Music and Sound in Silent Film: From the Nickelodeon to The Artist PDF
Preview Music and Sound in Silent Film: From the Nickelodeon to The Artist
Music and Sound in Silent Film Despite their name, the silent films of the early cinematic era were frequently accompanied by music and other sound elements of many kinds, including mechanical instruments, live performers, and audience sing-alongs. The 12 chapters in this concise book explore the multitude of functions filled by music in the rapidly changing context of the silent film era, as the concept of cinema itself developed. Examples are drawn from around the globe and across the history of silent film, both during the classic era of silent film and later uses of the silent format. With contributors drawn from film studies and music disciplines, and including both senior and emerging scholars, Music and Sound in Silent Film offers an essential introduction to the origins of film music and the cinematic art form. Ruth Barton is Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Trinity College Dublin. She is the author of Irish National Cinema, Acting Irish in Hollywood: From Fitzgerald to Farrell, Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film, and Rex Ingram: Visionary Director of the Silent Screen. Simon Trezise is Associate Professor in the Department of Music, Trinity College Dublin. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to French Music. Routledge Music and Screen Media Series Series Editor: Neil Lerner The Routledge Music and Screen Media Series offers edited collections of origi- nal essays on music, in particular genres of cinema, television, video games, and new media. These edited essay collections are written for an interdisci- plinary audience of students and scholars of music and film and media studies. Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle Edited by Stephen C. Meyer Music and Sound in Documentary Film Edited by Holly Rogers Music in Video Games: Studying Play Edited by K.J. Donnelly, William Gibbons, and Neil Lerner The Music Documentary: Acid Rock to Electropop Edited by Robert Edgar, Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, and Benjamin Halligan Music in Science Fiction Television: Tuned to the Future Edited by K.J. Donnelly and Philip Hayward Music, Sound and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema Edited by James Wierzbicki Music in the Western: Notes from the Frontier Edited by Kathryn Kalinak Music in Television: Channels of Listening Edited by James Deaville Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear Edited by Neil Lerner Music and Sound in Silent Film From the Nickelodeon to The Artist Edited by Ruth Barton and Simon Trezise First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Ruth Barton and Simon Trezise to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the contributors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Trezise, Simon, editor. | Barton, Ruth, editor. Title: Music and sound in silent film from the nickelodeon to the artist / Simon Trezise and Ruth Barton. Other titles: Routledge music and screen media series. Description: New York : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Routledge music and screen media series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018041098| ISBN 9781138245341 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138245358 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781315276274 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Silent film music—History and criticism. Classification: LCC ML2075 .M87552 2019 | DDC 781.5/42—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041098 ISBN: 978-1-138-24534-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-24535-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-27627-4 (ebk) Typeset in Goudy by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK Editor: Genevieve Aoki Senior Editorial Assistant: Peter Sheehy Editorial Assistant: John Makowski Production Editor: Katherine Finn Copy Editor: Andrew Craddock Cover Design: Jo Griffin Contents About the Editors vii About the Contributors viii Historical Introduction 1 SIMON TREZISE PART I The Evolution of Sound and Performance Practices: The American Experience 23 1 ‘Better Music at Smaller Cost’: Selling Mechanical Instruments to American Motion Picture Houses in the 1910s 25 ALLISON WENTE AND JAMES BUHLER 2 Cue Sheets, Musical Suggestions, and Performance Practices for Hollywood Films, 1908–1927 45 KENDRA PRESTON LEONARD 3 Sing Them Again: Audience Singing in Silent Film 61 MALCOLM COOK PART II The Evolution of Sound and Performance Practices: The Global Experience 77 4 ‘Players Must Be of a Good Class’: Women and Concert Musicians in Irish Picture Houses, 1910–1920 79 DENIS CONDON vi Contents 5 Music, Gender, and the Feminisation of British Silent Cinema, 1909–1929 93 LARAINE PORTER PART III Synchronisation and Scoring: Historical Practices 109 6 Music’s Role in the Development of the ‘Mute’ Feature Film: Ben Hur and Wings 111 GILLIAN B. ANDERSON 7 Edmund Meisel’s Score to Der heilige Berg (1926): Prefiguring Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’ Narrative-Scoring Practices in Live Performance 124 FIONA FORD PART IV Synchronisation and Scoring: Contemporary Reworkings 147 8 Carl Davis Interview 149 SIMON TREZISE 9 Scenes from Ozu 160 ED HUGHES 10 Rediscovering a Film, Revisiting a Film, Damaging a Film: A Musical Comparison of Three DVD Editions of Nosferatu 174 EMILIO AUDISSINO 11 Electroacoustic Composition and Silent Film 187 NICHOLAS BROWN 12 The ‘Silent’ Film in Modern Times 198 JAMES WIERZBICKI Index 209 About the Editors Ruth Barton Ruth Barton is Associate Professor in Film Studies at Trinity College