• Biography

Biography

Max Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. Trained by both Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first classically trained composers who wrote music primarily for motion pictures, and as such is often referred to as "the father of film music". Along with such composers as Franz Waxman, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Alfred Newman, Steiner played a major role in formulating the tradition of writing music for films.

Steiner was one of the best-known composers in Hollywood, and is widely regarded today as one of the greatest film score composers in the history of cinema. He composed hundreds of film scores for films including The Informer (1935), Now, Voyager (1942), and Since You Went Away (1944), which won him Academy Awards. He was nominated for the Academy Award a total of twenty-four times. He was also the first recipient of the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, which he won for his score to Life with Father. Some of Steiner's popular works include King Kong (1933), Little Women (1933), Jezebel (1938), Casablanca (1942), and Gone with the Wind (1939).