Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin (May 10, 1894 – November 11, 1979) was a Russian and American film composer and conductor. Classically trained in Saint Petersburg before the Bolshevik Revolution, he moved to Berlin and then New York City after the Russian Revolution. In 1929, after the stock market crash, he moved to Hollywood, where he became best known for his scores for Western films, including Duel in the Sun, Red River, High Noon, The Big Sky, 55 Days at Peking, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Rio Bravo, The Alamo, and Last Train from Gun Hill.
Tiomkin received 22 Academy Award nominations and won four Oscars: three for Best Original Score for High Noon, The High and the Mighty, and The Old Man and the Sea and one for Best Original Song for "The Ballad of High Noon" from High Noon.
Early life and education
Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin was born on May 10, 1894, in Kremenchug, a city then in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire and now in Ukraine.
His family was of Jewish descent;Stevens, Lewis. Composers of Classical Music of Jewish Descent, Vallentine Mitchell Publ. (2003) p. 50 his father, Zinovy Tiomkin, was a "distinguished pathologist" and associate of professor Paul Ehrlich, and later a notable Zionist leader. His mother, Maria Tartakovskaya, was a musician who began teaching the young Tiomkin piano at an early age. Her hope was to have her son become a professional pianist, according to Tiomkin biographer Christopher Palmer.Palmer, Christopher. Dimitri Tiomkin, T.E. Books, (1984) p. 13 Tiomkin described his mother as being "small, blonde, merry and vivacious."
Tiomkin was educated at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where he studied piano with Felix Blumenfeld, teacher of Vladimir Horowitz, and harmony and counterpoint with Alexander Glazunov, mentor to Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich.Robinson, Harlow. Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood's Russians: Biography of an Image, Northeastern Univ. Press (2007) pp. 130–133 He also studied piano with Isabelle Vengerova.Smith, Charles D, and Richard J. Howe. The Welte-Mignon: Its Music and Musicians. Vestal, N.Y: Published for the Automatic Musical Instrument Collectors' Association, 1994, p. 484.
He survived the revolution and found work under the new regime. In 1920, while working for the Petrograd Military District Political Administration (PUR), Tiomkin was one of the lead organizers of two revolutionary mass spectacles, the Mystery of Liberated Labor, a mystery play for the May Day festivities, and The Storming of the Winter Palace for the celebrations of the third anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.James Von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993), p. 157, Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 135–36 He supported himself while living in Saint Petersburg by playing piano accompaniment for numerous Russian silent films. Tiomkin joined many exiles in moving to Berlin after the Russian Revolution to live with his father. In Berlin, from 1921 to 1923, he studied with the pianist Ferruccio Busoni and Busoni's disciples Egon Petri and . He composed light classical and popular music, and made his performing debut as a pianist playing Franz Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Berlin Philharmonic.Wallace, David; Miller, Ann. Hollywoodland, Macmillan, (2002) pp. 193–194
He moved to Paris with his roommate, Michael Khariton, to perform a piano duo repertory together. They did this before the end of 1924.
Career In 1925, the duo received an offer from the New York theatrical producer Morris Gest and emigrated to the United States. They performed together on the Keith/Albee and Orpheum vaudeville circuits, in which they accompanied a ballet troupe run by the Austrian ballerina Albertina Rasch. Tiomkin and Rasch's professional relationship evolved into a personal one, and they married in 1927.
While in New York, Tiomkin gave a recital at Carnegie Hall that featured contemporary music by Maurice Ravel, Alexander Scriabin, Francis Poulenc, and Alexandre Tansman. He and his new wife went on tour to Paris in 1928, where he played the European premiere of American George Gershwin's Concerto in F at the Paris Opera, with Gershwin in the audience.
After the stock market crash in October 1929 reduced work opportunities in New York, Tiomkin and his wife moved to Hollywood,Warren M. Sherk (2003), "Biography: Dimitri Tiomkin" at "Dimitri Tiomkin: The Official Web Site." Accessed July 6, 2016. where she was hired to supervise dance numbers in MGM film musicals. He worked on some minor films, some without being credited under his own name. His first significant film score project was for Paramount's Alice in Wonderland (1933). Although Tiomkin worked on some smaller film projects, his goal was to become a concert pianist. In 1937, he broke his arm, injuring it so much that he ended that possible career. He began to focus on work as a film music composer.Cooke, Mervyn. The Hollywood Film Music Reader, Oxford Univ. Press (2010) pp. 117–136
Working for Frank Capra (1937–1946) Tiomkin received his first break from Columbia director Frank Capra, who chose him to write and perform the score for Lost Horizon (1937). The film gained significant recognition for Tiomkin in Hollywood. It was released the same year that he became a naturalized US citizen.Dominic Power, "Tiomkin, Dimitri", "film reference" web site. Retrieved September 7, 2010.
