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Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin (May 10, 1894November 11, 1979) was a Russian-born Hollywood film score composer and conductor. He is considered "one of the giants of Hollywood movie music." Musically trained in Russia, he is best known for his westerns, "where his expansive, muscular style had its greatest impact." Tiomkin received 22 Academy Award nominations and won four Oscars.
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Dimitri Tiomkin (Dmytro Zynoviyovych Tiomkin, Дмитрий Зиновьевич Тёмкин, Dmitrij Zinov'evič Tjomkin, sometimes transliterated as Dmitri Tiomkin) was born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire.
His family was of Jewish descent, with his father a "distinguished pathologist" and associate of Professor Paul Ehrlich, the inventor and Nobel laureate noted for discovering a cure for syphilis and for his research in autoimmunity, later becoming chemotherapy. His mother was a musician who began teaching the young Tiomkin piano at an early age. Her hope was to have her son become a professional pianist, according to Tiomkin biographer, Christopher Palmer. Tiomkin described his mother as being "small, blonde, merry and vivacious."
He was educated at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in Russia, where he studied piano with Felix Blumenfeld, teacher of Vladimir Horowitz, and harmony and counterpoint with Alexander Glazunov, mentor to Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich.
In 1920, while working for the Petrograd Military District Political Administration (PUR), he was one of the lead organizers of two revolutionary mass spectacles, the "Mystery of Liberated Labor," a pseudo-religious mystery play for the May Day festivities, and "The Storming of the Winter Palace" for the celebrations of the third anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. He supported himself while living in St. Petersburg by playing piano accompaniment for numerous Russian silent films.
He moved to Berlin after the Russian Revolution to live with his father; the revolution had diminished opportunities for classic musicians in Russia. In Berlin, from 1921 to 1923, he studied with the pianist Ferruccio Busoni and Busoni's disciples Egon Petri and Michael von Zadora. He composed light classical and popular music, and made his performing debut as a pianist playing Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Berlin Philharmonic.
He moved to Paris with his room-mate, Michael Kariton, to perform a piano duo repertory together, which they did before the end of 1924. In 1925 the duo received an offer from the New York theatrical producer Morris Gest and went to the United States where they performed together on the Keith/Albee and Orpheum vaudeville circuits in which they accompanied a ballet troupe run by the Austrian ballerina Albertina Rasch. Tiomkin and Rasch's professional relationship evolved into a personal one, and they married in 1927.
While in New York Tiomkin gave a recital at Carnegie Hall which featured music by Maurice Ravel, Alexander Scriabin, Francis Poulenc, and Alexandre Tansman. He and his new wife went on tour to Paris in 1928, where he played the European premiere of George Gershwin's Concerto in F at the Paris Opera, with Gershwin in the audience.
After the stock market crash in October 1929 reduced work opportunities in New York, Tiomkin and his wife moved on to Hollywood, where she was hired to supervise dance numbers in MGM movie musicals. He worked on some minor films, some without being credited under his own name, but his first significant film score project was for Paramount's Alice in Wonderland in 1933. Although he worked on some smaller film projects, his goal was to become a concert pianist. However, that goal ended abruptly in 1937 when he broke his arm, and he then focused on a career as a film-music composer.
Tiomkin received his first break from Columbia director Frank Capra, who picked him to write and perform the score for his film, Lost Horizon in 1937. The film won Tiomkin significant recognition in Hollywood, and came out the same year he became a U.S. citizen.
In his autobiography, Please Don't Hate Me! (1959), Tiomkin recalls how the assignment by Capra forced him to first confront a director in a matter of music style:
He worked on other Capra films during the following decade, including the comedy, You Can't Take It With You (1938 -AA winner for "Best Picture); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939- AA winner for "Best Picture"); Meet John Doe (1941); and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). During World War II, he continued his close collaboration with Capra by composing scores for his Why We Fight series, consisting of seven films commissioned by the U.S. government to show American soldiers the reason for the war. They were later released to the general U.S. public to generate support for American involvement.
Tiomkin credits Capra for broadening his musical horizons by shifting them away from a purely Eurocentric and romantic style to a more American style based on subject matter and story. After the war Tiomkin became one of the most sought-after composers in Hollywood.
In 1952 he composed the score to Fred Zinnemann's High Noon, with the theme song, “Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'” (“The Ballad of High Noon”). At its opening preview to the press, the film, which starred Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, did badly. Tiomkin writes that "film experts agreed that the picture was a flat failure. . . The producers hesitated to release the picture." Tiomkin then bought the rights to the song and released it as a single for the popular music market, with singer Frankie Laine. The record became an immediate success worldwide, one of the few hits that year.
