Music, Magic, and Humor

A Researcher’s Journey through Max Steiner’s Life and Work

Abstract

If you are a student of film music researching the life and work of Max Steiner, there are some things you should know, especially if you are working from a country other than the United States. In 2006–2007, my wife Jane and I traveled to three of the cities with which Steiner is most closely associated (Vienna, London, and Los Angeles) and visited Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, where the composer’s personal papers have been stored since 1981. This article details those journeys, taken in a strange parallel to Steiner’s own. These include Steiner’s experiences as a child prodigy from an established theatrical family in Vienna; conducting in London and the United Kingdom’s theatrical circuit; a career on Broadway, working with Victor Herbert, George Gershwin, Fred Astaire, and many other theatrical legends; and his final, thirty-five-year career as one of the founding fathers of modern film composition in Hollywood. Furthermore, the internet has made many more materials available to the scholar, including BYU’s developing online thematic catalogue. The “net” result is that future students will have an incredible amount of material available to them, much more than those of just thirty years ago.