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Film Music: The Material, Literature and Present State of ResearchAuthor(s): MARTIN MARKSSource: Journal of the University Film and Video Association, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Winter 1982),pp. 3-40Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20686878 .Accessed: 12/04/2011 14:12
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Film Music: The Material, Literature and Present State of Research
MARTIN MARKS
/. The Material
From the time of the first public demon stration of a Lumiere CinSmatographe, for which a pianist is said to have impro vised an accompaniment, until today's wide-screen features with their multi channeled, tape-recorded scores, there
has always been music for motion pic
MARTIN MARKS is a doctoral candidate at Harvard University and is completing a
dissertation on music for silent films. He is
Lecturer in Music at MIT. His article on film music appeared originally in Notes: The Quar
terly Journal of the Music Library Associ ation 36 (December 1979): 282-325, and was
awarded recognition by that journal as the
best article-length bibliography by a young scholar in 1979.
Copyright? 1982 by Martin Marks.
Author's Note: To anyone with a sense of
history, three years will not seem to be much
time; but in our fast-motion century, it is time
enough to witness several important additions to the literature of film music. These I have tried to incorporate into this reprint. Insofar as it was possible, both the discussion of
recent literature and the bibliography have been brought up to date. Also, several minor
corrections (and I hope a few improvements) have been made. Yet I did not see the
necessity, just yet, of altering the article in
any more fundamental way than this. The pur
pose of this reprint is not so much to make it au courant, as it is to make it accessible to a
different readership. Three years ago I was
grateful to William McClellan, for allowing this survey to be published in Notes; now I am
indebted to Timothy Lyons, for giving it the chance to reach a new audience ?one which I
hope will join me in charting the many cur
rents of film music research. Corrections, ad
ditions, and comments on this article may be
sent to me c/o Kirkland House C-13, Harvard
University, Cambridge, MA 02138.
tures.1 The pictures have fostered an abundant and rich variety of music making, which for more than eight decades has affected us in ways both simple and subtle. Yet most of us have a very poor knowledge of what film music is all about. Why should there be this dis crepancy? Why are the facts of film music not widely understood? Why should Peter Odegard, in a review of two recently published musicological ref erence works, have to take both to task for all but ignoring film music, "the most widely dispersed repertoire being performed today, and hence in its pecu liar way, the most influential"?2
The answer, first of all, derives from the nature of the medium. Because film com
inventors August and Louis Lumiere were the first to project motion pictures for
public amusement, within the Salon Indien of the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capu cines, Paris, 28 December 1895, according to Kenneth MacGowan, Behind the Screen: The
History and Techniques of the Motion Picture (New York: Dell, 1965), pp. 80-81. Although the presence of a pianist at the premier is asserted in many books, few give more specific infor
mation; but Oscar Messter, who premiered films in Berlin during October 1896, wrote in his autobiography Mein Weg mit dem Film (1936): "Ich kenne kein ?ffentichen Filmvorf?
rungen ohne Begleitmusik" ? cited by Konrad
Ottenheym, "Film und Musik bis zur Einf?h
rung des Tonfilms," Diss. Friedrich-Wilhelm, Berlin 1944, p. 3.
2Review of the Dictionary of Contem
porary Music, ed. John Vinton (New York:
Dutton, 1974) and The New Oxford History of Music, VoL X: The Modern Age, 1890-1960, ed. Martin Cooper (London: Oxford, 1974) in Journal of the American Musicological Society 19(1976): 155.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 3
municates (at least potentially) through a
conjunction of visual and auditory signals, research into film music requires an understanding of not one but two non verbal systems of communication, as well as the problematical jargons with which we attempt to describe each of them in
speech. In this age of specialized studies, few scholars have been able to master more than half of the subject. Those in film have been preoccupied with the broad essentials of its history and theory, with the result that music has been granted mostly cursory con sideration.3 The subject also stands on the periphery of musicology. That disci
pline, little older than film itself, has em
phasized the historical study of Western fine-art and folk idioms, along with the
ethnological study of music in other cul tures; relatively little attention has been
given to recent music in the professional and popular idioms ?the idioms through which film music usually communicates.4 Even as musicological attention to recent music grows, moreover, film music's
share remains minimal. The reference works reviewed by Odegard are good ex
amples; and more generally, when music
textbooks bring up film music, they do so
only to mention a respected composer's venture into the film world.5 Otherwise, this peculiar hybrid idiom is ignored.
Film music is indeed a peculiar subject, not only because it straddles two disci
plines, but also because its material
poses many problems for the researcher. This is a point that even Odegard ap parently overlooks. Through his choice of words he associates film music with con cert music as comprising a "repertoire," from which (presumably) selections are
"performed." Between these two kinds of music, however, a fundamental distinc
tion must be made: unlike concert music, film music does not usually come out of, or go into, a repertoire; it exists only as an accompaniment to a film. (One may, however, speak of a repertoire of ar
rangements of film music for concert use, sheet music sales, soundtrack albums, and so on.) Furthermore, since the inven tion of synchronized sound, film music has been heard not in continuous live per formance, but through mechanical repro ductions of many fragmentary perform ances assembled by recording "engi neers." In other words, there not only is no repertoire of film music, there also are no "pieces of film music" at all?only pieces of film, with music photographical ly or electromagnetically inscribed on a
band alongside the image. The primary material of film music, both for the audi ence and the researcher, is not a record
ing or a score, but the film itself.
It would thus appear that for scholarly inquiry into film music to advance, film ought to be studied with music at the center of observation rather than on the periphery?but this is far from an easy thing to do, at least when inside a thea ter. As we view a film, our minds must contend with the ever-changing content of the moving image and the soundtrack. The individual elements (not just music, but also lighting, camera angle, editing, and so forth) are submerged into the flow of images on the screen. Hence the en grossed audience rarely perceives these
3But music has fared somewhat better at the hands of theoreticians than historians, as
in the chapter "Music," in Siegfried Kracauer's
Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (London: Oxford, 1960), pp. 133-56; for other examples, see nn. 40-43.
4Charles Seeger defines these idioms in
"The Music Compositional Process as a Func
tion in a Nest of Functions and in Itself a Nest of Functions," a revision of a 1966 essay in his Studies in Musicology (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1977),
pp. 139-67. On the problems of using words to
describe music, see his "Speech, Music, and
Speech about Music," pp. 16-30.
5As in Daniel Kingman's American Music: A Panorama (New York: Schirmer, 1979), in
which film scores of Copland, Bernstein and Thomson are discussed. William V. Austin's Music in the 20th Century (New York: Nor
ton, 1966) indexes the following names un
der "film music": Auric-Cocteau, Chaplin,
Copland, Eisler, Hindemith, Honegger, Mil haud, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, and Stravin
sky.
4 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
elements consciously; it is simply carried along by the stream of sights and sounds.
The film-viewing experience is in some fundamental sense a passive one; yet film study, like the study of any subject, re
quires an active state of mind. This prob lem has been formulated in many ways, but perhaps never more eloquently than by Walter Benjamin in his profound study of "The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction." That essay, while primarily concerned with the political implications of twentieth-cen tury art, contains this illuminating pass age on the psychology of film perception:
Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a paint ing. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the specta tor can abandon himself to his associa tions. Before the movie frame he can
not do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it is already changed. It cannot be arrested. Du
hamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as follows: "I can no
longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images." The spectator's pro cess of association in view of these im
ages is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change. This consti
tutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cush ioned by heightened presence of
mind.6
Film's ability to "arrest" our contem
plative faculties, advises Benjamin, should be countered by a "heightened presence of mind." For the purposes of film study, however, such mental preparation may not suffice. Even the most attentive (in the analytical sense) viewer has great difficulty in compre
hending all there is in a film ?likewise in remembering just what has been seen and heard after leaving a theater. One must find other ways of taking the film in. For example, it helps both to see a film many times over and to see many films, because repeated viewing dulls the "shock effect" of the medium. One can also use special viewing machines such as movieolas, which facilitate frame-by frame analysis. (Indeed, such machines can be said to convert a film into a suc cession of paintings that "invite the spec tator to contemplation.") Finally, one can consult supplementary materials: scripts for the film and for the music, cue sheets, scores, and recordings.
Of course, all of these materials lead us away from the film as we normally (are meant to) experience it toward inadequate substitutes. "Films cannot be studied in any other way than by seeing them," Raymond Spottiswoode cautions students; "Nothing effective in film cor
responds to the text of a play or a musical score."7 The point is well taken. No writ
ten language can adequately transcribe what the camera sees and the microphone hears. The film text is, in fact, as another writer has put it, an "unquotable text."8 Yet scholars need these other materials, whether deficient or not. For as Benja min has shown, seeing a film and study ing a film can be very nearly antithetical experiences, and the above-named sup
plements help bring them together. Moreover, each of these noncelluloid items has some unique value of its own for research.
Of all these materials, scripts are the most widely used. They are of two differ ent kinds.9 (1) The preproduction or shooting script guides the making of a
6The essay first appeared in the Zeits
chrift fur Sozialforschung. V (1936); the trans lation by Harry Zohn is in Benjamin's Il luminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken, 1969), p. 238.
Grammar of the Film: An Analysis of Film Technique, rev. ed. (1950; reprinted. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali fornia Press, 1969), p. 3.
8Raymond Bellour, 'The Unattainable Text," Screen 16 no. 3 (1975): 20-cited by Claudia Gorbman in "Vigo/Jaubert," Cine Tracts, 1, no. 2 (1977): 65-80.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 5
film. Like a musical score or the text of a
play, it provides a set of directions for a
performance, but with an important dif ference. Scores and play texts are always required to determine each performance anew; however, once a film has been com
pleted, the shooting script loses its original function. (It might be said that a film always is given an identical "per formance"; and this peculiarity dis
tinguishes it from the older dramatic arts.) Thus, like an architect's blueprints or a composer's sketchbook, the script documents one or more stages in the making of the work. In retrospect it
helps to clarify the writer's contribution to this, the most collaborative of arts.10 (2) The postproduction script, usually as sembled by someone other than the film maker or writer, aids in the close analy sis of a film's structure. Publications of this kind have been criticized for falling far short of what is desirable. For ex
ample, when Vlada Petric reviewed all the texts in the Simon & Schuster series of Classic and Modern Film Scripts, he found that "no less than 90 percent of their breakdown of visual and auditory structure is inaccurate, and therefore
useless for serious film study."11 "Use
less" is too strong a word. Even the
vaguest of scripts can be preferable to reliance on frequently unreliable
memories. Petric is right, however, to
push for more accurate publications. There are too many scripts that try to
pass themselves off as plays or novels (or still worse, "novelizations") instead of as what they really are: inadequate but necessary transcriptions of what we see and, to a lesser extent, hear.
