Dmitri Tiompkin
2004 WMA Hall of Fame Member

Dmitri Tiomkin

Dmitri Tiompkin was born near the plains of Russia near the end of the 19th century. Years later, he was asked how someone who was born so far from America's plains could write majestic melodies so evocative of the grandeur of the West. He replied, in essence, because plains are plains! But Tiompkin's journey to the American West took a circuitous route.
He began studying music at age 5, in a family of concert musicians. He grew up on classical music and fell in love with ballet. Later, he was to marry a ballet dancer, who played an important role in his career. But it was the need to make a living, early on, that helped him develop the skills he needed to become one of the most prolific and respected composers in Hollywood. He played piano in a movie theater in the silent era. Watching the screen, he began to improvise, composing music as he played, to match the action and mood he perceived in the movie. It was his first attempt at scoring background music!
Tiompkin composed music for many kinds of films, winning him a remarkable 23 Oscars, but he is best remembered for his Western melodies. Writer John Stanley has said that Tiompkin's work was the musical counterpart to a Remington painting. His music played a vital role in communicating a picture's mood.
He composed scores for films starring John Wayne, e.g. Red River, The Alamo and Rio Bravo, and commented that Wayne's voice had a pitch and timbre that fit almost any instrumentation, making it easy to write for his films. Two of his Oscars were for one Western film, the score and the title song from High Noon. And he was the first composer to have his theme music turned into Top-Ten hits (four of them)!
The list of his best-known Western compositions includes scores from High Noon, Rio Bravo and Red River, the themes from Gunfight at OK Corral and Giant, music from The Alamo, including "The Green Leaves of Summer," and tv themes from "Rawhide" and "Gunslinger."