August 6 - Mortimer Wilson (The Musical Birthday Series, 5th Annual Cycle)

Previous posts for August 6th are here: Barbara Strozzi (2019), Ernesto Lecuona (2020), Leland Smith (2021). and Jean-Baptiste Lully fils (2022)

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Mortimer Wilson (August 6, 1876 – January 27, 1932) was an American composer, theorist, and teacher. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping Score

For the 1924 film The Thief of Bagdad Douglas Fairbanks encouraged Wilson to provide a fully-fledged classical score, unusual at the time. Wilson also wrote the music for Fairbanks’s next two films, Don Q. Son of Zorro (1925) and The Black Prince (1926). – Wikipedia

Before the movie screen had sound

Douglas Fairbanks Sr found

That Mortimer Wilson could compose

Music for these silent shows,

And thus it was that Fairbanks chose

To match his own swashbuckling thrills

With Mortimer Wilson’s musical skills.

Wilson, as a Reger student,

Might have thought such work imprudent,

But then remembered that his teacher

Was not alive to see the feature.

 

 

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