“The Snowman”
January 12, 2017
The Yard and Wash House, Carl Larsson
ERICH W. KORNGOLD, originally from Austria, reportedly wrote his lovely ballet “Der Schneeman,” or “The Snowman,” at the mere age of 11. Listen to it here. Perhaps your children, close in age to Korngold himself when he composed this, will understand its evocation of the sadly short-lived snow-friend. What a beautiful, dreamy piece this is, as beautiful as a snowy day.
Doesn’t it make you want to sit by a window and watch as snowflakes — those magical, many-sided crystals viciously maligned in recent comparisons to the immature and mentally unstable — fall by the millions to the snow-hungry earth? Don’t listen to what they say. There is no comparison — none — between a human being with all our faults and a snowflake, which is artistic perfection un-ruined. Same goes with a snowman, whose personality has zero faults and is not subject to Original Sin in the slightest. Except in his capacity to evaporate. As Korngold sweetly shows in musical terms.
More on the brilliant and widely forgotten Korngold (1897-1957) from a music blogger:
“Korngold is mostly remembered now as a pioneer in film scores. His 1938 soundtrack to The Adventures of Robin Hood won an Academy Award, and he cranked out many more during his time in Hollywood. However, it seems like he got tired of film scores. He stopped writing them in 1946, and returned to composing the romantic style of music he had worked on before leaving Austria.
Unfortunately, by the late 1940s that style was no longer popular, and in the years following his death in 1957, critics tended to greet Korngold’s work with a bit of a shrug, which I think is pretty sad. Rewind to 1910, when composers like Strauss and Mahler were praising the 12-year-old as the next big thing, and his ballet The Snowman was being performed for the Austrian Emperor…it doesn’t seem fair that his career should be looked upon as if it were one of my pathetically deformed snowmen.” Source
Erich W. Korngold
