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THE EARLY YEARS
JEROME MOROSS was born in Brooklyn on August 1, 1913, into a family of émigrés from Russia, one of many who settled in the ethnic neighborhoods of New York’s Lower East Side and started businesses in the early years of the twentieth century. Moross quickly established his intellectual and musical talents, playing the piano from the age of five and composing when he was eight. As a teenager, Moross became friends with Bernard Herrmann (1911-1975), who would also distinguish himself as an important composer, and the two listened to or played as much modern repertoire as they could find. Moross first encountered Herrmann when he was 14 years old, and described the event in a later interview: We were in a German class, and I was sitting in the back of the room so the teacher shouldn’t disturb me while I was composing, and I looked up and I saw a boy sitting across the aisle, twirling his hair and studying the Mahler Fifth Symphony in a Eulenberg miniature score. . . . He looked at me, and he said “Do you know Mahler?” and I said, “Mahler stinks” or something like that . . . He got quite angry and grabbed what I was writing, looked at it, tossed it back at me, and said, “Dishwater Tchaikovsky!”[i]
Thus began a friendship that lasted until Herrmann’s death as Moross and Herrmann pursued their love of music together. They performed each other’s compositions, and eventually formed a trio with Hermann’s young brother, Louis, who played the cello. Together the three sought paying engagements wherever possible, in jazz bands, at dances and in theater pits. Moross also composed incidental music for what he described as “the equivalent of off-Broadway plays.”[ii] Moross reflected on their relationship, “An almost brotherly closeness existed for years until, frankly, I felt I had to break out from under his grasp. But whenever we met again the old bonds were renewed with the first greeting.”[iii]
Thus began a friendship that lasted until Herrmann’s death as Moross and Herrmann pursued their love of music together. They performed each other’s compositions, and eventually formed a trio with Hermann’s young brother, Louis, who played the cello. Together the three sought paying engagements wherever possible, in jazz bands, at dances and in theater pits. Moross also composed incidental music for what he described as “the equivalent of off-Broadway plays.”[ii] Moross reflected on their relationship, “An almost brotherly closeness existed for years until, frankly, I felt I had to break out from under his grasp. But whenever we met again the old bonds were renewed with the first greeting.”[iii]