The cue sheets that composers use are much less widely known than scripts, but in principle they are little different, be
ing a kind of setting down of sequences from a film in shorthand. Their function, however, is quite special: to link the music to the rest of the film. In the silent period cue sheets provided a series of suggestions for music to be used in ac
companiment, "cued" to the titles and ac tion on the screen. (These will be dis cussed further below, as part of the literature of film music.) Sound film cue sheets, normally prepared by a film's "music editor," describe the action, dialogue and (some) sound effects of scenes for which the composer is to write music. Often the composer works solely from these cue sheets after first viewing the film; hence, they become important clues to the compositional process, tell
ing us what details the composer thought deserving of musical emphasis.12
Often details from cue sheets are copied into scores of film music, as an aid to the conductor during recording sessions.
This combination of cue sheet and score may actually provide a more detailed transcription of (segments from) a film than does a script. By themselves, how ever, scores pose certain problems for re
search. In the silent period a score was like a Platonic "ideal." That is, it was shadowed more or less faithfully in each theatrical cave, with fidelity to the text dependent upon such matters as the number of musicians available and the taste of the music director. Indeed, most silent film music consisted of improvisa tions and compilations of preexistent pieces. Original scores were unusual
9The distinction comes from Roger Man
veil, "Screenwriting." The Intermtional En
cyclopedia of Film (New York: Crown, 1972), p. 449.
10But even the writer's best ideas may not
be written down, according to Gore Vidal;
citing his comical adventures in Hollywood, he
illustrates the serious difficulties involved in
answering the question "Who Makes the Movies?" New York Review of Books, 25 November 1976, pp. 35-39.
u"From a Written Film History to a Visual Film History," Cinema Journal 14, no. 2 (1975): 21. This issue is given over to a "Symposium on the Methodology of Film History," spon sored by the International Federation of Film
Archives in Montreal, 1974; in the "Transcript of Discussion," pp. 47-64, several participants challenge Petric's point of view.
12For examples of sound film cue sheets, see the manuals of Dolan, Hagen, Skiles, and Skinner listed at the end of this article. (N.B., in most cases in the notes I give only abridged references for books devoted to film music; full citations are given in the Bibliography. Section III.)
6 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
(though we do not really know how un usual, since no attempt at a count has been made). As Charles Berg has noted, the very concept of an "original score"
was ambiguous, since many a score said to be "original" was actually a mixture of new and old music "composed by" (read "arranged by") a compiler.13 In short, music for the silent film was a detach able, ever-changing accompaniment; sound film music, on the other hand, is an integral part of an unchanging sound track, with the performed score attached unambiguously to the film. But the value of the score as a tool for study is dimin ished somewhat by the film's integral character. With the exception of the cue sheet transfers mentioned above, scores tell us only about a film's music, without indications of simultaneous dialogue and sound effect. As of yet no very satisfac tory method of transcribing a whole soundtrack has been found, any more than has a method of transcribing film images.14
Only recordings can provide us with inte gral soundtracks. Unfortunately, most commercial soundtrack albums are as in
accurate in their own way as script publi cations. The problems with such albums are (1) the music has often been newly ar ranged or recorded (in which case the al bum is now usually dubbed an "original motion picture score" ?"original" again
being an ambiguous term); (2) even genuine "motion picture soundtracks"
are usually abridged and limited to music alone; and (3) they go rapidly out of print and into a highly expensive collector's market.15 It should be noted that film
composers often prefer recordings such as these, simply because they allow the most important music to be clearly heard. For scholarly purposes, however, the most desirable recordings are the studio originals, comprising both the
separate components of a soundtrack and the final "mixed" version.
The accessibility of all these materials is at present a serious problem. Only scripts and soundtracks have been issued in any great number (with the drawbacks al ready noted).16 For the most part scripts, cue sheets, scores and recordings are
scattered in private collections, libraries, and film studios, often uncatalogued. To track any of these items down for a parti cular film requires inordinate amounts of money and time. The studios, moreover, have allowed a great deal of materials to be lost or destroyed. They are still the first place one should inquire, but there is every possibility that the door will be closed to the researcher or that the shelf will be empty.
The picture is dark, to be sure, but the materials are not altogether invisible. At least some studios seem more and more
disposed to make their holdings available. Warner Bros.'s scores, for ex
ample, are now on deposit at the Univer
sity of Southern California and can be consulted by the serious scholar. More
over, many archives and libraries have shown themselves increasingly sensitive to the matter of film music. The two lead
13See Charles Berg. Investigation of the Motives for and Uses of Music to Accompany
the American Silent Film, 1896-1927 (New York: Arno, 1976), p. 158.
14Marie-Claire Ropars-Wuilleumier's "The Disembodied Voice: India Song," Yale French Studies no. 60 (1980): 241-268, analyzes the film's first nine shots with a detailed "tableau" of image and sound tracks side by side ?a
good recent example of what words both can and cannot convey. Gorbman takes up the
problem of transcription and various attemp ted solutions in "Vigo/Jaubert" (n. 8); in my
survey of the literature below, I shall refer to one of those attempts, by Manvell & Huntley in The Technique of Film,Music (1957).
^ee Ken Sutak, "The Investment Market in Movie Music Albums," High Fidelity (July 1972): 62-66.
"Clifford McCarty's Published Screen
plays: A Checklist, Seriff Series [of] Bibli ographies and Checklists, no. 18 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1971), lists 388
films, with an introductory survey of the his
tory of screenplay publications; Manvell, in
"Screenwriting" (n. 9), lists seven complete shot-by-shot analyses of films.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 7
ing institutions in this regard are the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Library of Congress. The former con tains a very large collection of silent film scores, and both silent and sound film scores can be found in abundance at the latter. At this very moment at the
Library of Congress a project is under way to collect, catalogue, and preserve on microfilm the many scores deposited in the Music Division and in the Copy right Office (one of the great "archives" of twentieth-century music) ?with the
hope that studios and composers will be
encouraged to make further large deposits.17 Other significant collections can be found at the Free Library in Phila
delphia18 and at the following univer sities: California (Los Angeles), Califor nia State (Long Beach), Oregon, Southern California (USC), Wisconsin, and Wyoming.19 Of these, USC should be
singled out for having taken a significant step forward: the creation, in 1976, of the Alfred Newman Memorial Library, where not just scores but all the materials pertinent to that composer's
career will be stored.20
What is still greatly needed is a large scale film music archive.21 Although there are now more than eighty film ar chives around the world,22 most of them are not capable of fulfilling this need. Their limited budgets are marked for the preservation and study of films, not film music. Inevitably, their holdings reflect this bias.23 Thus, for many years to come
the only feasible approach may be to strive for a "web" archive: a cooperative network of studios and institutions like those named above. The idea may seem far-fetched, but it is not inconceivable, given the loose bonds which already link the American Film Institute to the
Library of Congress, and the world's ar chives into an International Federaton.
Undoubtedly progress will be made, for there is an ever-strengthening tendency to take films seriously in all their as
pects?as historical documents, as
sociological phenomena, and as works of art. Scholars have written recently of an
"explosion" in film study.24 The larger context is the explosive growth and
17For information on the project, contact
Gillian Anderson, music reference librarian at the library; see also "Early Film Music Collec
tions in the Library of Congress," Main Title
(published by the Entr'acte Recording Society) 2, no. 2 (1976): 8.
iaSee Arthur Cohn, "Film Music in the Fleischer Collection of the Free Library of
Philadelphia," Film Music Notes 7, no. 3
(1948): 11-13. 19See the lists in Motion Pictures, Tele
vision, and Radio: A Union Catalogue of
Manuscript and Special Collections in the
Western United States, ed. Linda Harris
Mehr (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1977)-the only book
in which film music holdings have been in
dexed; some recent acquisitions of California
State and the Library of Congress are men
tioned in Notes 33 (1977): 577-79. Brigham Young University recently acquired the
library of Max Steiner; included are sketches
for virtually all of his film scores, as well as
scrapbooks and personal memorabilia. Exten
sive collections of silent film music can be
found in the archives of the Seymour Theatre
Library at Princeton (the "Valva Collection"), and the Music Library at Yale (collection
#176).
20Page Cook assesses the Newman Library in "The Sound Track," Films in Review 17 (1976): 369-72.
21See Robert Fiedel, "Saving the Score ?
Wanted: A National Film Music Archive," American Film 3, no. 1(1977): 32, 71.
22These are listed in the International Film
Guide, 1979, ed. Peter Cowie (London: Tantivy Press, 1978), pp. 400-404. An excellent, though now dated guide to several important Ameri can archives and libraries is "Our Resources for Film Scholarship," Film Quarterly 16, no. 2
(1962): 34-50. 23To cite one example: the British Film Ar
chive (est. 1935), though among the world's
largest and oldest, has obtained scores for
only half a dozen films. The extraordinary collection of the Museum of Modern Art, ac
quired over many years, is largely a result of its longstanding tradition of screening silent films with live music.
24Roger Manvell, "The Explosion of Film
Studies," Encounter 37, no. 1 (1971): 67-74; Jean Cohen, "The Visual Explosion: The Growth of Film Literature," Choice (March 1973): 26-40.
8 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
change within the medium itself. What was at the turn of the century a crude, lower-class entertainment has become a
massive medium, a connoisseur's fine art, and a conglomerate industry. Likewise film music has been transformed from the tinny piano accompaniments of "in visible" pit musicians to the "Dolby Stereo" scores of "star" composers ?in
an idiom that makes use of popular songs, concert works, jazz, commer
cialized and genuine folk music, synthe sizer, and sitar. Films and their music are both peculiar hybrids, and far from easy to work with. As we look into them, we find ourselves confronted by materials that seem to withhold as much infor mation as they give. If we push further, it is because, like Benjamin, we feel the urge to come to grips with the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduc tion. In order to smooth the course of in
quiry, I now propose to examine how others have wrestled with film music's recalcitrant materials, to see what they have written.
//. The Literature
Is there a literature? The tendency has been to suppose not. Thus a recent book on film music is called A Neglected Art (New York: New York University Press, 1977), and at the outset author Roy Prendergast puts forward a case for his title:
This book is the first attempt at a comprehensive look at the history, esthetics, and techniques of film mu sic. Seldom in the annals of music history has a new form of musical ex pression gone so unnoticed. While the use of music to accompany film is a relatively new phenomenon, begin ning in the last decade of the nine teenth century, its relatively new ap pearance should not have precluded a body of intelligent and perceptive writing on the subject.
The fact remains, however, that there is no such body of critical literature
on film music, with the notable ex
ception of a few penetrating articles by critic Lawrence Morton. [From the "Foreword," p. xiii; Morton's own con
tribution to, and view of, the litera ture will be discussed below.]
Certainly film music is a neglected art. Both scholars and audiences have paid it less than its due, partly for reasons con sidered in the first part of this article.
