Biography
Ernst Toch was an Austrian composer of classical music and film scores. Born in Vienna in 1887, he studied music in Frankfurt and taught in Mannheim and Berlin before emigrating in 1933 following the Nazi rise to power. He worked briefly in Paris and London before settling in the United States.
In Hollywood he composed scores for Paramount and other studios, including Peter Ibbetson (1935), The Cat and the Canary (1939), The Ghost Breakers (1940) and Dr. Cyclops (1940). He received Academy Award nominations for three of his film scores. Toch also taught composition and philosophy at the University of Southern California from 1937 to 1948.
His concert works include seven symphonies; the Third Symphony (1955) won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1956. He became a naturalised American citizen in 1940 and died in Los Angeles in 1964.
