Jerome Moross

Jerome Moross (August 1, 1913 – July 25, 1983) was an American-born composer for the stage, and a composer, conductor and orchestrator for motion pictures.

Biography

He was born in New York City in 1913. He became a talented piano player and composed music for the theater. In the 1940s he began to work in Hollywood, where he would compose music for 16 films from 1948 to 1969.

His best known film score is that for the 1958 movie The Big Country, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Original Music Score. According to Moross, he composed the main title after recalling a walk he took in the flat lands around Albuquerque shortly before he moved to Hollywood in the late 1930s.

Among his other works include the music for the films The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1960), The Cardinal (1963), and Rachel, Rachel (1968). He also composed the main theme to the 3rd–8th seasons of the TV series Wagon Train and was a composer on many other films.

He also orchestrated for other composers, including such films as Our Town for Aaron Copland and The Best Years of Our Lives for Hugo Friedhofer.

Moross's concert works include a symphony (whose premiere was conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham), a sonata for two pianos and string quartet.

Moross died in Miami in 1983 of congestive heart failure following a stroke.

Work on Broadway

• Mother (1935) - play - co-incidental music composer
• Susanna and the Elders (1948) - one-act musical - composer
• Willie the Weeper (1948) - one-act musical - composer
• The Eccentricities of Davey Crockett (1948) - one-act musical - composer
• The Golden Apple (1954) - musical - composer

References

• Bloom, Ken. American song. The complete musical theater companion. 1877–1995’’, Vol. 2, 2nd edition, Schirmer Books, 1996.
• Borroff, Edith; Clark, J. Bunker. American Opera. A Checklist, Harmonie Park Press, 1992.
• Larkin, Colin. The Encyclopedia of Popular Music, Third edition, Macmillan, 1998.
• Press, Jaques Cattell (Ed.). Who's who in American Music. Classical, First edition. R. R. Bowker, New York 1983.
• Sadie, Stanley. The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians, Macmillan, 1980.
• Sadie, Stanley; Hitchcock, H. Wiley (Ed.). The New Grove Dictionary of American Music. Grove's Dictionaries of Music, 1986.
• Wescott, Steven D. A Comprehensive Bibliography of Music for Film and Television, Information Coordinatores, 1985.

External links

• Official site
• Jerome Moross Papers at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University
• Jerome Moross at the Internet Movie Database
• Jerome Moross at the Internet Broadway Database

Persondata
Name	Moross, Jerome
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	August 1, 1913
Place of birth
Date of death	July 25, 1983
Place of death