Nevertheless, Prendergast's assertion
that the subject has gone "unnoticed" in
print is misleading. There is in fact an ex tensive literature on the subject that be comes, after a bit of sifting, an "intelli gent and perceptive" literature. However, it is far from easy to come by, and this is one reason for its own neglect. Books on film music pass speedily out of print, while articles lie scattered and buried in ephemeral or out-of-reach jour nals. The bibliographies that seek to resurrect them are equally obscure, besides being much too error-prone, and far from comprehensive.25 Also, the literature has been neglected in the sense that no one has written much about it. There are only two surveys, and each is so brief that it can only point at some sources in passing.26
The following survey also does its share of rude pointing at selected items. It is written, however, with a different end in view: to chronicle some of the most im portant methods and tendencies of film music research. (It has been limited to
25See, however, Win Sharpies, Jr.'s excel lent compilation of sources in Cinema Journal
ft978), cited with other principal bibliographies in the Bibliography, Section I.
26Zofia Lissa's "Literatur ?ber den Ton film," in Aesthetik der Filmmusik (1965), pp. 9-16, cites about fifty mainly theoretical
works; Harry Geduld's "Film Music: A Sur
vey," Quarterly Review of Film Studies 1
(1976): 186-204, is an uncritical introduction to a few books on music and musicals, and also soundtracks. I have been unable to consult
Alicja Helman's survey of the literature in Kwartalnik filmowy no. 2 (1961), but her study of "Probleme der Musik in Film," Film (Frank furt) 5 (1964: 687-707, contains very thoughtful discussion of much theoretical literature.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 9
sources in English, French, German, and Italian; discographies and film musicals have not been considered.) The resultant
"montage" of long shots and close ups, it is hoped, will clarify the principal pat terns of thought that have been inspired by this "new form of musical expression."
The process of recording sound photo electrically alongside an image on a
single strip of film was not adopted for commercial use until the late twenties. Before this time, despite various at tempts to synchronize sound and film
mechanically, the movies were mostly silent, accompanied by live music.27 As has already been noted, this music was not all of a piece; it consisted of improvi sations, compilations, and original scores, mixed in many ways. The tens of thousands of theaters across Europe and America varied enormously in size and decor, and in the number and types of musicians employed.28 There were amateurs and professionals, pianists,
organists, small ensembles, and or
chestras. Rather like musicians of the baroque period, these silent film players enjoyed a great deal of freedom to realize their music according to talent and circumstance; for though "playing to
pictures" owed something to nineteenth
century traditions of theater music from opera to pantomime, it was fundamen
tally as new an art as playing from a
figured bass had been three centuries earlier. And just as in the baroque period there accumulated a large number of books written to guide players in the choices they had to make, in the silent
period a literature developed that was
designed to aid in the preparation of an
accompaniment. This was the first literature of film music: a mass of
materials fulfilling a variety of practical functions.
Its first function was to guide musicians in the selection of music for individual films. It was to this end that beginning in 1909 the Edison Company, a leading film
producer, printed brief "Suggestions for Music" for its weekly film rentals in the Edison Kinetogram. The suggestions were welcomed, other companies followed suit, and "cue sheets," as they came to be called, remained in use until the demise of the silent film.29 In general, rather than name specific pieces of music, which musicians might not have owned or been able to play, early cue sheets specified only a tempo, or mood, or kind of music appropriate to the situa
tion on screen. The forwarned player could then either improvise something appropriate or, if time permitted, select a suitable piece to fit the cue.
As publishers sensed the growing need for such "suitable" ?and readily han
dy?music, they began to bring out an
thologies containing assorted popular favorites, classical selections (often newly "arranged"), and original "inciden
tal" pieces of cinema music. They also
brought out indexes of their music
geared for use by the cinema player. That is, as the cue sheets ?by mood,
27The most recent extended discussion of
the history of synchronized sound is Geduld's The Birth of the Talkies: From Edison to Jolson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975). Kurt London reviews some of the
experimental devices used in the silent period to achieve synchronization in Film Music
(1936), pp. 66-70: see also Samuel Peeples, "The Mechanical Music Makers," Films in
Review 24 (1973): 193-200. 28Two books on silent film theaters are
Dennis Sharp's The Picture Palace and Other
Buildings for Movies (London: Hugh Evelyn, 1969) and Ben M. Hall's The Best Remaining Seats: The Story of the Golden Age of the Movie Palace (New York: Bramhall House,
1961). Hall's is much the less technical; it gilds the subject with nostalgia, but reveals more
about music in the most splendid of the
"palaces."
^Berg sketches the early history of cue sheets (to about 1915) in his Investigation (1976), pp. 102-12; Hof mann reproduces five
examples in Sounds for Silents (1970), and Max Winkler explains his own important role in their development (though he was not, as he
claims, their "inventor"), in "The Origins of Film Music," Films in Review 2, no. 10 (1951): 34-42, reprinted in Limbacher, Film Music
(1974), pp. 15-24.
10 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
dramatic situation, tempo, and so forth. In this sense they constitute the first typologies of music for film. (For an anno tated list of representative publications, see the Bibliography, Section II-A.)
Cue sheets, anthologies and indexes all
helped in the preparation of accompani ments, but they tell us nothing directly about how the accompaniments were to be played. Some information of this kind might be included in an introduction, however, as in Erno Rapee's Encylopedia of Music for Pictures (1925; reprint ed. New York: Arno, 1970). In fifteen highly compressed chapters, the author (famed as a composer of original scores, and as
the conductor at New York City's Capitol Theatre) gives detailed advice on such matters as the kinds of music ap propriate to the various film genres, the uses of the organ, and ways to organize and rehearse theater orchestras. The
Rapee introduction was an offshoot of a second branch of silent film literature (see the Bibliography, II-B), of which the principal function was to advise players on both What and How to Play for Pic tures. This was the title of an early little
manual written by Eugene Ahern in 1913, and published in Twin Falls, Idaho ?far away from New York and quite different in tone from Rapee's much later work. Ahern's advice is
geared to the small town pianist. He stresses not to call attention to oneself by playing too loudly, not to change the music too often in the course of the pic ture, but to be sure to vary one's playing from week to week lest audiences get bored.
Manuals such as Ahern's were the first books on film music. They multiplied rapidly, and were addressed variously to
pianists, organists and conductors. Often
they provided instruction in music
theory, on all levels from the rudiments of reading music to advanced har mony?one indication of the great disparity of musical practice from theater to theater. Their principal value to us perhaps consists precisely in this
disparity: they convey all kinds of in formation about performance practices
throughout the period (and, more broadly, about the nation's musical cul ture).
On a smaller scale, one finds similar in formation begin to crop up in one of the fledgling industry's most important trade weeklies, Moving Picture World. The earliest volumes of this magazine, founded in 1907, contain advertisements for mechanical instruments, anthologies of music, and specially compiled and composed scores. From 1909, alongside advertisements there appear editorials, letters, and articles calling for the im provement of music; and in the next year, a column of advice on "Music for the Picture."30 This column, which ran for more than eight years, published sample cue sheets and addressed itself to many problems: the types of music appropriate for various film genres; whether a piano, organ, or orchestra was preferable; the place of sound effects in an accompani ment; and the value of special scores. Of ten the editors ran letters on these mat ters from across the country. In this way the column ?and others like it ?became national forums on film music, drawing together thousands of isolated musicians (like Eugene Ahern) who welcomed the chance to communicate with others of
their profession.31
Cue sheets, anthologies, columns, and
handbooks all first appeared at very nearly the same time (around 1910). The sudden development of a literature seeking to improve music in the theater, by example and advice, is a phenomenon partly to be explained in economic terms
30The first editorials on film music were "The Musical End" and "Musical Accom
paniments for Moving Pictures," Moving Pic ture World 5 (1909): 7-8 and 559. The first column of "Music for the Picture," ed. Clar ence Sinn et al., is in 7 (1910): 1227, and the last in 39 (1919): 1359. Important early articles are Louis Reeves Harrison, "Jackass Music," 8 (1911): 124-25, and W. Stephen Bush, "Giving
Musical Expression to the Drama," 9 (1911): 354-55.
31See Berg's account of this and other columns in Investigation, pp. 112-23.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 11
? as in these words from the editorial introduction to the first column of "Music for the Picture": "The demand for good music is such that it is now as much of a
rivalry between exhibitors to brag of their good orchestras as it is of bragging of [sic] the quality of their pictures."32 The sentence, despite the grammatical lapse, makes sense. At the time, theaters
were growing rapidly in number and size. Pictures were becoming both more
popular and more respectable. "The
growth of picture houses in America in the period 1910-20 was phenomenal. 'Movie Madness' pervaded society, and by the middle of the decade it has been estimated that 25,000 picture theaters were in use and the average daily attend ance was in the region of six million
people."33 To compete for the widening audience, theater managers installed spectacular organs, expanded their or chestras and musical shows, and hired better musicians. "Good music" became
one of a theater's selling points (just as
specially composed scores were often used to promote important films like The Birth of a Nation). In response to compe
tition, managers became entrepreneurs and film music and its literature thrived.34
It continued to thrive until the end of the silent film. Cue sheets and manuals be came more detailed and sophisticated, anthologies more encyclopedic (like Rapee's). At the same time, musicians within the trade and critical observers from outside never ceased to ponder how to "reform" film music. Various kinds of reform were envisaged: the introduction of more "classical" music into the theater (with better playing), more original scores, and better systems of compilation whereby the music would produce a
much greater dramatic effect.35
Better compilations were the object of the period's most sophisticated and wide ranging book: Hans Erdmann and Giuseppe Becce's Allgemeines Handbuch der Filmmusik, edited by Ludwig Brav, in two volumes (Berlin: Schlesinger, 1927). Erdmann, Becce, and Brav all had composed for silent films, and cam
paigned for improvement of musical
practice.36 The Handbuch was the culmin ating synthesis of their efforts. Its first volume is given over to an essay, unique in the literature of the period, surveying the theory, history and techniques of film music "Vom Atelier bis Theater." The second volume contains a "Thematisches
Skalenregister," or index, which follows the most elaborate system for cate
gorizing musical moods ever attempted in this kind of literature. Music of several publishers is included, with abundant cross-references from one cate
gory to another. In its attempt to be so systematic and comprehensive, the Hand buch surpassed all earlier indexes and manuals. It opened a door to altogether new kinds of research ?a door, however, which no one at the time passed through. It was an unusually complex book, and published too late in the day to have much impact.
32J[ohn] M. B[radlet], Moving Picture World 7 (1910): 1227.
33Sharp, The Picture Palace, p. 70.
^Moving Picture World contains many articles that establish a correlation early on; see especially James S. McQuade's account of the budding career of the silent film's greatest theatrical entrepreneur, Samuel L. ("Roxie")
Rothapfel, "The Belasco of Motion Picture
Presentations," 10 (1911): 796-98.
35See, e.g., Carl Van Vechten, "Music for the Movies," in Music and Bad Manners (New York: Knopf, 1916), pp. 44-54; Sherwood K. B?hlitz, "Where 'Movie Playing' Needs Reform," Musician (June 1920): 8, 29, and Richard Holt, "Music and the Cinema,"
Musical Times 65 (1924): 426-27. Van Vechten wanted a new kind of music, but he was very unspecific as to what kind it should be; B?hlitz stressed the value of playing classical accom
paniments as a means to educate the young; and Holt lambasted nearly all movie music, with kind words only for an original score (film not named) by Eugene Goosens.
