Dimitri Tiomkin

Dimitri Tiomkin (born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, 10 May 1894; died in London, 11 November 1979) was a Ukrainian-born composer and pianist who spent much of his career in Hollywood. His name is closely associated with classic film music, particularly the western and the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock.

Tiomkin studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory with Blumenfeld and Glazunov, and later in Berlin with Petri, Zadora and Busoni. After the First World War he made his debut as a concert pianist in Berlin and, in 1928, gave the European premiere of Gershwin's Concierto en fa at the Paris Opera. In 1929 he moved to Hollywood accompanying his first wife, the choreographer Albertina Rasch. The success of his score for Horizontes perdidos opened the door to an intensive career as a film composer. During the Second World War he worked mainly on war documentaries, but in 1952 he achieved great renown with the score for Solo ante el peligro, which was based on songs. By the time he settled in London in 1968, after leaving Hollywood, he had worked on some 140 films and had been nominated for the Academy Award for original score or song on 23 occasions. He won the Oscar for best score for Más allá de las nubes, La vieja y el mar and Solo ante el peligro, the last of which he shared with the award for best song.

Tiomkin came to composition late: he was over forty when his film career truly took off and nearly sixty when his mature style was consolidated. His scores reflect the colour of Russian and French concert music. He maintained the melodic emphasis typical of 1940s cinema but, in the 1950s, adopted a more rhythmic, energetic and compact style. His orchestration evolved from textures dominated by strings towards a more colourful palette, featuring a solo voice and wordless choir. He composed for very diverse genres: the western (Duelo al sol, Gigante, El Álamo), the thriller (Extraños en un tren, Yo confieso and Crimen perfecto, by Hitchcock), adventure (Los cañones de Navarone and 55 días en Pekín) and science fiction (La cosa, from 1951).

His approach favoured instinctive emotional involvement with the drama rather than an intellectual interpretation of the narrative. The ballad that serves as the central theme in Duelo en el OK Corral is said to evoke the chorus of Greek tragedy. He preferred to get involved from the earliest stages of production, although he took audience expectations into account, as Río Rojo shows. His legacy lies in having demonstrated that the song could function as a narrative device in film and in leaving an extensive body of work that remains associated with the classic western.