An Analysis of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's
Cello Concerto and Underscore Written for the Film Deception

by

Lawrence Leviton

Introduction

As a child and young man in Vienna, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) startled the musical world with his compositional gifts. Korngold composed many successful works during his childhood, including chamber music, works for solo piano, vocal music, and orchestral music. Among the three operas he wrote as a young man is the highly regarded Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City), which premiered in 1920. Throughout the 1920s, he was one of the leading composers in Europe. A poll taken in the early 1930s in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt listed Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Arnold Schoenberg as the two most popular contemporary Austrian composers.1

His career took an abrupt turn in the next decade when Max Reinhardt summoned him to the United States in 1932 to arrange the music for the film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. During the next fifteen years, he became one of the preeminent film composers in Hollywood. Films such as Captain Blood (1935), Robin Hood (1938), and the Sea Hawk (1940), helped create a style that continues to influence the film scoring practices of today. During this time however, his concert music fell out of favor; critics labeled him an anachronism when he returned to Vienna after World War II and tried to resurrect his concert career and reclaim his former prominent position in the musical world of Europe.

Deception, produced in 1946, was the last film Korngold scored. It is a film about a love triangle among three musicians, and it was adapted from the play Monsieur Lambertier, by Louis Veurneuil, which had a run on Broadway in the 1920s. Originally, there were two principal characters in the story, with the third character, the composer, only alluded to and heard via telephone conversations. For the film, with a new screenplay by John Collier and Joseph Than, Deception was expanded to feature three main characters: Christine Radcliffe, Alexander Hollenius, and Karel Novak.

In the film, Christine Radcliffe, portrayed by Bette Davis, is a struggling concert pianist, who has been set up in grand style by her mentor and lover, the composer Alexander Hollenius, played by actor Claude Rains. Radcliffe discovers that her pre-war lover, a cellist named Karel Novak, played by Paul Henreid, did not perish in the war, as she had previously feared. The film opens with her furtively entering the balcony at his performance of the Haydn Cello Concerto in D Major with a college symphony orchestra. After a tearful reunion, they quickly make plans to get married. The marriage takes place after Radcliffe very abruptly ends her relationship with Hollenius.

The remainder of the film revolves around Radcliffe’s desperate attempt to protect the secret of her prior relationship from Novak, while trying to prop up his fragile psyche. Radcliffe is repeatedly compelled to fabricate unbelievable explanations that Novak grudgingly accepts, providing the basis for the title of the film, Deception.

Claude Rains, in an acting tour de force, has a devilishly good time in his portrayal of Hollenius, imbuing him with great style, charm, and a healthy dose of scathing wit. John McCarten, in his review from the time, described his character as "a famous and worldly composer with some vicious attachment to a dame, he fills out a fascinating portrait of a titanic egoist.”2 Hollenius wields his charm and powers to undermine the new union of Radcliffe and Novak, and they only escape his considerable power and cruel manipulation through murder.

A significant portion of the film revolves around a Concerto that Hollenius has written for Novak. Radcliffe only sees malicious intent in Hollenius’s gift of the Concerto, imagining he has nefarious plans to undermine Novak's performance and to use the work as a tool to gradually erode Novak's tenuous hold on reality. Throughout the entire narrative, Hollenius wields the secret of his relationship with Radcliffe as a weapon, and she, immediately before the Concerto’s premiere, shoots and kills Hollenius, rather than have the secret of their affair revealed to Novak.

The Korngold/Hollenius Cello Concerto plays an important role in Deception’s narrative. The exposition, elements of a lyrical middle section and a concluding fugato, are heard in solo practice sessions and orchestra rehearsal and concert performances in the film. Musically, the agitated character, plaintive melodies, ambiguous harmonic structure in the underscore,3 and concert elements in the film provide an emotional context for the turbulent relationships depicted in the story. It is "performed" or pantomimed on-screen by actor Paul Henreid, whose simulated performance was laid over the superb prerecorded performance by Eleanor Aller Slatkin.

Henreid’s simulated performance was one of many in the film and a variety of technical devices were employed to make these performances look authentic. These illusions lend a sense of authenticity to a film portraying the culture of music with an attention to detail unrivaled in other films of its kind. Korngold’s involvement in many of the musical aspects of the film and his contribution is difficult to overlook. The rehearsals and concerts in the film, the witty and urbane dialogue concerning musical issues, and the life-styles of the musicians in the film all provide an authentic glimpse into the musical culture of the time.

In the past twenty years, a renewed interest in Korngold's music has emerged. In a post-modern climate where the lines between "art” and "popular" music are blurred, Korngold's film music and concert music have undergone a reassessment, as has film music in general. His lush, richly orchestrated, and highly lyrical works are better appreciated in both academic and public musical circles. At least ten recordings of his works have been released in the last three to four years, and articles have appeared in the New York Times and other prominent newspapers, as well as in several journals. The celebration of the centenary anniversary of his birth in 1997 saw many performances of his music.

Until recently, the most authoritative biographical information was found in the reminiscences of Korngold's father, Julius, and Luzi Korngold, Erich's widow, published in 1945 and 1961, respectively. They provide important information, but are obviously influenced and colored by the authors’ personal involvement with the composer. In the past two years, biographies written by British historians Brendan Carroll and Jessica Duchen, explore many of the social, familial and musical issues that shaped the direction and trajectory of Korngold's personal and professional life. Carroll's comprehensive work is the product of twenty-five years of exhaustive and authoritative research.

Duchen's book makes an important contribution, although it does not have the scope of Carroll’s. Her thoughtful observations about Korngold's life provide insight into the turbulent relationship between Korngold and his father.4 In addition to these two works, several dissertations written in the past ten years address Korngold's songs and piano sonatas.5

The film Deception provides a rare opportunity to examine both Korngold's work as composer for the concert hall and for film. The Cello Concerto represents the work of Alexander Hollenius, the fictional "modern" composer played by Claude Rains. In reality, however, the Concerto represents, in microcosm, an accurate picture of the real composer’s own music. It is occasionally daring in harmony and skirts the boundaries of functional tonality; nevertheless it follows Korngold’s musical credo: melody and tonality remain ascendant.

In this thesis, I examine how the Concerto is used in the film and explore how Korngold later expanded the work for performance on the concert stage. My analysis of Korngold's underscore in the film provides further insight into his film music style. Deception lacks the abundance of music found in his costume dramas such as Captain Blood or The Adventures of Robin Hood. Nevertheless, Korngold's film music style is well represented in the score for Deception. A final feature of this study is a description of how musical performances were staged in the film, and how these accurate performance simulations contribute to the comprehensive portrayal of musical culture in Deception.

Many critics characterize Korngold as a film composer with a great talent for writing attractive melodies but who never fulfilled his childhood promise. Between 1945 and the early 1970s, articles about Korngold in the New York Times, the New York Sun, Time Magazine and others were fairly consistent in their criticism of his music. He receives little or no mention in most of the scholarly books about twentieth-century music. Until recently, praise for his music could only be found in books about film music, where he is usually held up as a pioneer in one of the new musical art forms of the twentieth century. More recently, critics are beginning to soften their posture and accept his concert music for its wealth of melodic invention and opulent tone colors. Currently, there is a resurgence of interest in his music, and film music in general. The Cello Concerto however, has received sparse attention and merits further study. An analysis of the film Deception, and, in particular, the Cello Concerto, will contribute to this ongoing reassessment of Korngold.

Notes

© copyright 1998-Lawrence Leviton

Back to Lawrence Leviton's Home Page