36Becce was the most prominent of the three, as composer of a number of original scores and of the popular Kinothek an
thologies; his career is traced by Hans Thomas in Die deutsche Tonfilmmusik (1962), pp. 81 83. Music and literature of all three authors is indexed by Herbert Birett in Stumm-Film
musik (1970).
12 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
The year 1927 marked the phenomenal success of The Jazz Singer. The silent film then entered its twilight phase, and synchronized sound began its triumphal rise. Within a few years, silent films, along with their musicians, had slipped into obsolescence. No longer functional, the music and literature of the period were mostly forgotten.37
The transformation was more in the nature of a slow "dissolve" than a quick "wipe." For a time silent and sound films shared the screen, and also music. Many of the early "talkies" were given continu ous synchronized accompaniments little different from those which had been heard in silent theaters. (Except for the sung portions, Louis Silvers' score for The Jazz Singer is very much in the tradition of silent film scoring.) The
quality of recorded sound, however, was at first much inferior to live music. Hence, some deplored the "symphonic hurly burly" created by the sound film; as late as 1929, film critic Harry Alan Potamkin could still assert that the best way to combine "Music and the Movies" was to use live chamber ensembles rather than
synchronized orchestras.38
Potamkin was one of the writers who re
mained loyal to the silent film. Indeed, many theorists had based their reasoning on the premise that the medium was purely a visual one, and sound seemed to them to be a blemish on that purity. But there were many others who welcomed the transformed medium with enthusiasm. Sound triggered "an avalanche of manifestos," full of prophe cies, speculations, and attempts to es
tablish principles governing sound.39 A trio of Russian filmmakers ? Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexandrov?set the tone with their brief manifesto-like "State ment on the Sound Film" of 1928: "The first experimental work with sound must be directed along the line of its dis tinct non-synchronization with the visual image."40 They were disturbed by the prospect of an excessively literal use of sound ?its use, in other words, merely to confirm things already visible on the screen ?because such mechanistic syn chronization threatened the theory and practice of montage as it had been de veloped during the twenties. Though more progressively minded than Potamkin, these writers, too, felt their loyalties divided.
In subsequent films, however, they left the esthetic of silence behind, and Eisen stein and Pudovkin continued to amplify and revise their ideas in many books and articles.41 Parallel to their efforts, Rudolf Arnheim published his theory of Film als Kunst, a complex work with a complex section on sound. He incorporated some of the Russians' terminology
? using such
370n the plight of silent film musicians see Maurice Mermey, "The Vanishing Fiddler," North American Review 227 (1929): 301-7; on publishers, see Winkler's "Origins" (n. 29).
^Musical Quarterly 15 (1929): 281-96. "Music for the Movies" is the first article on film music to appear in this journal ?one ex
ample of how the sound film brought forth a new literature from new quarters and quarter lies; for others, see nn. 44,52, and 53.
39The phrase is Marian Hannah Winter's, in "The Function of Music in the Sound Film,"
Musical Quarterly 27 (1941): 153. Winter cites as an example Guido Bagier's Der kommende Film: eine Abrechnung und eine Hoffnung (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt, 1928). Cf. the sources summarized in Thomas's overview of the time "Zwischen Stummfilm und Ton
film," Die deutsche Tonfilmmusik, pp. 11-17. i0Zhisn Iskustva, 5 August 1928; the
English translation is from Sergei Eisenstein's Film Form: Essays in Film Theory, trans. & ed. Jay Leyda (1947; reprinted. New York:
Harcourt, n.d.), pp. 257-60. 41See the Bibliography of Eisenstein's
writings in English in The Film Sense, trans. & ed. Leyda (1947; reprinted. New York: Har
court, 1970), pp. 269-76 ? and in the same book, the essay on Prokofiev's music for Alexander
Nevsky, "Form and Content: Practice," pp. 155-216. Vse velod Pudovkin's essays from the
thirties are gathered in Film Technique and Film Acting, trans. & ed. Ivor Montagu, rev.
ed. (1958); reprinted New York: Grove, 1970). See esp. "Asychronism as a Principle of Sound Film" and "Dual Rhythm of Sound and
Image," pp. 183-93 and 308-316.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 13
words for sound as "contrapuntal" and
"asynchronous" ? but also wrote in favor
of more "naturalistic" uses of sound.42
Like Arnheim, Bela Bal?zs stressed film's naturalistic character when com bined with sound, in his own treatise, Der Geist des Films; and he even fore saw the day when musical accom
paniments would become naturalistic too: a "program music" made from ab
stract and natural sounds, into "sym
phonies of noise."43
All four of these writers, as well as others whose manifestos have nearly vanished into the settling dust, kept their discussions of music abstract. They were not musical professionals, like the writers of silent film manuals and the
compilers of anthologies; they were film makers and theorists, whose knowledge of music appears not to have been very deep. (Bal?zs, however, had written the libretto for Bluebeard's Castle.). Yet it is
interesting to observe how many writers who were musically educated adopted a similar style ?especially in Europe and
especially in the periodicals Die Musik and Melos. From the year 1928 to 1933 these two journals brought out a very large amount of film music literature by
musicians; and much of it floats on the same abstract plane as the literature cited above.44
From 1928 to 1929, most of the articles in Die Musik appeared under the general heading of "Mechanische Musik"?that is, the music of phonograph, radio, and film.45 This mechanical music was the product of what Paul Valery called a "new intimacy of music and physics."46 That intimacy, it seemed, had brought forth powerful new sources of patronage and creative stimulation. Much ex
citement was generated in the musical world by films of all kinds, and it spilled over into print.47 Soon, however, dis
42See the section on "The Sound Film" in
Film, trans, (from Film als Kunst, 1930) L.M.
Sieveking and Ian F.D. Morrow (London:
Faber, 1933), pp. 201-208. 43See "Tonfilm," in Der Geist des Films
(1930); reprinted. Frankfurt: Makol, 1972), pp. 142-85. Bal?zs's first book on film, Der sicht bare Mensch, oder die Kultur des Films
(Vienna: Deutsch-?sterreichische Verlag, 1924) also contains a brief section on "Musik
ins Kino," pp. 143-44; ideas from both books are incorporated, in revised form, into Theory of the Film: Character and Growth of a New
Art, trans. Edith Bone (1952; reprinted. New
York: Dover, 1970), pp. 194-241. 44The following are the most theoretical
articles from Die Musik: Ali Weyl-Nissen,
"Stilprinzipien des Tonfilms ?Versuch einer
Gundlegung," 21 (1929): 905-7; Walter Grono
stay, "Die Technik der Gerauschanwendung im Tonfilm," 22 (1929): 42-44; A. Lion,
"Erreichtes und Erreichbares: Zur Frage der
Naturlichen Klangwiedergabe im Tonfilm," 22
(1930): 473-74; and Franz Benedict Biermann, "Tonfilm und Musik," 24 (1931): 250-54. From
Melos, see Hanns Gutman "Der Tonende
Film," 7 (1928): 163-66; Hans Luedtke, "Film
musik und Kunst," 7 (1928): 166-70; Becce, "Der Film und die Musik: Illustration oder
Komposition," 7 (1928): 170-72; W. Mechback,
"Grundgedanken zur Filmmusik," 8 (1929): 24
29, Adolf Raskin, "Grundsatzliches zum
Klangfilmproblem," 8 (1929): 249-51; Grono
stay, "Die M?glichkeiten der Musikanwen
dung in Tonfilm," 8 (1929): 317-18; Kurt London, "Kinoorchester und Tonfilm: Organi sationsfragen der Filmmusik," 9 (1930): 247-50, and "Filmstil und Filmmusik," 11 (1932): 404-6; and Leonhard F?rst, "Filmgestaltung aus der
Musik," 12 (1933): 18-22.
45Cf. Constant Lambert, "Mechanical Music and the Cinema," Music, Ho! (New York: Scribners, 1934), pp. 256-68. (See also n.
56). 46From the essay "La Conque*te de
lubiquite," (in De la musique avant toute
chose, 1928), trans. Ralph Mannheim in Valer
y's Aesthetics (New York: Pantheon, 1964), p. 225; Benjamin cites a passage from this essay at the head of his own (n.6).
47See, e.g., these reviews of the 1928 and
1929 Baden-Baden Music Festivals, where
many films with avant-garde scores were
screened: Heinrich Strobel, "Film und Musik: Zu den Baden-Baden Versuchen," Melos 7
(1928): 343-47; Oscar Thompson, "More Fun, Less Music," Modern Music 6, no. 1 (1928): 38
40; and Strobel, "Die Baden-Baden Kammer
musik, 1929," Melos 8 (1929): 395-400. Other re
views in Melos are: Hans Mersmann on Der blaue Engel 9 (1930): 188; H[ellmuth] G[otze] on "Vier Tonfilme," 10 (1931): 371-72; and Lon
don on "LArlesienne: Ein Tonfilm mit Musik von Bizet," 11 (1932): 53-54. For a very good discussion of the avant-garde's approach to film music, both in the late silent and early
14 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
appointment set in, as music's place within commercial films dwindled. The public's attention was directed toward talkies full of talk but not much music, and toward musicals full of song and dan ce. (In fact, the two categories overlap ped, since songs were apt to be inserted into any kind of film, no matter how awk
ward the context.) By 1931, moreover, the public's appetite for musicals was ex hausted; and their decline in popularity coincided with the general abandonment of accompanimental music.48 (One rationale for the spreading silence was that in the "naturalistic" context of the sound film, music was as out of place as the stylized, exaggerated gestures and facial expressions of silent film actors.) Owing to this downward turn of affairs, when musicians wrote about music they dwelt mostly on the exciting, exceptional examples of creative use of sound, and on the theoretical future rather than on the immediate present. Of the movies as
they were, they had formed a pretty low
opinion.49
In the mid-thirties, however, opinions and opportunities began to improve. From Hollywood, in 1933, came Forty Second Street and King Kong?two movies less important in themselves per haps than as signals of "comebacks" of both musicals and background scores.
(The songs of the former were by Al Dubin and Harry Warren; the music of the latter was by Max Steiner.) In each case, the comeback was made with a fresh set of techniques that quickly be came established as conventions. Com
mercial film music was back on its feet,
and in the following year Hollywood granted it official recognition with the in stitution of the Academy Awards for out standing scores.50
Recognition of a more inquiring kind was granted at the first International Congress of Music (ICM) in Florence, 1933, where a session was held on "La
Musica e il film."51 This marked the beginning of a new outpouring of litera ture across all of Western Europe. A special issue of La Revue Musicale was devoted to "Le Film Sonore."52 New peri odicals were established: Cinema Quar terly and Sight and Sound in Great Britain, Bianco e nero in Italy; and each of them published many articles by com posers, critics, and theorists.53 From the city of London, moreover, came the first two books on music in the sound film.
sound periods, see Dietrich Stern, "Kompon isten gehen zum Film," in Angewandie Musik der 20er, Jahre, ed. Stern (Berlin: Argument Verlag, 1977), pp. 10-38.
