Alex North studied music at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia, then
won a scholarship to Juilliard in New York (1929) and the Moscow
Conservatoire (1933), making him the first-ever American to become a
member of the Union of Soviet Composers. In Europe, he worked as music
director for the Latvian State Theatre, before returning to the U.S. in
1935 to perfect his craft under the auspices of
Aaron Copland. At the same time, he
produced his first compositions, including two symphonies, chamber
music and dance scores for Martha Graham
and Agnes de Mille. After a spell in
Mexico as conductor/composer, he served as a captain with the U.S.
Army, in charge of 'self-entertainment programs' for hospitalised
psychiatric patients. He also did his first film work, scoring
documentaries for the Office of War Information.
Profoundly influenced by, above all,
Duke Ellington, North began to write
several innovative compositions in jazz. His
'Revue for Clarinet and Orchestra' was originally commissioned by Benny Goodman
and first performed in 1946 under the direction of Goodman and
Leonard Bernstein with the New York
Philharmonic Orchestra. Joining ASCAP in 1947, North went on to compose
theatrical scores, including
'Death of a Salesman' for Elia Kazan
and this opened the door to Hollywood.
Endstation Sehnsucht (1951)
was the first all-jazz score ever written for a motion picture. His
next assignment was the film version of
Der Tod eines Handlungsreisenden (1951),
followed by Viva Zapata (1952), for
which he used traditional instruments, including marimbas and timbales.
Much of his subsequent work was characterised by sparse instrumentation
(as, for example,
Wer hat Angst vor Virginia Woolf? (1966)
and the Oscar-nominated
Unter dem Vulkan (1984)). He
used jazz again, evocatively, to score
Der lange heiße Sommer (1958)
and
Fluch des Südens (1959),
but was rather less successful on more conventional themes, such as
Misfits - Nicht gesellschaftsfähig (1961). One of his most
beautiful and lyrical works was the love theme from
Spartacus (1960). For the small screen,
he composed the music for the two instalments of the popular miniseries
Reich & arm (1976).
Alex North was Oscar-nominated fifteen times but only received the
coveted statuette as a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1986.