Based on the popularity of the song, the studio released the film four months later, with the words sung by country western star Tex Ritter. The film went on to receive seven Academy Award nominations and four wins, including two for Tiomkin: Best Original Music and Best Song.
According to film historian Arthur R. Jarvis, Jr., the score "has been credited with saving the movie." Another music expert, Mervyn Cooke, agrees, adding that in his opinion "the song's spectacular success was partly responsible for changing the course of film-music history . . ." Tiomkin became the first composer to receive two Oscars (score and song) for the same dramatic film.
The song's lyrics briefly tell the entire story of the film, a tale of cowardice and conformity in a small Western town. The score was built entirely around a single western-style ballad. Tiomkin created an unconventional score for the film, and eliminated violins from the ensemble. Along with other instruments, he added a subtle harmonica sound in the background, to give the film a "rustic, deglamorized sound that suits the anti-heroic sentiments" expressed by the story.
According to Russian film historian Harlow Robinson, building the score around a single folk tune was typical of many Russian classical composers. Glenda Abramson, a historian of Jewish culture, adds that the song was likely adapted from a Yiddish folk tune, and has compared and found direct similarities in the music notation. She also notes that other widely recognized American songs were likewise adaptations from Jewish folk songs, including Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies," and Harold Arlen's "Paper Moon," among others. However, Robinson adds that the source of Tiomkin's score, if indeed folk, has not been proven.
Tiomkin won two more best score Oscars in subsequent years: the John Wayne film The High and the Mighty (1954), and for The Old Man and the Sea (1958). During the ceremonies in 1955, Tiomkin humorously thanked all of the earlier composers who had influenced him in writing this music, including Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and many of the other great names of European classical music.
Along with doing many films for Frank Capra, Tiomkin scored films for a number of other leading directors. He did four films for Alfred Hitchcock Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Strangers on a Train (1951), I Confess (1953) and Dial M for Murder (1954). He was one of few composers, the other main two being Franz Waxman and Bernard Herrmann, who scored multiple films for Hitchcock.
He also worked with Howard Hawks on The Big Sky (1952) and Land of the Pharaohs (1955), with Fred Zinnemann in The Men (1950) and The Sundowners (1960), with John Huston on The Unforgiven (1960), and with Nicholas Ray on 55 Days at Peking (1963).
Many of his scores were for Western movies, for which he is best remembered. His first Western was Duel in the Sun (1946), directed by King Vidor. His most well-know Western was High Noon (1952). Among his other Westerns were Giant (1956), Friendly Persuasion (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), Rio Bravo (1959), and The Alamo (1960). He received Oscar nominations for both Giant and The Alamo.
Although influenced by Eastern European music traditions, he was self-trained as a film composer and scored many other American successful movies of various genres, from Cyrano de Bergerac (1950) to the military drama, The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955). Among other genres were The Guns of Navarone (1961), Town Without Pity (1961), 55 Days at Peking (1963), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), and The War Wagon (1967).
Tiomkin also wrote scores for four of Alfred Hitchcock's romantic dramas, where he used a lush style relying on solo violins and muted trumpets. He composed the score for the science fiction thriller, The Thing, which is considered to be among the "greatest of all sci-fi scores" ever written, and is considered his "strangest and most experimental score."
In addition to the cinema he was also active in composing for the small screen, including such memorable television theme songs as Rawhide (1959) and Gunslinger. Although he was also hired to compose the theme for TV's The Wild Wild West (1965), the producers rejected his music and subsequently hired Richard Markowitz as his replacement. A cover version of the theme from Rawhide was performed in the 1980 cult musical film The Blues Brothers, the in-joke that the composer is a Ukrainian-born Jew being lost on the crowd at the cowboy bar.
Tiomkin also made a few appearances as himself on television programs. These include being the mystery challenger on What's My Line? and an appearance on Jack Benny's CBS program in December 1961, in which he attempted to help Jack write a song.
He also composed the music to the song "Wild Is The Wind". It was originally recorded by Johnny Mathis for the 1957 film Wild Is the Wind. It is mostly well known as jazz singer Nina Simone's standard. The song carried on in a 1976 David Bowie's cover (Bowie being a long time admirer of Simone). In 1981, Bowie released a shorter version as a single. which became a hit in the UK charts. It has since been recorded by several other artists.
