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Miklós Rózsa
April 18, 1907 - July 27, 1995
born in Budapest, Hungary, composed during the Modern period
Biography
Miklos Rozsa already had a promising career as a composer in the concert hall when he started writing movie scores in the mid-1930s. By the end of that decade, he was working on the most expensive movie being made in England, and by the end of the decade that followed, he was under contract to the biggest studio in Hollywood.

Born into a well-to-do family in Budapest, Rozsa's musical sensibilities were shaped by his contact with the Magyar peasants who lived around his father's summer estate. As a boy he could read music before he could read words, and proved a natural musician, taking up the violin at age six. His earliest influences as a student were Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály, who were regarded as dangerous radicals at the time. After studying at the Leipzig Conservatory, Rozsa embarked on a career as a composer and saw early success with his Variations On a Hungarian Peasant Song and his Theme, Variations and Finale -- the latter entered the repertory of several major conductors, including Bruno Walter, in the mid-1930s, and Rozsa received encouragement in his career from none other than Richard Strauss. He began writing music for films at the inspiration and suggestion of his friend Arthur Honegger -- Rozsa needed the income, and he liked the idea of writing music that would get performed and recorded quickly.
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