Dublin. She is the author of a number of publications on Irish cinema, including Irish National Cinema (Routledge, 2004) and Acting Irish in Hollywood (Irish Academic Press, 2006). She has written critical biographies of the Hollywood star Hedy Lamarr, Hedy Lamarr, The Most Beautiful Woman in Film (University Press of Kentucky, 2010), and the Irish silent era director Rex Ingram, Rex Ingram, Visionary Director of the Silent Screen (University Press of Kentucky, 2014). She is currently preparing a new monograph on Irish cinema, Irish Cinema in the Twenty-First Century, for Manchester University Press. Simon Trezise Simon Trezise is Associate Professor in the Department of Music, Trinity College Dublin. His interests include phonomusicology, performance prac- tice, Debussy and French music of the late Romantic period, the Hollywood musical, and film music. Recent publications include ‘Britten, Elgar, Harty’, in Dirigieren und Komponieren (Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, in press); editor, Cambridge Companion to French Music (Cambridge University Press, 2014); ‘The Recorded Document: Interpretation and Discography’, in Eric Clarke, Nicholas Cook, Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, and John Rink (editors), The Cambridge Companion to Recorded Music (Cambridge University Press, 2009); and ‘Elgar’s Recordings’, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 5, 2008. About the Contributors Gillian B. Anderson Gillian B. Anderson is an orchestral conductor and a musicologist (see www. gilliananderson.it). With Ron Sadoff, she is a co-editor and co-organiser of Music and the Moving Image (the journal and the annual conference at NYU). She premiered her most recent reconstruction, Lubitsch’s Rosita (1923), for MoMA at the opening of the Venice Film Festival (2017). Her publications include Music for Silent Film (1988), a translation of Ennio Morricone and Sergio Miceli’s Composing for the Cinema (2013), and ‘The Shock of the Old’ in The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound (2017). Emilio Audissino A film scholar and a film musicologist, Emilio Audissino (University of Southampton) holds one PhD in History of Visual and Performing Arts from the University of Pisa, Italy, and one PhD in Film Studies from the University of Southampton, UK. He specialises in Hollywood and Italian cinema, and his interests are film analysis, film style and technique, comedy, horror, and film sound and music. He is the author of the monograph John Williams’s Film Music: ‘Jaws’, ‘Star Wars’, ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ and the Return of the Classical Hollywood Music Style (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), the first book- length study in English on the composer. His book Film/Music Analysis: A Film Studies Approach (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) concerns a method to analyse music in films that blends neoformalism and gestalt psychology. Nicholas Brown Nicholas Brown is a composer, performer, and writer. His musical works have been presented at international festivals and venues such as the BBC Promenade Concerts; Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival; Science Gallery, Dublin; Cambridge Festival of Ideas; Haarlem Koorbiennale (NL); and the Three Choirs Festival (UK). He has also composed two scores for Contributors ix silent films, which have been released by the British Film Institute. As a writer, he has published articles on issues in contemporary musical practice, especially the use of digital technologies in computer-assisted composition. He holds the post of Ussher Assistant Professor in Sonic Arts at Trinity College Dublin and is an Associate Researcher at the Orpheus Institute, Ghent. See www.nicholasbrown.co.uk. James Buhler James Buhler received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, he taught at Carleton College and the University of Wisconsin—Madison. His research interests include the history and theory of the soundtrack, auditory culture, and critical theory. He has published extensively in edited anthologies, as well as in Nineteenth-Century Music, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Cambridge Opera Journal, and Modernism/Modernity, among others. Along with David Neumeyer and Caryl Flinn, Professor Buhler edited a collection of essays on film music for Wesleyan University Press (2000). He is also author with David Neumeyer and Rob Deemer of Hearing the Movies, a textbook on music and sound in film for Oxford University Press (2009). He is currently working on a book dealing with the auditory culture of early American cinema. Denis Condon Denis Condon lectures on cinema at the School of English, Media and Theatre Studies, NUI Maynooth, where his research and teaching inter- ests include Irish cinema, early cinema and popular culture, Hollywood, and documentary. He is the author of Early Irish Cinema, 1895–1921 (Irish Academic Press, 2008). Malcolm Cook Malcolm Cook is a Lecturer in Film at the University of Southampton. He has published a number of chapters and articles on animation, early cinema, and their intermedial relationships. These include explorations of the connections between silent film and music in relation to sing-along films in Britain in the 1920s, European abstract animation in the same period, and the use of music in the work of Len Lye. His monograph Early British Animation: From Page and Stage to Cinema Screens was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. Fiona Ford Dr Fiona Ford wrote her doctoral thesis on The Film Music of Edmund Meisel (1894–1930), parts of which have been published in The Sounds of the Silents in
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