Zador, Eugene
Zador, Eugene
Zador, Eugene (real name, Jenõ Zádor), Hungarian-American composer; b. Bátaszék, Nov. 5, 1894; d. Los Angeles, April 4, 1977. He studied music with a local teacher. In 1911 he enrolled in the Vienna Cons., and studied composition with Heuberger. From 1912 to 1914 he was in Leipzig, where he took a course with Reger; also attended classes in musicology with Abert and Schering; continued musicological studies with Volbach at the Univ. of Münster (Ph.D., 1921, with the diss. Wesen und Form der symphonischen Dichtung von Liszt bis Strauss). He settled in Vienna, and taught at the Neues Konservatorium there. Following the Anschluss of Austria by the Nazi regime in 1938, Zador emigrated to the U.S.; he settled in Hollywood, where he became successful and prosperous as an orchestrator of film scores; made some 120 orchestrations in all; at the same time, he continued to compose music in every conceivable genre. Zador was a master of musical sciences, excelling in euphonious modern harmonies, and an expert weaver of contrapuntal voices; his colorful writing for instruments was exemplary. He possessed a special skill in handling Hungarian folk motifs in variation form; in this, he followed the tradition of Liszt. During his European period, he composed some fashionable “machine music/7 as demonstrated with particular effect in his Sinfonia tecnica.
Works
dramatic: O p e r a: Diana (Budapest, Dec. 22, 1923); A holtak szigete (The Island of the Dead; Budapest, March 29, 1928); Revisor (The Inspector General; 1928; rev. and reorchestrated, Los Angeles, June 11, 1971); X-mal Rembrandt (referring to the multiple copies of Rembrandt’s self-portraits; Gera, May 24, 1930); Asm (Budapest, Feb. 15, 1936); Christoph Columbus (N.Y., Oct. 8, 1939); The Virgin and the Fawn (Los Angeles, Oct. 24,1964); The Magic Chair (Baton Rouge, La., May 14, 1966); The Scarlet Mill (N.Y., Oct. 26, 1968); Yehu, a Christmas Legend (1974). Ballet: Maschinenmensch (1934). ORCH.: Bank ban, symphonic poem (1918); 4 syms.: No. 1, Romantische Symphonie (1922), No. 2, Sinfonia tecnica (Paris, May 26,1932), No. 3, Tanzsymphonie (Budapest, Feb. 8,1937), and No. 4, Children’s Symphony (1941); Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song (Vienna, Feb. 9, 1927); Rondo (1934); Hungarian Caprice (Budapest, Feb. 1,1935); Pastorale and Tarantella (Chicago, Feb. 5, 1942); Biblical Triptych (Chicago, Dec. 9, 1943); Elegie and Dance (Philadelphia, March 12, 1954); Divertimento for Strings (1955); Fugue-Fantasia (1958); Rhapsody (Los Angeles, Feb. 5, 1961); Christmas Overture (1961); Variations on a Merry Theme (1963; Birmingham, Ala., Jan. 12, 1965); 5 Contrasts (Philadelphia, Jan. 8, 1965); Trombone Concerto (Rochester, Mich., July 20, 1967); Rhapsody for Cimbalom and Orch. (Los Angeles, Nov. 2, 1969); Studies (Detroit, Nov. 12, 1970); Fantasia hungarica for Double Bass and Orch. (1970); Accordion Concerto (1971); Hungarian Scherzo (1975); Concerto for Oboe and Strings (1975). CHAMBER: Chamber Concerto for Strings, 2 Horns, and Piano (1930); Piano Quintet (1933); Suite for Brass (1961); Suite for 8 Cellos (1966); Suite for Woodwind Quintet (1972); Brass Quintet (1973); piano pieces. VOCAL: Cantata tecnica (1961); Scherzo domestico for Chorus (1961); The Remarkable Adventure of Henry Bold for Narrator and Orch. (Beverly Hills, Calif., Oct. 24,1963); The Judgement, oratorio (1974); Cain, melodrama for Baritone, Chorus, and Orch. (1976); songs.
Bibliography
L. Zador, E. Z.: A Catalogue of His Works (San Diego, Calif., 1978).
—Nicholas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire