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André Previn, 1929-2019
Composer André Previn died on February 28, 2019, at home in Manhattan, New York, after a short illness. He was 89.
André George Previn was born in April 1929, in Berlin, Germany, and he showed early musical talent and began studying piano and composition as a child. Fleeing Nazi persecution, Previn’s family emigrated to Los Angeles in 1938, where his uncle Charles Previn, a music director at Universal Studios, introduced him to Hollywood’s burgeoning film industry. He graduated from Beverly Hills High School – where he was a classmate of Richard M. Sherman – and he went to work at MGM Studios as a teenager in the 1940s, where he quickly became a key figure in their music department. Over two decades, he composed, arranged, and conducted music for over 50 films. His film scores displayed a sophisticated blend of lush orchestration and accessibility, contributing significantly to the Golden Age of Hollywood.
His first scores were written when he was still in his early 20s, and he worked on a wide range of films, from westerns like Bad Day at Black Rock (1954) and The Fastest Gun Alive (1956) to dramatic epics like Elmer Gantry (1960) and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1961), and lighthearted comedies like The Music Lovers (1970). His scores often reflected his classical training, jazz influences, and innate ability to capture the emotional essence of a story. Read more…
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