48My overview of the early sound period follows Thomas, Die deutsche Tonfilmmusik, pp. 11-30; and Manvell & Huntley, The
Technique of Film Music, pp. 31-53; see also The Movie Musical- From "Vitaphone to %2nd Street" as Reported in a Great Fan
Magazine [i.e., Photoplay, from 1926 to 1933], ed. Miles Kreuger (New York: Dover, 1975).
*9Leonhard F?rst, "Musikkritik und Ton
film," Melos 12 (1933): 92-97.
MSee "Academy Award Winners and Nominees for Music: 1934-1972," in The Com
plete Encyclopedia of Music and Jazz: 1900 1950, ed. Roger D. Kinkle, Vol. 4 (New York:
Arlington House, 1974), pp. 2029-39; in the early years, awards went to the studio's music
department, rather than to the composer(s): see Frank Varity, "The Sound Track," Films in Review 15 (1964): 295-97,300.
51See the Atti del primo congresso inter nazionale di musica, Firenze, SO april-U maggio 1933 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1935), pp. 209-216, for the session on "La musica e il film." (Furst's paper for this session was a re
working of his Melos article cited in n. 44.) There was also a session on "Radio, Film, Grammofono" ? see esp. Adriano Lualdi, "Due novi vie per la musica: Radio e film," pp. 43-52.
52[No. 151], December 1934. There are
nineteen articles under four headings: "Esthetique," "Technique," "Dessin anime," and "L'Ecran pedagogique." More than a third of the issue is given over to these articles by composer Arthur Hoeree: "Essai d'esthetique du sonore," pp. 45-62; "Le Travail du film
sonore," pp. 63-69; and with Honegger, "Par ticularities du filmitopf," pp. 88-91.
Sight and Sound, begun in 1932, was
published by the British Film Institute from 1934, and at that time commenced to run ar
ticles on film music, including; Ernest J. Bor
neman, "Sound Rhythm and the Film," 3, no. 10 (1934): 65-7; John Grierson, "Introduction to a New Art," 3, no. 11 (1934): 101-4; and M.D.
Calvocoressi, "Music and Film: A Problem of
Adjustment," 4, no. 14 (1935): 57-58. Cinema
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 15
Leonid Sabaneev's Music for the Film: A Handbook for Composers and Conduc tors (1935) and Kurt London's Film
Music: A Summary of the Characteristic Features of Its History, Aesthetics, Technique and Possible Developments (1936) were as different as their subtitles suggest.54 Each had its own antecedents. Sabaneev's handbook revived the tradition of the silent film manuals, avoiding abstractions (except, to some
degree, in a chapter on the "Aesthetics of the Sound Film"), and describing in prac tical terms each stage of the film-scoring process. London's summary followed
Erdmann and Becce in attempting to sur vey the whole subject systematically.55 Yet in one respect the two books were
very much alike: they shared a fascination with the concept of "Music for the Microphone." The theme was a
popular one in the literature of the time (like that of "Mechanical Music," to which it was closely related), but it was Sabaneev and London who gave it the most play.56 Each author explained in de
tail how the acoustics of the recording studio altered the sounds (for better and worse) made by instruments alone and in groups. From these observations, each
tried to generate idiomatic principles of film composition and orchestration. As it turned out, however, neither their ob servations nor their principles endured for long. Recording technology was
changing so rapidly that large portions of each book soon became obsolete.57
London had anticipated this "possible de velopment." He called for the creation of a "Microphone Academy" for the scienti fic study of the microphone's properties and for the training of a new generation of composers. No such academy was
created, however. Nor did any books come to join these two until after World
War II. Sabaneev and London rode a wave of interest in film music at its crest, but by the end of the decade that wave had broken on the shoals of politics and war. Literature continued to issue from Europe, but slowed to a trickle. The main achievements of those years were the second ICM at Florence (1938), which Quarterly (Edinburgh) ran from 1933-35, then
merged with the monthly World Film News
(WFN); under both titles it featured many ar ticles by composers, including: Alexander
Hackenschmied, "Film and Music," trans. Karel Santar, 1 (1933): 152-55; Walter Leigh, "The Musician and the Film," 3 (1935): 70-74; and Hanns Eisler, "Music and the Film: Illustration or Creation?" WFN (May 1936): p. 23 [cf. Becce's art., n. 44]. Bianco e nero began at the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia in Rome, 1937, and offered many theoretical studies beginning with Sebastiano Luciani, "La musica e il film," 1, no. 6 (1937): 3-17.
"Compare London's subtitle with the first sentence of Prendergast's book, quoted on
p. 9.
55London, however, did not make the con
nection; all he says of the Handbuch is that it "dealt with directions for cinema conductors
playing musical accompaniments to silent
films, which soon after became superfluous . . ."
(p. 12). ^"Film music," wrote Walter Leigh,
"must be written specifically for performance through the microphone, with full regard to its various needs and possibilities" ?from "Music and Microphones," WFN (August 1936): 40; Benjamin Britten gave Walton's score for As You Like It a negative review, complaining that "one cannot feel that the microphone has
entered very deeply into Walton's scoring soul," in WFN, (October 1936): 46. Other ex
amples: Eric Sarnette, "Musique et elec tricite," La Revue Musicale [No. 151] (Decem ber 1934): 80-87; Libero Innamorati, "I prob lemi della registrazione musicale," in the Atti del sec. cong . . . 1937 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1940), pp. 261-64; Carlos Chavez, Toward A
New Music: Music and Electricity (New York:
Norton, 1937); and, from more technical points of view, W.F. Elliott's Sound Recording for Films (1937) and Ken Cameron's Sound and the Documentary Film (1947), both published in London by Pitman.
"London's book, though published one
year after Sabaneev's, became obsolete sooner, because it was based on developments prior to 1933; cf. George Antheil's reviews: "Good Russian Advice about Movie Music," and "On the Hollywood Front," both in
Modern Music 13,14 (1936,1937): 53-56,107-8.
MNine papers on film music are contained in the Atti of the second ICM (n. 56); its other theme was "Music and the Public." Besides
Ottenheym's dissertation there were two others ? unavailable to me?by Wilhelmine Fey and Friedrich Robbe (see Bibliography III).
16 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
sponsored three sessions on film music, and Konrad Ottenheym's dissertation (completed in 1944) on the history of silent film music in Germany.58 At the same time a much stronger "new wave" of literature began to pour from the United States, swelled by the great number of refugee filmmakers, com posers, and critics. In the thirties, Ameri can literature had followed its own course. It was, in general, less concerned with theoretical problems than with descrip tions of techniques and trends written for a lay audience.59 This practical, popu
larizing tendency set it apart from much European writing. A comparison of two articles from 1937 is instructive: French composer Maurice Jaubert was preoc
cupied by the aesthetic principles of "Music on the Screen," while Max Steiner (Viennese-born, but in matters of film music, Hollywood-bred) described the processes and history of "Scoring the Film."60 It was not that Steiner lacked ideas about what film music should do, but that he displayed them as the fruits of his working experience rather than as theoretical precepts in the manner of Jaubert. One magazine that combined both approaches was Modern Music. Like Melos, it had, since the late twen ties, functioned as a promoter of the avant-garde's ideas about film music.61
Then in 1936 it took the innovative step of hiring one of the avant-garde's mem
bers to be its film music reporter and critic of news K0n the Hollywood Front." For four years George Antheil held the job, writing in a lively, thoughtful fashion of his experiences both as an ob server and as a participant.62
Hollywood in those years was an ever
more lively place for music, so there was a great deal of news to report. Lengthy symphonic scores had become normal ac cessories to feature films. Much of the
music was derivative, but some com
posers (such as Steiner, Newman, and
Korngold) had found distinctive ways of adapting nineteenth- and early twen tieth-century idioms to films. At the same time more "modern" composers (like Antheil himself, as well as several
who had come over from Europe) tried their hand at films with varying but rarely overwhelming success. In 1940, Alfred Newman was appointed Music Director at Fox, and Steiner and Erich Korngold were enthroned at Warner Bros.; Antheil wrote only one film score in that year, and then gave up on Holly wood until after the war. Describing its hostility to modern music, he called Hollywood a "closed proposition."63 The best openings many composers could find were in documentaries. Thus, in
59See, e.g., "Music in the Movies Wins New Place" (in the Academy Awards),
Musician 40, no. 1 (1935): 14; Douglas Moore, "Music and the Movies," Harpers 111 (1935: 181-88; and Antheil, "Hollywood Composer," Atlantic Monthly 165 (1940): 160-67; also, Prendergast cites many articles from the New York Times and Herald Tribune.
60The titles of the sources contrast in the same way: Jaubert's essay comes from Foot notes to the Film, ed. Charles Davy (New York: Oxford, 1937), pp. 101-115; and Steiner's from We Make the Movies, ed. Nancy Naum
burg (New York: Norton, 1937), pp. 216-38. see also Herbert Stothart's "Film Music," in Behind the Screen, ed. Stephen Watts (New York: Dodge, 1938), pp. 139-44.
61As in these articles: Darius Milhaud, "Experimenting with Sound Films," 7, No. 2 (1930) : 11-14; Hans Heinsheimer, "Film
Opera ?Screen vs. Stage," and Richard Hammond, "Pioneers of Movie Music," 8, no. 3 (1931) 10-14 and 35-38; Virgil Thomson, "A Lit
tie More about Movie Music," 10 (1933): 188-91; Ernst Toch, "Sound-Film and Music Theatre," 13 (1936): 15-18; and John Gutman, "Casting the Film Composer," 15 (1938): 216-21.
820n the Hollywood Front" ran through vols. 14-16 (1936-39) and continued as "On the Film Front" under Paul Bowles, 17-18 (1939-41) and Jean Latouche and Leon Kochnitzky, 19 (1941-42): under Carter, 20-21 (1943); and back "On the Hollywood Front," under Lawrence
Morton, 21-33. (1944-46). Morton gives a fine
summary of Antheil's views in 22 (1945): 135-37.
63In his autobiography, Bad Boy of Music (New York: Doubleday, 1945), p. 314. Cf. Oscar
Levant's characterization of the place as
"pretty much a closed shop for specialists," in his own autobiography, A Smattering of Ig norance (New York: Doubleday, 1940), p. 111. Both of these books, along with Hans W. Hein scheimer's Menagerie in F Sharp (New York:
Doubleday, 1948), tell a great deal about film music in Hollywood in the forties.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 17
1940 the following composers were credited with documentaries: Marc Blitz stein, Paul Bowles, David Diamond, Hanns Eisler, Louis Gruenberg, Roy Harris, Werner Janssen, Gail Kubik, and David Raksin.64 Of these, only Raksin had much Hollywood experience.
