, a Mendelssohn one has never heard before. Instead of merely selecting bolts of music of the requisite lengths, he wove together his own fabric from an array of musical-thematic threads, all the while adorning it with glamorous modern accoutrements all his own. This chapter shows how Korngold brought skills he acquired on the operatic stage to his glamorization of Mendelssohn, and how the sonic spectacle he created contributed to the foregrounding of the forest.