Jerome Moross

Synopsis

Today marks the birthday anniversary of the American composer Jerome Moross, famous for sixteen classic film scores he wrote between 1948 and 1969, but also the creator of a handful of concert works, including this 1966 "Variations on a Waltz."

Moross was born in Brooklyn, began playing the piano and composing at an early age, and graduated from the New York University School of Music at 18. For a biographical dictionary published shortly before his death in 1983, Moross wrote:

"In my teens I was interested in sounds per se, as so many composers are today. By my late twenties I found myself interested in communicating with my audience… I feel that a composer should write what he feels, but in such a way that his audience experiences his emotions anew… In addition, the composer must reflect his landscape and mine is the landscape of America. I don't do it consciously; it is simply the only way I can write."

Speaking of landscapes, his best known film score is for the 1958 western The Big Country, which was nominated for an Academy Award. Moross said he composed the main title after recalling a walk he took in the flat lands around Albuquerque, New Mexico, shortly before he moved to Hollywood in the late 1930s.

Music Played in Today's Program

Jerome Moross (1913 - 1983) Variations on a Waltz and Main Title, fr The Big Country

On This Day

Births

• 1779 - Baltimore lawyer Francis Scott Key, who in 1814 wrote the words of "The Star-Spangled Banner," setting his text to the tune of a popular British drinking song of the day, "To Anacreon in Heaven," written by John Stafford Smith; The text and the tune became the official national anthem by and Act of Congress in 1931;

• 1858 - Austrian composer Hans Rott, in Vienna;

• 1913 - American composer Jerome Moross, in Brooklyn;

• 1930 - British pop song and musical composer Lionel Bart, of "Oliver!" fame, in London;

Deaths

• 1973 - Gian-Francesco Maliperio, Italian composer and first editor of collected works of Monteverdi and Vivaldi, age 91, in Treviso;

Premieres

• 1740 - Thomas Arne: masque, “Alfred” (containing “Rule, Brittania”), in Clivedon (Gregorian date: August 12);

• 1921 - Hindemith: String Quartet No. 3, Op. 16, by the Amar Quartet (which included the composer on viola) in Donaueschingen, Germany;

• 1968 - Webern: "Rondo" for string quartet, written in 1906, at the Congregation of the Arts at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire;

• 1993 - Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Concerto for Horn and String Orchestra, at the Bravo! Music Festival in Vail, Colo., by soloist David Jolley with the Rochester Philharmonic, Lawrence Leighton Smith conducting;

Others

• 1892 - John Philip Sousa , age 37, quits the U.S. Marine Corps Band to form his own 100-piece marching band;

• 1893 - In Spillville Iowa, Antonin Dvorák finishes his String Quintet in Eb, Op. 97 ("The American") during his summer vacation at the Czech settlement.