In his autobiography, Please Don't Hate Me! (1959), Tiomkin recalls how the assignment by Capra forced him to first confront a director in a matter of music style:
He worked on other Capra films during the following decade, including the comedy You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). During World War II, he continued his close collaboration with Capra by composing scores for his Why We Fight series. These seven films were commissioned by the US government to show American soldiers the reason for United States' participation in the war. They were later released to the general US public to generate support for American involvement.
Tiomkin credited Capra for broadening his musical horizons by shifting them away from a purely Eurocentric and romantic style to a more American style based on subject matter and story.
High Noon (1952) Following his work for Fred Zinnemann on The Men (1950), Tiomkin composed the score for the same director's High Noon (1952). His theme song was "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'" ("The Ballad of High Noon"). At its opening preview to the press, the film, which starred Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, did badly. Tiomkin writes that "film experts agreed that the picture was a flat failure.... The producers hesitated to release the picture." Tiomkin bought the rights to the song and released it as a single for the popular music market, with singer Frankie Laine. The record became an immediate success worldwide. Based on the song's popularity, the studio released the film four months later, with the words sung by country western star Tex Ritter. The film received seven Academy Award nominations and won four awards, including two for Tiomkin: Best Original Music and Best Song. Walt Disney presented him with both awards that evening.Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:
According to film historian Arthur R. Jarvis Jr., the score "has been credited with saving the movie."Browne, Pat. The Guide to United States Popular Culture, Univ. of Wisconsin Press (2001) p. 846 Another music expert, Mervyn Cooke, agrees, adding that "the song's spectacular success was partly responsible for changing the course of film-music history". Tiomkin was the second composer to receive two Oscars (score and song) for the same dramatic film. (The first was Leigh Harline, who won Best Original Score for Disney's Pinocchio and Best Song for "When You Wish Upon a Star". Ned Washington wrote its lyrics as he did for "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin".)
The song's lyrics briefly tell High Noons entire story arc, a tale of cowardice and conformity in a small Western town.Roger L. Hall, A Guide to Film Music: Songs and Scores (Stoughton, PineTree Press, 3rd ed, 2007), 24. Tiomkin composed his entire score around this single western-style ballad. He also eliminated violins from the ensemble. He added a subtle harmonica in the background, to give the film a "rustic, deglamorized sound that suits the anti-heroic sentiments" expressed by the story.
According to Russian film historian Harlow Robinson, building the score around a single folk tune was typical of many Russian classical composers. Robinson adds that the source of Tiomkin's score, if indeed folk, has not been proven. The Encyclopedia of Modern Jewish Culture, on page 124, states: "The fifty-year period in the USA between 1914, the start of the First World War and the year of Irving Berlin's first full score, Watch Your Step, and 1964, the premiere of Bock and Harnick's Fiddler on the Roof, is informed by a rich musical legacy from Yiddish folk tunes (for example Mark Warshavsky's "Di milners trem," The miller's tears: and Dimitri Tiomkin's "Do Not Forsake Me." High Noon) ... "
Tiomkin won two more Oscars in subsequent years: for The High and the Mighty (1954), directed by William A. Wellman, and featuring John Wayne; and The Old Man and the Sea (1958), adapted from an Ernest Hemingway novel.Eva Marie Saint and Anthony Franciosa present the Oscar for The Old Man and the Sea to Dimitri Tiomkin, 1959 During the 1955 ceremonies, Tiomkin thanked all of the earlier composers who had influenced him, including Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other names from the European classical tradition.
The composer worked again for Zinnemann on The Sundowners (1960).
Film genres and other associations Many of his scores were for Western films, which were extremely popular in this period, and for which he is best remembered. His first Western was the King Vidor-directed Duel in the Sun (1946). In addition to High Noon, among his other Westerns were Giant (1956), Friendly Persuasion (1956), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), and Last Train from Gun Hill (1959). Rio Bravo (1959), The Alamo (1960), Circus World (1964) and The War Wagon (1967) were made with the involvement of John Wayne. Tiomkin received Oscar nominations for his scores in both Giant and The Alamo. He told TV host Gig Young that his aim in creating the score for Giant was to capture the "feelings of the great land and great state of Texas.""Dimitri Tiomkin talks about Giant in 1956, TV interview with Gig Young
Although influenced by European music traditions, Tiomkin was self-trained as a film composer. He scored many films of various genres, including historical dramas such as Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), and Great Catherine (1968); war movies such as The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955), The Guns of Navarone (1961), and Town Without Pity (1961); and suspense thrillers such as 36 Hours (1965).
Tiomkin also wrote scores for four of Alfred Hitchcock's suspense dramas: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Strangers on a Train (1951), I Confess (1953), and Dial M for Murder (1954). Here he used a lush style relying on solo violins and muted trumpets. He composed the score for the science fiction thriller The Thing from Another World (1951), which is considered his "strangest and most experimental score." He also worked with Howard Hawks on The Big Sky (1952) and Land of the Pharaohs (1955), with John Huston on The Unforgiven (1960), and with Nicholas Ray on 55 Days at Peking (1963).
Television