Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Friedberg, Carl

(b Bingen, 18 Sept 1872; d Merano, 9 Sept 1955). German pianist and teacher. He studied piano with James Kwast and for a short while with Clara Schumann at the Hoch Konservatorium, Frankfurt. He too became a teacher there (1893–1904) and later at the Cologne Conservatory (1904–1914), and from 1923 until his retirement in 1946 was principal piano teacher at the New York Institute of Musical Art. His pupils included Malcolm Frager, Bruce Hungerford, William Masselos, Elly Ney and his biographer, Julia Smith (Master Pianist: the Career and Teaching of Carl Friedberg, New York, 1963).

Friedberg's playing career spanned over 60 years in both Europe and America. He made his official début in 1892 with the Vienna PO under Mahler, receiving praise from Eduard Hanslick. This was followed in 1893 by an all-Brahms recital in the presence of the composer, who admired his playing and who later demonstrated to him in private the majority of his piano works. As a chamber musician he replaced Artur Schnabel in the Schnabel-Flesch-Becker Trio in 1920 and played in that ensemble until 1932. Friedberg gave numerous recitals with Kreisler throughout America and in 1937 formed his own trio with Daniel Karpilowsky and Felix Salmond. Friedberg's repertory was reputedly vast, and he became much associated with the music of Beethoven (his edition of the Beethoven sonatas was published by Schott in 1922), Chopin, Schumann and Brahms. He made one commercial recording of music by Schumann and Brahms in 1953 and some private recordings, some of which have been issued by the International Piano Archive.

DONALD ELLMAN

Friedel, Sebastian Ludwig.

See Friedl, Sebastian Ludwig.

Friederici.

See Friderici family.

Friedheim, Arthur

(b St Petersburg, 26 Oct 1859; d New York, 19 Oct 1932). German pianist, conductor and composer. He began the serious study of music at the age of eight. Later he studied for a year with Anton Rubinstein, but, disapproving of Rubinstein’s disorganized methods, he went instead to Liszt. During the last eight years of Liszt’s life Friedheim remained his pupil; he also lived with him in Rome and Weimar and acted as his secretary. This close association formed the basis for Friedheim’s reputation as one of the foremost exponents of Liszt’s music. He also gained orchestral experience conducting in theatres and opera houses in Germany. From 1891 to 1895 he taught and played in the USA, then spent some time in London, and for several years up to 1904 taught at the RMCM. From 1908 to 1911 he conducted at Munich and in 1915 settled in the USA, going to Toronto in 1921 as professor at the Canadian Academy of Music.

Friedheim’s technique was awesome, but his greatest success lay in the clarity and repose that characterized his interpretations of Liszt’s music. It is unfortunate that the best qualities of his playing survive in only a fragmentary way in the few recordings he made. Serious and deeply reflective by nature, he tried all his life to focus his powers not only on playing and conducting but also on writing and composing. He wrote a psychological study of Liszt and many reminiscences, later collected by his pupil Theodore Bullock under the title Life and Liszt (New York, 1961). Besides editing the works of Chopin, Friedheim was a dedicated composer, though few of his works were published and many of the manuscripts are lost. His operas include The Last Days of Pompeii, not performed, Alexander and Thaïs and Die Tänzerin (Karlsruhe, 1897), both performed in Cologne, 1904, and The Christmas and Giulia Gonzaga, both unfinished. He wrote two piano concertos, in B (performed in 1880) and B (Karlsruhe, 1890), an early orchestral overture, A Hero of our Times (St Petersburg, 1877), and a march, E pluribus unum (1894).