As composers wrote more and more film music, they wrote more and more about film music, with as much diversity in the latter sphere as in the former. What they
wrote depended on where they stood: in side the Hollywood circle or out. Aaron Copland, for example, was one of the more successful outsiders; consequently his feelings about Hollywood were amiably ambivalent.65 But Antheil and Eisler, who both tried and pretty much failed to get "in" (though in different ways), painted pictures of Hollywood in dark tones. Antheil's tales, however, of ten read like black comedy, whereas Eisler's Composing for the Films (1947) has no light touches. Indeed, it is as severe a critique of Hollywood music as has ever been published.
The book began as a seemingly scientific collaboration between Eisler and Theo dor Adorno. In the early forties both were at the New School in New York, Adorno investigating radio music, and Eisler heading a "Film Music Project," funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.66 But although Eisler had once described this project in terms of a laboratory
experiment ?with theoretical determi nation of special problems, experiments and public tests of the results67?Com posing for the Films contains passages of Marxist rhetoric so high-pitched that they defy all notions of dispassionate re search:
... it is preposterous to use words
such as "history" with reference to an apocryphal branch of art like motion picture music. The person who around 1910 first conceived the repulsive idea of using the Bridal March from Loh engrin as an accompaniment is no more of a historical figure than any other second-hand dealer. Similarly, the prominent composer of today, who, under the pretext of motion-pic ture requirements, willingly or unwill ingly debases his music earns money, but not a place in history. The histori cal processes that can be perceived in cinema music are only reflections of the decay of middle-class cultural goods into commodities for the amuse ment market ... It would be ludi crous to claim that motion-picture mu
sic has really evolved either in itself or in its relation to other motion pic ture media [p. 49].
The ideological tone has turned more than one American reader away. Pren
dergast goes so far as to term the book "testy and relatively valueless" (A
Neglected Art, p. 3); but much of what Eisler writes is of great value. This in cludes the fascinating report on the origi nal project (unfortunately too brief and relegated to an appendix). Moreover, the
MSee the credit listings in Clifford Mc
Carty's Film Composers in America (1953). Kubik wrote that "composers in the documen
tary field have more often been allowed the
luxury of writing what they have felt than have our colleagues in the more commercial films," in "Music in Documentary Film,"
Writers Congress: Proceedings of the Con ference Held in October 19kS, by the Holly wood Writers' Mobilization Committee (Los Angeles: Univ. Cal. Pr., 1944), p. 256.
66As expressed in the chapter on "Music in the Film," Our New Music (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1941), pp. 260-75. An earlier ver sion of this chapter appeared in Modem Music 17 (1940): 141-47, under the ambivalent title "Second Thoughts on Hollywood."
66For explanation of the book's compli
cated history, including why Adorno's name did not appear on the first edition, see his
"Postscript" in the reprint edition published in 1971 (Freeport, New York: Books for Li braries Press)?this postscript being a tran slation of "Zum Erstdruck der Original Fas sung," appended to the German edition pub lished in 1969 as Komposition f?r den Film (Munich: Rogner & Bernhard) under both authors' names. A summary of these matters is given under Eisler in Bibliography III.
67See "Film Music ?Work in Progress," Modern Music 18 (1941): 250-54.
18 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
book is conceptually on firmer ground than most others about film music, because it so unyieldingly affirms its main point. For Eisler, the point was that modern music (particularly twelve-tone music) was an ideal style for the film medium, but that the film industry, with its barriers of "prejudices and bad habits" (enumerated in the first chapter), made it impossible for such music to be heard.68
As for the composers who got along very well in the "industry," they wrote about it far more brightly. Two examples in book form are British composer Louis
Levy's memoir of a life spent making Music for the Movies (1948), and Holly wood composer Frank Skinner's step-by
step manual Underscore (1950). The lat ter is a cheerful case history of Skinner's
experiences composing the music for The
Fighting OTlynn (released by Universal in 1949; in the book, however, the film is titled The Irishman). Skinner approaches the assignment uncritically, in the prag matic manner of the Hollywood profes sional; but he was far from being the most Pollyanna-like of writers. That credit may well belong to Nathaniel Fin ston, Music Director at Metro Goldwyn
Mayer (MGM), for claiming that "every film today contains in its making the
painstaking efforts of the best minds in the musical world."69
Finston and Eisler would have had diffi culty coming to terms. Yet in one sense
they wrote for the same reason: to bring their art into public light. Some desired this because they believed, with Finston, that film music was good and getting
better, and so deserved to shine; others maintained that only when the eye (and ear) of the public was directed toward "background music," and it was brought into the foreground, would the public be come aware of how bad it was. This was Eisler's position, except that he linked improvement of film music not just to
public awareness but to changes in the whole socioeconomic structure of our culture.
English critic Hans Keller took a somewhat simpler but still negative view, in several articles and, most per tinently, in a lively pamphlet on The
Need for Competent Film Music Criti cism (London: British Film Institute, 1947). He wanted critics equally knowl edgeable in film and music to "thrust" film music from the "unselective precon sciousness into open consciousness, in
fact into an aural close-up," so that "film music will be heard for what it isn't worth" (p. 21).70
At the time Keller took up the pen, it ap peared as if the above-named need was being satisfied. The profession of film music criticism suddenly took on many practitioners both in England and the United States.71 They were all very much interested in seeing film music improve,
68See Lawrence Morton's review, "Hanns
Eisler: Composer and Critic," Hollywood
Quarterly [HQ] 3 (1948): 208-211. ""The Screen's Influence in Music," in
Music and Dance in California, ed. Jose Rodri
guez (Hollywood: Bureau of Musical Research, 1940), p. 124. Cf. the claim that "the great and the near-great of the musical world are finding their way to Hollywood to try their skill in the new medium" ?from an anonymous pamphlet on The Men Who Write the Music Scores
(Hollywood: Motion-Picture Production and Distributors of America, 1943), p. 2.
70For other Kellerian thrusts, see "Film Music: Some Objections," and "Hollywood Music: Another View," Sight and Sound [S &
S] 15 and 16, nos. 60 and 64 (1946 and 1947): 136 and 168-69. see also nn. 71 and 73.
7Tn England, criticism was written on a
regular basis by Ernest Irving, "Film Music," Tempo nos. 1-3 (194647); Keller, "Film Music,"
Music Review vols. 9-17,19-20 (1948-56, 58-59), Music Survey vols. 1-3 (1949-51), and Musical Times vols. 96-97 (1955-56); Antony Hopkins, "The Sound Track," S & S, Vols. 18-19 (1949 50); and John Huntley, "The Sound Track," S & S, 19-24 (1950-55). In America the critics wre Antheil et al. for "On the Hollywood Front" (n. 62); Kurt London "Film Music of the Quarter," Films nos. 1-4 (1939-40); Walter Rubsamen, "Music in the Cinema" Arts and Architecture, June 1944 to January 1947; and Lawrence Morton, "Film Music of the Quarter." HQ 3-7 (1947-52). Also, Film Music Notes contained criticism in every issue from 1941 to 1957.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 19
but their common goal did not prevent them from sparring just as much as com posers over such issues as the relative
merits of American and European film music, and the state of the art in Holly wood. The critic who described that state with perhaps the nicest blend of wit, sympathy, and insight was Lawrence
Morton.72 Morton engaged in his share of debate, especially with English critics.73 His writing, however, is distinguished from everyone else's by its pointed preci sion. Morton expressed precisely what he thought, without the hyperbole that seemed to come naturally to a writer like Keller. Moreover, rather than summarily condemn or approve, he gave reasons for
his opinions and rested them on solid fac tual ground.
This is most obvious in his pioneering study of "The Music of Objective: Bur
ma,1' published in Hollywood Quarterly 1 (1946): 378-95. In this article for the first time a score is analyzed cue by cue. After
listing the six main themes, Morton de scribes every one of the twenty-four "separate compositions," with several score excerpts provided. Then he con
cludes the article with this assessment of the composer and his milieu:
"Musicality" is an inclusive term, and it is not axiomatically applicable to everyone who writes music. A wit
once remarked that uthe only differ ence between Alban Berg and other Viennese atonalists is that Berg was musical." Franz Waxman is one of no
more than a dozen composers for whom the same can be said in Holly wood.
It was a polemical age. Sweeping evalua tions were common. But Morton's analy sis makes every attempt to define the
Waxman score's "musicality" (harmonic,
thematic, and structural) in terms of the relationship of music and drama. Few other critics were able to justify their
opinions with such carefully marshalled evidence ?although Frederick Sternfeld followed Morton's lead with four com
parable but less compelling articles.74 Earlier on in his article, Morton called himself "counsel for the defense" (p. 394, where he acknowledges Tovey's Essays in Musical Analysis as the source of the
phrase). Film music was considered to be on trial; so was Waxman, for becoming a
part of that world; and so was the idea that film music could be deserving of serious analysis. Very little could be taken for granted by writers seeking to end public and professional neglect.
Was the neglect passing? It had already seemed so to Kurt London several years earlier. After emigrating to America, he was hired by the short-lived but prestigious periodical Films (1939-40) as a critic of film music. In his last column he optimistically wrote of a change in at titudes:
Slowly but surely, motion picture pro fessionals and laymen are coming to
72See especially the balanced perusal of both sides of the question "Film Music: Art or
Industry?" in Film Music Notes 11, no. 1
(1951): 4-6. 73Two examples: (1) Morton's "Rule,
Britannia!" in HQ 3 (1948): 211-14, was a nega tive review of both Huntley's British Film
Music (1947) and Cerald Cockshott's pamphlet on Incidental Music in the Sound Film (Lon don: British Film Institute, 1946), and Cock shott responded with "Comments on a Re
view," in the next issue of HQ (1948): 326-27; (2) Antony Hopkins described American film
music as "orchestration run riot" in "Music:
Congress at Florence," S & S 19 (1950): 243-44; Morton replied to the charge in his column on
"Film Music of the Quarter," HQ 5 (1951): 282
88; the reply was reprinted (incomplete) with a rebuttal by Hopkins in S & S 20 (1951): 21-23; Keller got into it with "Film Music and
Beyond: The Dragon Shows His Teeth" Music Review 12 (1951): 221-25 and Morton showed his teeth once more with "Composing, Or
chestrating and Criticising," HQ 6 (1951): 191 206.
74Sternfeld analyzed Hugo Friedhofens score for The Best Years of Our Lives in "Music and the Feature Films," Musical Quar
terly 33 (1947): 517-32; Miklos Rozsa's for The Strange Love of Martha Ivers in "The Strange Music of Martha Ivers," HQ 2 (1947): 242-51; "Gail Kubik's Score for C-Man," HQ 4 (1950: 360-69; and "Copland as a Film Composer [for The Heiress], Musical Quarterly 37 (1951): 161-75.
20 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
recognize that music for the movies is not a mere by-product of film-mak
ing, but an important part of the cine matic art. We have had various signs of this awakening during the past year [no. 4, p. 25].
