# Talk:Max Steiner

Considered the father of film scores in Hollywood. He began the practice of including music throughout movies in Hollywood talkies, not just at the credits or during the dance numbers.

If someone wants to work on referencing (and possibly expanding) the article, some of the biographical facts could be documented from Geoffrey O'Brien, "Interrupted Symphony: A Recollection of Movie Music from Max Steiner to Marvin Gaye", p. 90–102 in Eric Weisbard, ed., This is Pop, Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-674-01321-2 (cloth), ISBN 0-674-01344-1 (paper). There's about three pages on Steiner there. - Jmabel | Talk 23:35, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

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I removed quote from the section Beginning Music Career section, Broadway career, symphony of six million...and early life. Wikipedia articles should be for information that readers can glean at a glance. It does not depend on the exact wording of Max Steiner. I paraphrased the quotes in order to be more concise and only provide vital information. Encyclopedias don't necessarily need a lot of quotes. Amgisseman(BYU) (talk) 18:23, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

All the links to youtube are not in compliance with the external link guidelines (WP:EL). They're convenient and it was obviously a lot of trouble to put them there, so I'm reluctant to delete them. thoughts? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 18:02, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I tried to find a source that mentioned anything about other film composers Steiner influenced, since I noticed that a user keeps trying to add that unsourced information. I didn't have any luck with the Encyclopedia of Film composers or the notes to his collection we have here at BYU. Undoubtedly he influenced other composers, so please add that information if you can find a source. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:17, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Rachel Helps (BYU) - I couldn't find a source either, which is why I reverted the addition. I thought that might prompt the ip editor to include their source. Onel5969 TT me 16:32, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
makes sense to me! Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:03, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Max Steiner/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: JohnWickTwo (talk · contribs) 11:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Initiating assessment for biography. JohnWickTwo (talk) 11:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

0 Lead section

Lead section is well-written though it might be nice to include a passing mention of his stand-out scoring of the theme of Gone With the Wind, and perhaps also the fact that he did not score the famous "As Time Goes By" from Casablanca. You might double check that all of the comparison composers you list are mentioned somewhere in this article for them to be included in the lead section. The citation for your quote as well as its exposition should be moved to the main article, and then the footnote itself is not needed in the lead section. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
1 Early years

Could you give some thought to re-organizing these first 4 sections under a section title called "Biography" for purposes of enhancing structural organization in this article. Also dating of the first two sections as you have already dated in parenthesis sections 3 and 4. Then bring up your section on Personal life and death and integrate the information there into the new Biography section into the time frame that they belong in. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
2 Beginning music career

Add years for this section in parenthesis. Section format per above. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
3 Broadway music (1914–1929)

Refactor section. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
4 Hollywood film music (1929–1971)

Some of the subsections here are short and some a more developed. It might make sense to regroup some of them and date each regrouped section accordingly. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
4.1 Symphony of Six Million (1932)
4.2 King Kong (1933)
4.3 The Informer (1935)
4.4 Composing for Warner Bros.
4.5 Gone with the Wind (1939)
4.6 Film Noir
4.6.1 The Letter
4.6.2 The Big Sleep
4.7 Award-winning Scores

"More comments on the above film sections after you give a try at refactoring them into the new Biography section and date the chronology in them in the new section headings. Should this be a separate short section, or should the individual sentences be refactored into the new outline. For example, state that Casablanca was nominated for an Oscar when you discuss Casablanca in 1942 in his Biography section above which goes with 1942. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
4.8 Westerns

This short section might be assimilated into the sections of the biography which deal with the time frame which corresponds to each of these Westerns. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
4.9 Later works

Assimilate this short section into the new refactored version of the biography by year of chronology. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
5 Musical Influences

Two choices here. Either the Influences can be assimilated into the biography sections above as to which influences predominated in any particular biographical period, or, move this section into the Methods section directly below it in the current outline. Its hard to tell which one of these works better until you try it and see. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
6 Methods of composing

See comments for individual subsections. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
6.1 Techniques

Leitmotifs are strongly associated with Wagner as an approach he used in his operas. Should Wagner be mentioned in this section. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
6.2 Character themes

"Every character should have a theme" is very, very closely associated with leitmotifs; should these discussions be separated as they are currently. Can they be combined in some way. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
6.3 Scene and situation themes