JERROLD NORTHROP MOORE/R

Friedhofer, Hugo (William)

(b San Francisco, 3 May ?1902; d Los Angeles, 17 May 1981). American orchestrator and composer. He gave up early study towards an artistic career in favour of a musical training, first as a cellist, and then as an arranger and orchestrator. During the 1920s he studied with Domenico Brescia and worked as an arranger for theatre and cinema orchestras, before joining Fox Studios in 1929 as an arranger for early sound film scores. These collaborative projects prepared him for his move to Warner Bros. in 1934 where he worked as principal orchestrator for Korngold and Steiner. He orchestrated 16 of Korngold's 17 original film scores, including The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The Sea Hawk (1940), and 54 of Steiner's 77 scores for Warner Bros. between 1936 and 1947, notably including Now, Voyager, which won Steiner the Academy Award for 1942, and Mildred Pierce (1945). In 1943 he was offered a contract to compose for Twentieth Century-Fox, and he scored 69 films as principal composer and 200 as co-composer. His first original film score was in 1938 for The Adventures of Marco Polo, and he went on to compose for a variety of films including Broken Arrow, Vera Cruz and An Affair to Remember. He won the 1946 Academy Award for The Best Years of our Lives. Despite the modernist techniques of teachers such as Nadia Boulanger, Toch and Kanitz, with whom Friedhofer studied in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and the influence of jazz on the film scoring of consequent decades, his style is most clearly understood as a fusion of the thematic approach of Steiner and the atmospheric emphasis of Korngold, blended with more economic orchestration than he used for either composer. A large collection of Friedhofer's original scores is held in the Arts and Communications Archive, Brigham Young University, Utah.

WORKS

(selective list)

all film scores

As principal composer: The Adventures of Marco Polo, 1938; The Lodger, 1944; The Bandit of Sherwood Forest, 1946; The Best Years of our Lives, 1946; The Bishop's Wife, 1947; Enchantment, 1948; Joan of Arc, 1948; Broken Arrow, 1950; Edge of Doom, 1950; Ace in the Hole, 1951; Above and Beyond, 1952; Vera Cruz, 1954; Violent Saturday, 1955; The Rains of Ranchipur, 1955; Between Heaven and Hell, 1956; An Affair to Remember, 1957; Boy on a Dolphin, 1957; The Sun also Rises, 1957; The Barbarian and the Geisha, 1958; The Young Lions, 1958; One-Eyed Jacks, 1960; Geronimo, 1962; The Secret Invasion, 1964; Von Richtofen and Brown, 1971; Private Parts, 1973

As orchestrator: Captain Blood, 1935; The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938; Juarez, 1939; The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, 1939; The Sea Hawk, 1940; King's Row, 1942; Devotion, 1943 (film released 1946) [principal composer Korngold]

The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1936; Jezebel, 1938; Dark Victory, 1939; Santa Fe Trail, 1940; The Great Lie, 1941; Now, Voyager, 1942; Casablanca, 1943; Mildred Pierce, 1945 [principal composer Steiner]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

F.W. Sternfeld: ‘Music and Feature Films’, MQ, xxxii (1947), 517–32

L. Morton: ‘Film Music Profile: Hugo Friedhofer’, Film Music Notes, x/1 (1950), 4–5

I.K. Atkins: Hugo Friedhofer (Los Angeles, 1974) [incl. complete list of films]

M. Skiles: Music Scoring for TV and Motion Pictures (Blue Ridge Summit, PA, 1976)

T. Thomas: Film Score: the View from the Podium (South Brunswick, NJ, and New York, 1979),

W. Darby and J. Du Bois: American Film Music: Major Composers, Techniques, Trends, 1915–1990 (Jefferson, NC, 1991) [incl. complete list of films as principal composer, and complete list of orchestrations for Korngold and Steiner]

G. Burt: The Art of Film Music: Special Emphasis on Hugo Friedhofer, Alex North, David Raksin, Leonard Rosenman (Boston, 1994)

K.S. Daubney: The View from the Piano: the Film Scores of Max Steiner, 1939–1945 (diss., U. of Leeds, 1996)

J. Duchen: Erich Wolfgang Korngold (London, 1996)

L. Danley, ed.: Hugo Friedhofer: the Best Years of his Life (Lanham, MD, 1999)

KATE DAUBNEY