American composer, originally from Ukraine. He worked mainly in the genre of film music, a four-time winner of the "Oscar" award.
Biography
Kremenchuk
Dmytro Zinoviovych Tyomkin was born in Kremenchuk on May 10, 1894 in a Jewish family. His father, Zinovii Ionovych Tyomkin, was a doctor and in the early 1890s opened a medical practice in Kremenchuk, Poltava province. He married Maria Davydivna Tartakovska, a representative of one of the most famous Jewish families in the city. Maria's brother (Dmytro's uncle) Moisei Davidovich Tartakovsky was a well-known dentist in the city. Maria Tartakovska was a music teacher, she taught piano. It was she who gave the first music lessons to little Dmytro. At one time, Tyomkin described his mother as "small, blond, cheerful and lively." Together with Dmytro, his two sisters - Tatyana and Zhanna - studied music. In 1900, the Temkin family lived in a house on the street. Khersonskaya. (modern name is Leytenanta Pokladova Street). The record in the title of the Poltava province in 1904 indicates that in 1904 the Temkin family already lived in another place in Kremenchuk, on Doctor's Street (now Akademik Maslov Street).
Petersburg
In 1907, at the age of thirteen, he became a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. There he studied piano with Felix Blumenfeld and Izabela Vengerova, and composition with Oleksandr Glazunov. He earned a living by taking music lessons and accompanying silent films (which gave him his first experience in film music), and in his spare time he visited the famous cabaret "Stray Dog", a haven of bohemians and modernists (he was accompanied, in particular, by his fellow student Sergei Prokofiev and famous dancer Mykhailo Fokin.It was in this cabaret that he first got acquainted with American music - "Alexander's Ragtime Band" by Irving Berlin and other works in the style of ragtime, blues and early jazz.
After the events of 1917, while serving in the political administration of the Petrograd Military District, Tyomkin participated in the preparation and musical decoration of Bolshevik holidays, in particular the May Day "Mystery of Freed Labor" and the large-scale staging of the "Storm of the Winter Palace" (November 7, 1920), in which more than a thousand performers were involved , including 500 musicians.
But life in Bolshevik Russia gave little hope for success in a musical career, and Tyomkin soon left St. Petersburg.
Berlin (1921—1923), Paris (1924—1925)
In 1921, Tyomkin left for Berlin, where his father, who worked as an assistant to the famous Paul Ehrlich, lived at the time (by the way, sometimes you can find statements that the year of birth of Dmitry Tyomkin is 1899, but this mistake happened because the father deliberately falsified the date in Dmytro's passport to hide his real age from his second wife). In Berlin, the young pianist took lessons from Ferruccio Busoni and his students Egon Petri and Michael von Tsadora, and in 1924 he went on tour to Paris, and from there, on the recommendation of Fyodor Chaliapin, to the United States, where he first accompanied the ballet company in which he met his future wife Albertina Rush.
In 1928, Tiomkin had a huge success in Paris, where he performed as a soloist at the European premiere of George Gershwin's Piano Concerto.
New York (1925-1929)
Hollywood (1929—1967)
Tiomkin's Hollywood career began in 1929, to which he initially owed his wife (Albertina prepared the choreography for three musicals of the Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer company that year, and Dmytro wrote the music). From the beginning of the thirties, he became one of the leading composers of Hollywood. His music for "cowboy" films and westerns was particularly successful. When asked how a person from the Slavic lands can so well feel and embody the poetry of the plains of the American West in music, the composer answered, referring to his origin from Ukraine: "Because the steppe is the steppe!" (it should be emphasized that he did not use prairie, which is familiar to America, but the word of Ukrainian origin, steppe).
During the Second World War, Tiomkin composed music for several documentaries, for which he received a special award from the US Department of War.
In 1953, he won two "Oscars" at once - for the music for the film "High Noon" and for the song "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'" from the same film. He received two more "Oscars" for the music for the films "The High and the Mighty" (1955) and "The Old Man and the Sea" (1959) based on Hemingway's novel.
Return to Europe (1968-1979)
Tyomkin not only wrote film music, but also acted as a producer (known in the former USSR for the western "McKenna's Gold", 1969).
In 1967, after burying his beloved wife and surviving an attack by robbers, Tyomkin left for Europe, where he lived until the end of his life. Among his works of recent years is the music for the film "Tchaikovsky" (Mosfilm, 1970).
He was awarded two French orders of the Legion of Honor (cavalier and officer of the order) and the Spanish Cross of the Knight of the Order of Isabella the Catholic.
Memory
On February 16, 2016, by the decision of the Kremenchug City Council of the Poltava Region to implement laws on decommunizationin Ukraine, one of Kremenchug's lanes (Krupska lane) was renamed in honor of Dmytro Tyomkin.
Awards
Among many other awards, Dmytro Tyomkin has four Academy Awards:
1953
for the best score for the film "High Noon" (1952)
for the best song for the same film (the song "Don't Leave Me, My Darling")
1955
for Best Music for The High and the Mighty (1954)
1959
for the best score for the film "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958)
and six Golden Globes:
1953
The best music for the film - the film "High Noon" (1952)
1961
The best music for the film - the film "The Alamo" (1960)
1962
The best music for the film - the film "Cannons of Navaron Island" (1961)
The best song "Ruthless City" from the "film" of the same name (1961)
1965
The best music for the film - the film "The Fall of the Roman Empire" (1964)
Best Song "Circus World" from the film of the same name (1964)