The "signs" to which London pointed were the Film Music Project under Eisler and the formation of a Federation of Film Music Clubs across the country
?
developments which might indeed have
appealed to "professionals" on the one hand and "laymen" on the other. And in fact, one sees similar signs all through the period. An "awakening" could be said to have begun with Antheil's criticism in
Modern Music, which pointed the way to a flourishing profession after the war. The formation of film music clubs led to the establishment of Film Music Notes, the first and longest-lived (1941-1957) of
periodicals to be devoted to the subject.75 Beginning in the same year, a number of
sophisticated studies of the aesthetics of film music were published, as innovative in their own way as the analytical studies
already cited.76 Above all, composers wrote about their craft. Some, like Ber nard Herrmann and Adolf Deutsch, did so in individual articles.77 More common,
however, and perhaps more in keeping with the spirit of those years, were collective publications and anthologies representative of common views. Thus, at one end of the decade came a sym posium of mostly east coast composers; in the middle, a series of publications fo
cussing on Hollywood; and at the end, the Seventh ICM in Florence?this one en
tirely given over to film music, primarily as seen through the eyes of film com
posers in Europe.78
From the "Hollywood Front" to the Florence Congress, the literature ex
panded impressively. What had come awake with full force was the urge to ex
plain film music?its functions, its methods, its quality, and its possibilities for im
provement. Yet though in a general sense the range of the literature was always broadening, taken piece by piece its nar rowness is undeniable. Most writers were caught up by ideas and music of the moment and did not attempt to catch the overall drift. Retrospective views were rare enough;79 scholarly work was rarer
75For its various titles and a description of its contents, see Bibliography III.
76Paulo Milano, "Music in the Film: Notes for a Morphology," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 1, no. 1 (1941): 89-94; [Claude] Roland-Manuel, "Rhythme cinematographique et musical," in Cinema: Cours et conferences dIDHEC (Paris: L'Institut des hautes etudes
cinematographiques, n.d.), pp. 3-5; Robert U.
Nelson, "Film Music: Color or Line?" HQ 2
(1946): 57-65; Pierre Schaeffer, "L'Element
non-visuel au cinema." Revue du Cin&ma 1, nos. 1-3 (October-December 1946): 45-49, 62-65,
51-54; and Nazareno Taddei, "Funzione
estetica della musica nel film" Bianco e nero 10 no. 1 (1949): 5-11.
"Herrmann, "Score for a Film" [i.e., Citizen Kane], New York Times (25 May 1941): Section 9, p. 6; Deutsch, "Three
Strangers," HQ 1 (1946): 214-23. Each com
poser explains how he wrote his score. Such articles appeared in virtually every issue of Film Music Notes, beginning with 1, no. 1
(1941), in which Herrmann's article is reprin ted.
78See "Music in Films: A Symposium of
Composers," Films no. 4 (1940): 5-20; Music and Dance in California, ed. Jose Rodriguez, and Music and Dance in California and the
West, ed. Richard Drake Saunders (Holly wood: Bureau of Musical Research, 1940 and 1948); and the symposium on "Music and the
War," in Writer's Congress (n. 64). As far as the seventh ICM is concerned, although the
bibliography under "Film Music" in Grove's 5th edition lists a volume of Proceedings, I have been unable to locate such a publication. However, in conjunction with the congress, Bianco e nero published a special double issue on "La musica nel film," ed. Luigi Chiarini & Enzo Masetti, 11, nos. 5-6 (1950), issued the same year in book form. The 1959 anthology on Musica e film, ed. S.G. Biamonte (Rome: Ateneo) also includes some papers read at the
congress. It was this congress that sparked the second debate described above (n. 73).
79But Alberto Cavalcanti wrote a history of the use of "Sound in Films" for Films no. 1 (1939): 25-39, and Marion Hannah Winter
wrote one of film music, misleadingly titled "The Function of Music in the Sound Film,"
Musical Quarterly 27 (1941): 246-64 (cited above ?see n. 39).
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 21
still.80 So it is not surprising to read this description of the literature by Morton, written in 1953:
If the truth be told, it is not very dis tinguished. Some of it is pertinent but
uninteresting, or interesting but fan ciful; much of it is mere reportage, spot news; little of it has any perma nent value. As opinion, as judgment, it represents a varied assortment of ant's-eye views of film-music events in isolation, a great deal of special plead ing, and a still larger amount of preju diced derogation. Its short-comings have not prevented it, however, from being made the basis of broad gener alizations. These exist, for the most
part as catch-words, epithets and im
precations. They do not reflect, in any true sense, a general view with either critical or historical perspective.81
Morton's "general view" of the literature covers a lot of ground, including his own: as a critic, he too was obliged to view "film-music events in isolation." And what is his study of "The Music of Objec tive: Burma," if not "special pleading" (indeed, by a "counsel for the defense") on behalf of Franz Waxman's virtues as a film composer?
We shall return to the question of the literature's value, permanent or other
wise, later in this article. For the mo ment, let it be acknowledged that Mor ton's description contains a good deal of truth. Moreover, it applies just as well to much of the literature written since. There have never ceased to be "ant's
eye views" of contemporary events, and "special pleading" for, or prophecies of, improvement
? always dependent upon
the latest technical and stylistic trends in
filmmaking. Thus (to cite one set of ex
amples out of a number too large and too
scattered to be contained in this article), Films in Review has, from 1952 until the present, run a column on "The Sound Track," little different (except in its longevity) from its predecessors as a re pository of capsule reviews, too-brief essays, and summary judgments. Currently it is being written by Page Cook, whose colorful and emotional prose make him one of film music's most passionate critics.82
Yet in the literature of the fifties, one be gins to perceive signs of a second, more
scholarly "awakening." Films in Review, for example, has published not just spot criticism, but also many articles calling attention to silent film music, as well as studies of important Hollywood com
posers.83 During this decade, moreover, various musical reference works begin to include film music surveys and bibliogra
80The best examples: Ottenheym's dis sertation, and some ground-breaking bibli
ographies?see The Film Index and Nelson, Rubsamen and Zuckerman under Bibliogra phy I.
81From the "Foreword" to McCarty's Film Composers in America (1955), p. xi.
82Contrast, e.g., Cook's damning of com
posers who write "noise" instead of music
(Neil Hefti, Quincy Jones, et al.) in Films in Review 19 (1968): 162-63,166, with his effusive praise of Scott Lee Hart in 26 (1975): 235-39. Principal contributors to "The Sound Track" have been Gordon Hendricks in 3-5 (1952-54); Edward Connor, 6-10 (1955-59); T.M.F. Steen, 12-13 (1961-62); and Page Cook, 14-29 (1963-79).
88Articles on silent film music include:
Winkler, "The Origins of Film Music" (n. 29); John Griggs, "The Music Masters," 5 (1954): 338-42; McCarty, "Film Music for Silents," and "Victor Herbert's Filmusic," 8 (1957): 117-18, 123, and 183-85; John Ripley, "Song Slides," 22 (1971): 147-52; Peeples, "The Mechanical Music
Makers," (n. 27); and a column on "authorita tive source material," 27 (1976): 493-94, 499. For studies of American composers, see Theo dor Huff, "Chaplin as Composer," 1, no. 6
(1950): 1-5; Dmitri Tiomkin, "Composing for Films," 2, no. 9 (1951): 17-22; Jack Jacobs "Alfred Newman," 10 (1959): 403-414; Harry Hauer & George Raborn, "Max Steiner," 12
(1961): 338-51; Anthony Thomas, "David
Raksin," 14 (1963): 38-41, and "Hugo Fried
496-502; Ken Doeckel, "Miklos Rozsa," 16
(1965): 536-48; Rudy Behlmer, "Erich Wolfgang Korngold," 18 (1967): 86-100; Cook, "Bernard Herrmann," 18 (1967): 415-30, "Franz
Waxman," 19 (1968): 398-412, and "Ken Dar
by," 20 (1969): 335-56.
22 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
phies.84 A still brighter sign was the book for which Morton wrote his description of the literature (from which he quite rightly excepted the new work): Clifford McCarty's checklist of Film Composers in America (1953). This book was the first to tackle the formidable problem of gathering accurate music credits for thousands of films; and because of Mc Carty's slow and careful research, the book is still the most successful refer ence work of its kind.85
A work as important as McCarty's, but for different reasons, is Roger Manvell and John Huntley's The Technique of Film Music (1957). It is important as the first example of the kind of book that has
predominated in recent years: the
"general view." By this is meant a book that presents the subject within a
variety of perspectives: history, theory, and criticism either mix or take turns. The Technique of Film Music is of the
turn-taking sort, since each of its five
chapters has little to do with the other four. The first two cover the history of music, first in silent, then in early sound
films (to 1939). The next chapter at tempts to categorize the functions of mu sic in the sound film, and offers analyses of excerpts from several films. Four of these excerpts are laid out in vertical alignment with dialogue, descriptions of sound effects and action, plus photographic stills ?one of the more in teresting and lavish attempts to quote the "unquotable text" ?but unfor
tunately the authors say nothing about them. The significance of this group of "analyses" rests purely in the method of transcription.88 The fourth chapter, moreover, drops analysis entirely for a discussion of the role of the music direc tor and recording practices in the film studios. The final chapter shifts to a pre sentation of "The Composer's View"; that is, the views of fourteen composers are cited on such matters as their feel ings about being a member of a "team," their freedom to experiment, and the problem of writing music to accompany dialogue. The book concludes with three appendices: a chronology of film music's history (told through yearly lists of "principal events and film music composi tions"), reprints of a few examples of film music criticism, and a bibliography.87
It is clear that The Technique of Film Music is not just about film music's "tech nique." (The misleading title was chosen so that the book could be included in "The Focal Press Library of Communica tion Techniques" series, since all the titles in the series begin with the same three words.) It is difficult, perhaps im
MSee especially, Ernest Irving, H. Keller, and Wildred Meilers, "Film Music," in Grove s
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1955); Edmund Nick &
Martin Ulner. "Filmmusik," Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Cassel: Barenreiter, 1955); George van Parys, "Film,"
Encyclopedie de la musique (Paris: Fasquelle, 1959); and Roman Viad, "Musica per film," La
musica 1: Enciclopedia storica (Turin: Ed.
Turinese, 1966). 85Its only predecessor was Claire Reis's
Composers in America: Sketches of Contem
porary Composers with a Record of Their
Works, rev. ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1947), a book praised by Morton as the first refer ence work to put "Film Music in the Main
stream,"^ 3 (1947): 101-4-but it is a general work, with limited space afforded to film musicians. The only successor is James L. Limbacher's Film Music: From Violins to Video (1974), a book more inclusive and up to
date, but so flawed that it must be used with the greatest caution. McCarty, though ob
viously not an unbiased observer, nonetheless wrote a devastating review of Limbacher for Notes 31 (1974): 48-50.
86See Gorbman's dissection of this and other methods of transcription, referred to above (n. 8). The films analysed in this way are
Henry V, pp. 96-107; Louisiana Story, pp. 117
25; Julius Caesar, pp. 130-32; and Odd Man
Out, pp. 139-49.