Although Tiomkin was a trained classical pianist, he adapted his music training in Russia to the rapidly expanding Hollywood film industry, and self-taught himself how to compose meaningful film scores for almost any story type. Film historian David Wallace notes that despite Tiomkin's indebtedness to Europe's classical composers, he would go on to express more than any other composer, "the American spirit—its frontier spirit, anyway—in film music." Wallace summarizes the overall effect of his scores on the movie industry:
Nonetheless, Tiomkin had no illusions about his talent and the nature of his film work when compared to the classical composers. "I am no Prokofiev, I am no Tchaikovsky. But what I write is good for what I write for. So please, boys, help me." Upon receiving his Oscar in 1955 for The High and the Mighty, he became the first composer to publicly list and thank the great European masters, including Beethoven, Strauss, and Brahms, among others.
Music historian Christopher Palmer states that Tiomkin's "genius lay in coming up with themes and finding vivid ways of creating sonic color appropriate to the story and visual image, not in his ability to combine the themes into a complex symphonic structure that could stand on its own." In addition he speculates how a Russian-born pianist like Tiomkin, who was educated at a respected Russian music conservatory, could have become so successful in the American film industry:
Tiomkin himself alluded to this relationship in his autobiography:
Tiomkin's methods of composing a film score have been analyzed and described by music experts. Musicologist Dave Epstein, for one, has explained that after Tiomkin reads the script, he then outlines the film's major themes and movements. After the film itself has been filmed, he then makes a detailed study of the timing of scenes, using a stopwatch to arrange precise synchronization of the music with the scenes. He completes the final score after assembling all the musicians and orchestra, rehearses a number of times, and then records the final soundtrack.
Tiomkin also paid careful attention to the voices of the actors when composing. According to Epstein, he "found that in addition to the timbre of the voice, the pitch of the speaking voice must be very carefully considered. . . " To accomplish this, Tiomkin would go to the set during filming and would carefully listen to each of the actors. He would also talk with them individually, noting the pitch and color of their voice. Tiomkin explains why he took the extra time with actors:
Dimitri Tiomkin died in London, England, UK, in 1979 and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Dimitri Tiomkin, although born and trained in Russia, has been credited with composing the most memorable film songs ever produced by Hollywood. During the 1950s he was the highest paid film composer, composing nearly a picture each month, achieving his greatest fame during the 1950s and 1960s. Between 1948 and 1958, his "golden decade," he composed 57 film scores. During the single year of 1952, he composed 9 film scores, including High Noon, for which he won two Academy Awards. In the same decade, he won two more Oscars and his film scores were nominated nine times.
Beginning with Lost Horizon in 1937, through his retirement from movies in 1979 over four decades later, and up until modern times, he is recognized as being the only Russian to have become a Hollywood film composer. Other Russian-born composers, such as Irving Berlin, wrote their scores for Broadway plays, many of which were later adapted to film.
Tiomkin was the first film score composer to write both the title theme song and the score. That technique was exemplified in many of his westerns, including High Noon and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, where the main theme song became a common thread running through the entire film. For the film Red River, for example, his biographer Christopher Palmer describes how the music immediately sets the epic and heroic tone for the film:
Because of this stylistic contribution to westerns, along with other film genres, using title and ongoing theme songs, he had the greatest impact on Hollywood films in the following decades up until the present. With many of his songs being used in the title of films, Tiomkin created what composer Irwin Bazelon called "title song mania." In subsequent decades, studios often attempted to create their own hit songs to both sell as a soundtrack and to enhance the movie experience, with a typical example being the film score for Titanic.
He was known to use "source music" in his scores, which some experts claim were often based on Russian folk songs. Much of his film music, especially for westerns, was used to create an atmosphere of "broad, sweeping landscapes," with a prominent use of chorus. During a TV interview, he credited his love of the European classic composers along with his ability to adapt American folk music styles to creating grand American theme music.
A number of Tiomkin's film scores were released on LP soundtrack albums, including Giant and The Alamo. Some of the recordings, which usually featured Tiomkin conducting his own music, have been reissued on CD. The theme song to High Noon has been recorded by many artists, with one German CD producer, Bear Family Records, producing a CD with 25 different artists performing that one song.
In 1999, the U.S. Postal Service added his image to their "Legends of American Music" stamp series. The series began with the issuance of the Elvis Presley in 1993, and Tiomkin's image was added as part of their "Hollywood Composers" selection.
In 1976, RCA Victor released Lost Horizon: The Classic Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin (US catalogue #ARL1-1669, UK catalogue #GL 43445) with Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic Orchestra. Featuring highlights from various Tiomkin scores, the album was later reissued by RCA on CD with Dolby Surround Sound.
The American Film Institute ranked Tiomkin's score for High Noon #10 on their list of the greatest film scores. His scores for the following films were also nominated for the list:
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Димитрий Темкин
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