Collection 17-M

Alex North Collection of Motion Picture Music

North was born on Dec. 4, 1910, in Chester, PA; attended the Curtis Institute, Juilliard School, and Moscow Conservatory; became music director of the German Theater Group and the Latvian State Theater, and the only American member of the Union of Soviet Composers; returned to the US in 1935; studied with Ernst Toch and Aaron Copland in NY, and composed ballet scores for Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, and Agnes de Mille; composed for the NY stage, including scores for Life and death of an American (1939), Of V we sing (1942), and Death of a salesman (1949); wrote music for some 50 documentary shorts between 1937-50; in 1939 went to Mexico as music director for the Anna Sokolow dance troupe and studied with Silvestre Revueltas; served as a captain in the US Army in World War II; his Revue for clarinet and orchestra was performed by Benny Goodman and the NY Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein in 1946; began scoring feature films in the early 1950s, becoming a leading Hollywood composer; his musical language encompasses dissonance and lyricism, and ranges from chamber to symphonic proportions; he was nominated for 15 Academy Awards but did not win one until 1986, when the Motion Picture Academy presented him with an honorary life-achievement award; died in 1991.

Collection consists of Alex North's holograph scores, with occasional holograph music notes, for the following motion pictures: The agony and the ecstasy (1965), All fall down (1962), The bachelor party (1957), The bad seed (1956), Cheyenne autumn (1964), The children's hour (1962), Cinerama South Seas adventure (1958), Cleopatra (1963), Death of a salesman (1951), Desiree (1954), Devil's brigade (1968), A dream of kings (1969), Go man go (1954), Hard contract (1969), Hot spell (1958), I'll cry tomorrow (1955), The king & four queens (1956), The long hot summer (1958), Man with the gun (1955), A member of the wedding (1953), Les miserables (1952), The misfits (1961), The outrage (1964), Pony soldier (1952), The racers (1955), The rainmaker (1956), The rose tattoo (1955), Sanctuary (1961), Shoes of the fisherman (1968), Spartacus (1960), Stagestruck (1958), A streetcar named Desire (1955), The thirteenth letter (1951), Unchained (1955), Viva Zapata (1952), Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), The wonderful country (1959), 2001, a space odyssey (1968), Symphony to a new continent, and Somebody killed her husband (1978).

For additional information about this collection consult:

Catalog record
Finding aid

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