"The music underscores" needs a capital letter added at the start of sentence. This section appears again thematically very close to leitmotif discussion and might be more strongly delineated from the leitmotif section. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
7 Personal life and death

Refactor this into the new Biography section as discussed above. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
8 Awards and honors

This material might look better in narrative form, for purposes of consistency with the rest of the article. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
9 Influence and legacy

Don't over-read my next statement, though didn't Steiner have much more of an influence on the legacy of film scores than the 3-4 sentence summary you give here. Did film scores become a forgotten legacy the day Steiner died, being replaced by the "pop" hits collection approach of films like Forrest Gump and others. Or, did Steiner plot a course for the scoring of films on the shoulders of classical composers such as Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Mahler. John Williams is one composer who comes to mind. There are other composers I could mention here. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
I agree it's a little short. This has been a work in progress. When I took this article on, there was no legacy section at all as I can recall. I have been slowly adding things as I find them, because I have wanted to be as specific as possible, actually naming names that he influenced instead of just stating that he influenced composers without naming them. I will keep looking for more stuff to expand this section. Although I have spent some time on this article, it hasn't been my pet project like Scarface is, so I still have some work to do.Skyes(BYU) (talk) 22:39, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
10 Filmography

The filmography main article should take care of most of this. Switching to div col 2 may help here as well. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

That should get things started. Ping me when ready or if clarification is needed on any of the above comments. JohnWickTwo (talk) 12:39, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed review. I won't be able to finish today, because my shift ends in about an hour, but I should be able to get things done by tomorrow. One of your suggestions also made me realize that I should probably give Casablanca its own section, so I will work on that as well. Skyes(BYU) (talk) 21:42, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
@JohnWickTwo: ok I took a look at your suggestions and did my best to implement them. I'll be honest, it was a lot of work, because the organization of the article was kind of a mess. Hopefully, I understood what you were asking for and the organization is more to your liking. I'm happy to make more changes, just let me know what you're looking for. In the meantime, I'll be looking for more things to add to the legacy section. Skyes(BYU) (talk) 18:06, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
@Skyes(BYU): Results in the article are looking much enhanced after your overnight edits. There is actually a small cottage industry of articles comparing John Williams to him in the press. Just type in their 2 names next to each other on Google search and the list should show up. Regarding the music score for King Kong, do you know if he was involved in the scoring of the tribal chanting used to conjure King Kong to appear at the start of the film, or was that someone else. Separately, the re-organized biography section looks much improved with the years added to section titles. JohnWickTwo (talk) 18:16, 14 August 2018 (UTC)
@JohnWickTwo:, I tried looking for those articles you mentioned about Williams. I don't know if I found exactly what you were referring to, but I found some stuff regardless and added that in the legacy section. As far as your question about the chanting in Kong, I did some research and he did in fact score the tribal music. I added a sentence in that section to reflect that. Thanks for that question! Is there anything else I can do for you? Skyes(BYU) (talk) 20:00, 14 August 2018 (UTC)


### Closing assessment
A remarkable effort in the last day or two has really enhanced the article. If further enhancement is intended then I would suggest that the Techniques section currently has an orphan section. That's easily addressed by either dropping the sub-section heading for 'Techniques' or possibly refactoring its entire parent section into 3 sections such as (I) Music as background to dialogue, (II) Leitmotifs, and (III) your current closing paragraph there introduces a third topic which could optionally be titled accordingly; or something like that to get around the orphan section you currently have in the article. The other optional improvement might be to re-organize a new Influence section to include your current Influence section along with its Accolades section as both under the same section title with 2 sub-sections. Awards sections are often titled as "Industry recognition" sections. The other section there might be titled as "Legacy among composers" Otherwise for the article as a whole, the images are informative and have instructive captions. The writing is well-organized and well presented. The article is neutral in tone and does not appear to have original research. The citations to the article are fully formatted and well researched, and the article is passed. JohnWickTwo (talk) 21:18, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Please correct the introduction.
The introduction wrongly says that Max Steiner was "threatened with internment in Germany during World War I" and "he fled to England" (paragraph 2, sentence 2).
But the "Biography" section says that "Upon returning to Vienna [...] Having difficulties finding work, he moved to London [...] He stayed in London for eight years [...] But the beginning of World War I in 1914 led him to be interned as an enemy alien" (under the subheading "Beginning music career (1907-1914)" paragraph 2 sentences 7, 8, 10, and paragraph 3 sentence 2).
And that makes sense, because Steiner was Austrian, so that he was a national of the Axis and not a national of the Allies. keenuck (talk) 09:49, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Hi keenuck, thanks for pointing that out. I was able to access a newer biography of Steiner and it said that he was never interned (but you are correct that he would have been interned in England). I think that I corrected the information. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 18:44, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
Hi, Rachel, thanks for doing some work on this. Do you think the second paragraph also needs to be changed? It says 'Threatened with internment in Germany ...'. That is the paragraph that begins 'Steiner was a child prodigy ...' near the beginning of the whole article. keenuck (talk) 08:27, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
I have changed it to 'England' in the second paragraph. keenuck (talk) 14:10, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

