Hugo Riesenfeld

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Hugo Riesenfeld
Born (1879-01-26)January 26, 1879
Vienna, Austria
Died September 10, 1939(1939-09-10) (aged 60)
Los Angeles, California, United States
Nationality US
Occupation violinist, conductor, composer
Known for film scoring
Spouse(s) Mabel Gertrude Dunning
Awards Oscar nominations for Musical Director and Best Music for Make a Wish (1937)

Hugo Riesenfeld (January 26, 1879 – September 10, 1939) was a Jewish[1] Austrian-American composer. As a film director, he began to write his own orchestral compositions for silent films in 1917, and co-created modern production techniques where film scoring serves an integral part of the action. Riesenfeld composed about 100 film scores in his career.


Life and work[edit]

Hugo Riesenfeld's musical career began at the age of seven with a violin study at the Conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, where he graduated at the age of 17 in piano, violin and composition degrees. He briefly played in the Vienna Philharmonic. By the end of the 19th century, he was playing with Arnold Schönberg, Arthur Bodanzky, and Edward Falck in a local string quartet.



Red Seal Pictures[edit]

In May 1924, Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer began producing a series of sound cartoons, called Song Car-Tunes, using the Lee DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. In 1923, the Fleischers, DeForest, Edwin Miles Fadiman, and Riesenfeld had formed a corporation, Red Seal Pictures, to distribute American and foreign films. Red Seal also distributed the Song Car-Tune cartoons to an East Coast theater circuit that went as far as Cleveland, Ohio. The corporation filed for bankruptcy in late 1926, shortly after DeForest Phonofilm filed for bankruptcy in September 1926.

Movie theaters and live orchestras[edit]

Most large movie theaters in the U.S. had their own orchestras for silent film accompaniment, with smaller theaters having just a piano. The musicians often relied on an already existing repertoire of opera and excerpts from other compositions. Riesenfeld began as one of the first to write original compositions for films. As an example, the "Brother's Theme" was a mainstay of the 1926 release of "Beau Geste" (published by Robbins-Engel Inc.)




Illness and death[edit]



A selection of film compositions, unless otherwise noted:

Posthumous works:


  • 1938: Oscar nomination for best score for Make a Wish


  1. ^ Hans Morgenstern: Jüdisches biographisches Lexikon, LIT Verlag, Wien

External links[edit]