Erich Wolfgang Korngold was the son of a well-known music critic. He was a child prodigy who composed his first orchestral piece at 14 and drew the attention of Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and many other prominent composers and conductors. He had begun a promising career as a serious composer of operas and orchestral music when he emigrated to the United States in 1935 to escape Adolf Hitler's annexation of Austria. He is generally credited with "inventing" the syntax of orchestral film music. Korngold longed to resume his career as a serious composer, but after the war ended he found that the world of serious music had passed him by. He was little known at his death in 1957.