oops, I missed that mention, thanks. Incidentally, I think the 2020 Steiner biography looks really good and could probably replace some of the harder-to-find sources we used on this page (my student expanded it in 2018). I've put it on our worklist. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:51, 22 February 2023 (UTC)
Excellent, Rachel, looking forward to see that new info about Steiner keenuck (talk) 11:06, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

"After the underscoring of Symphony of Six Million, a third to half of the success of most films was 'attributed to the extensive use of music.'"
I know it has a citation, but how can you measure the success of "most films" in fractions? This is truly a meaningless statement, even if someone really said it. 2601:643:8D00:970:4901:BF0C:C666:A5D1 (talk) 05:24, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree that it doesn't really make sense. Here is the quote in Google Books. It's from a selection written by Steiner himself. I tried to change the body to have a little more accurate context of what Steiner was saying--does it make sense now? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 15:36, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

"Steiner took advantage of this offer and used an eighty-piece orchestra, explaining the film 'was made for music.'"
It's doubtful the orchestra was that large. First of all, most sources say 46 musicians played on the soundtrack. Secondly, since recording techniques were primitive, many instruments we expect in an orchestra today were missing, as they could not effectively be recorded—double basses, for example. The violin section sounds small, and is probably not more than 20 musicians. And an 80 piece orchestra would have been larger than the epic orchestras used today for the symphonies and concertos of even Brahms! The London Symphony Orchestra that recorded Star Wars only had eight-odd regular musicians, and for some of the battle music added percussion and some freelancers to bring the count up to nearly 100. But it's doubtful an 80 piece orchestra could even have been successfully recorded with early 1930s technology. Classical recordings (of even Mahler) in those days used reduced forces by necessity. 2601:643:8D00:970:4901:BF0C:C666:A5D1 (talk) 05:28, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I was able to verify that it was an 80-piece orchestra with the snippet from the cited book on Google books. The new Steiner biography, Music By Max Steiner confirms that Cooper gave Steiner a blank check to make the score as impressive as possible, and says that Steiner used the "largest orchestra possible" (p. 100). I can put a hold on Musique fantastique at my library, but it sounds like you may not believe this source is accurate. Which sources say that he used 46 musicians? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 15:28, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I keep reading the statement that as a boy Steiner studied piano from Johannes Brahms; but I am having difficulty finding any substantial source to back this claim other than the simple stand-alone (trivia) statement. If he did study with Brahms, being born in 1888, and Brahms dying in 1897, at what age? and when? Brahms was doubting himself as a composer by 1890; I can't imagine him being a piano teacher at this stage in his life. Is there any truth to this? Maineartists (talk) 23:05, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

where did you read that? I agree that it sounds inaccurate. The newest biography of Steiner, Steven Smith's Music by Max Steiner doesn't have an entry for Brahms in its index, indicating that he's not mentioned in the book. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 18:35, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Steiner's godfather was Gustav Adolf König, the sexton of the Protestant city church in Vienna.--Suessmayr (talk) 20:14, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi Suessmayr, it looks like the source for the claim that Richard Strauss was Steiner's godfather is a now-defunct website for a series on Hollywood in Vienna. I agree that it's not the most reliable source. Do you have a source for Steiner's godfather being König? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 21:14, 20 May 2025 (UTC)
The source concerning Steiner's protestant baptism on July 14, 1894, is public and easy to find: Vienna, Stadtkirche 1894, 149.--Suessmayr (talk) 14:56, 22 August 2025 (UTC)