87The bibliography is extensive, and
owing to its chronological ordering, has been
very helpful to the writing of this survey; but it contains many errors and inconsistencies, and these have not been corrected in the
second edition (1975). Some examples are given in the eleventh entry under Bibliography I.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 23
possible, to put the book's contents into focus. Full as it is of interesting informa tion and ideas, little of the information is accounted for, and few of the ideas are taken beyond a page or two. One isn't given any explanation, for example, why the authors consider the films listed in the "chronological outline" to be the "principal film music compositions"; nor is there any way to correlate them with the rest of the text, for they are not in cluded in the index. In short, the book is a hodge-podge, which cannot be swal lowed altogether. It contains morsels both tender and tough, rather like an un
trustworthy pot-pourri.
Before The Technique of Film Music, the number of books that followed this recipe was small: Erdmann & Becce's Handbuch (1927), London's Film Music (1936), and to some extent Eisler's Composing for the Films and Huntley's solo British Film Music (both 1947). Compared to this rate of one or two such books every decade, the subsequent pack has crowded one another's heels. Here is a list of the eleven that have followed Manvell & Huntley's Technique:
Georges Hacquard, La Musique et le cinema (1959).
Hans Thomas, Die deutsche Tonfilm musik (1962).
Henri Colpi, Defense et illustration de la musique dans le film (1963).
Zofia Lissa, Aesthetik der Filmmusik (1963).
Francois Porcile, Presence de la mu
sique a Vecran (1969). Tony Thomas, Music for the Movies
(1973). Irwin Bazelon, Knowing the Score
(1975). Mark Evans, Soundtrack (1975). Roy Prendergast, A Neglected Art
(1977). Alain Lacombe & Claude Rocle, La
Musique du film (1979). Helga de la Motte-Haber & Hans
Emons, Filmmusik (1980).
Most of these books have suffered from the same kinds of problems: diffuseness
of approach, lack of focus, and a conse
quent clumsiness of organization and language. Colpi, Porcile, and Lacombe &
Rocle, for example, are uneasy com
binations of history, theory, criticism, and biographical dictionaries (though the latter are very useful). The works of Tony Thomas and Evans are primarily historical surveys of American sound film music, with descriptions of the lives and works of several prominent com
posers. Bazelon's Knowing the Score is divided into two parts: a section of abra sive polemical criticism, jumping from film to film, and a series of interviews with fifteen composers. Of all these writers, perhaps Evans uses language most carelessly; and the following de scription of Newman's style may be taken as an example of this kind of literature at its weakest:
Often countermelodies, in a lyrical mode appropriate for an operatic aria, would be offset against the main theme. Newman's melodies were char
acterized by wide leaps, often harmon ized in thirds or sixths. Like Strauss, he knew how to manipulate the colors of the harmonic palette. His scores are always tonal, his uncanny ablity to use deceptive cadences, to alternate
between major and minor, and to in fuse his music with a breathless, surging quality of emotionalism accounts for much of its unique quali ty [p. 52].
One wonders, among other things, whose arias (with "counter-melodies") Evans has in mind; and what is "unique" about a composer whose style seems derived from devices used by a host of composers including Strauss and (apparently) Schubert?
Writing of much greater strength is to be found in the three German works from the list above: Hans Thomas' carefully documented survey of his country's sound film music; Lissa's abstract and scholarly study of film music aesthetics; and la Motte-Haber & Emons' "systema tic description" of film music, primarily in functional terms. These books do not
24 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
adhere to the normal motley pattern. Each of them has been designed with a careful balance of general concept and
specific detail. Indeed, within their
respective (though overlapping) spheres of history, theory and analysis, they may well be considered indispensable foun dations for further research.88
Over the last twenty years there have appeared many books besides those taking a "general view." Our stocks of an
thologies of the literature, reference works, biographies, and manuals have all been rising.89 Of particularly high value, however, are three works that lie outside these categories: Herbert Birett's Stummfilmmusik (1970), a compendium of primary source materials relating to the silent period in Germany; Robert Faulkner's sociological investigation of the careers of Hollywood Studio Musi cians (1971?to be complimented by his forthcoming: study of Hollywood com
posers, Music on Demand); and Charles Berg's Investigation (1976) of silent films in America.90 As can be judged from the topics (and full titles) of these books, they have been written by scholars for the use of scholars ? quite a change from the "by musicians for musicians" character of the literature from the silent period, and an indication that the "explosion" in film studies has begun to shake even this peripheral area of research. Moreover,
today we see many other indications of the same phenomenon. Various
publishers have reprinted forgotten early works that are now of value pri marily to the scholar.91 Dissertations have appeared and are in progress.92 As was noted in the first part of this article, many libraries and research centers are taking a more active interest in film music and its materials.93 Finally, the
88The same unfortunately cannot be said of Prendergast's study. Although it contains more detailed and sophisticated analysis than
any earlier English-language book, A Neglec ted Art depends too heavily upon other sour
ces (many of them not cited) to offer a con
sistent point of view of its own. See my re
view, "Focus!" in Pro Music Sana (published by the Miklos Rozsa Society) 6, no. 4 (1978): 14
18.
89Anthologies: Biamonte, Musica e film (1959 ?see n. 78); Engmann, Filmmusik: eine
Dokumentation (1968); Limbacher, Film Music
(1974), first half; and Tony Thomas, Film Score (1979). Reference works: Hippenmeyer, Jazz sur Films (1973); Limbacher, Film Music, second half; Meeker, Jazz in the Movies (1977); Comuzio, Film music lexicon (1980); and Lim
bacher, Keeping Score (1981). Biographies: Tiomkin & Bucanelli, Please Don't Hate Me
(1961); L. Korngold, Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1967); Lazarou, Max Steiner and Film Music
(1971); Porcile, Maurice Jaubert (1971); Previn & Hopkins, Music Face to Face (1971); Hugo Friedhofer: An Oral History (1974); Palmer, Miklos Rozsa (1975); Johnson, Bernard Herr mann (1977); and Bookspan & Yockey, Andre
Previn (1981). Manuals: Mancini, Sounds and
Scores (1962); Dolan, Music in Modern Media (1967); H?gen, Scoring for Films (1971); Skiles,
Music Scoring for TV and Motion Pictures
(1976); and Lustig, Music Editing for Motion Pictures (1980).
^Another retrospective work of somewhat less weight is Hofmann's Sounds
for Silents (1970). One should also be aware of a group of books comprising a separate cate
gory of their own, viz., "studies of music in the modern media"; some examples: Die drei
grossen "F" (1958), Prieberg, Musica ex Machina (1960), Jungk, Musik im technischen Zeitalter (1971), and Bornoff & Salter, Music and the Twentieth Century Media (1972). These books continue to offer variations on the theme of "music and the microphone," re ferred to above (n. 56).
91Arno Press, for example, has brought out six: Lang & West, Musical Accompani ment of Moving Pictures (1920; 1970); London, Film Music (1936; 1970); Rapee, Encyclopedia (1925; 1970); Huntley, British Film Music (1947; 1972); Rapee, Motion Picture Moods
(1924; 1974); and Sabaneev, Music for the Films (1935; 1978).
92Berg's Investigation originated as a dis sertation at Iowa; others include Gerrero, "Music as a Film Variable," 1969; Schwartz, "Film Music and Attitude Change," 1970; Hanlon, "Improvisation," 1975; Hamilton, "Leith Stevens," 1976; Gorbman, "Film
Music," 1978; and Steiner, "Alfred Newman." 1981 (cf. nn. 95 and 96). I know of two others in
progress: Scott Smith's on Alex North, at Ball State University, and mine on music for silent films.
"The AFI has been quite innovative in this regard, in taping and transcribing oral histories of composers Friedhofer and Bronislau Kaper (in progress), as well as sound
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 25
literature is being enriched by articles heretofore in short supply: close scholar ly looks at special problems.
In the fifties and sixties, the periodical literature was of three main types: (1) the topical, typified by 'The Sound Track" column of Films in Review; (2) the retro spective articles designed to reawaken interest in some part of film music's past (as in the examples cited in note 83 from the same periodical); and (3) probing of abstract problems by composers and theorists.94 Since 1970, however, a new
strand has been weaving through the periodical fabric, spun out of articles that combine careful scholarship with a sensi tivity to fundamental questions ?ques
editor George Grove. The Feldman Library of
the AFI (Los Angeles) also possesses tran
scriptions of seminars with several composers,
including Elmer Bernstein, Jerry Goldsmith, John Green, Henry Mancini, Alex North, and
Dory Previn.
940f these should be mentioned Pierre
Schaeffer, "Les Nouvelles Techniques sonores
et le cinema," and "Le Contrepoint du son et
derimage," both in Cahiers du Cinema no. 37
(July 1954): 54-56 and no. 108 (June 1960): 7-22;
Lissa, "Formprobleme der Filmmusik," in the
Festschrift Karl Gustav Feilerer, ed. Heinrich
Huschen (Regensburg: Bosse, 1962), pp. 321
35, "Le Bande-Son," a collection of four ar
ticles in Cahiers du Cinema no. 152 (February 1964): 19-44 Yves Baudrier, Les Signes du
visible et de Vaudible, premiere partie: Le
Monde sonore (Paris: IDHEC, 1964); Helman, "Probleme der Musik in Film" (n. 26); Rolf Urs
Ringger, "Filmmusik sucht sich selbst." Melos
33 (1966): 313-19; "Colonna sonora;" a special issue of Bianco e nero, 28, nos. 3/4 (March/
April 1967): 3-111; Hanns Jelinek, "Musik in
Film and Fernsehen," Ost Musikzeitschrift 23
(1968): 122-35; Leonard Rosenman, "Notes
from a Sub-Culture," Perspectives of New
Music 7 (1968): 122-35; William Johnson, "Face
the Music," Film Quarterly 22, no. 4 (1969): 3
19; Win Sharpies, "The Aesthetics of Film
Sound," Filmmaker's Newsletter 8 no. 5
(1975): 27-32; Sergio Miceli, "Musica e film: La
colonna sonora ha cinquant'anni. E possible un
bilancio?" in (Nuova) Rivista Musicale Italiana
(1977): 349-63; Thomas E. Backer & Eddy Law rence Manson, "In the Key of Feeling,"
Human Behavior 7 (February 1978): 62-67; and
Luther Prox, "Im Stadium der Kindheit: Skiz
zen zur Filmmusik," Musica 3 (1978): 229-235.
tions which must be addressed if film music research is to advance. Most of these articles have been the work of three writers (the third trilogy to be named in as many paragraphs)?Douglas Gallez, Frederick Steiner, and Claudia Gorbman.95 Most of their articles have been analyses of music within specific films, but unlike their predecessors in this genre, these writers have been con
cerned as much with providing a context for the analysis as with the analysis proper. Thus Gallez relates his under
standing of Satie's music for Entr'acte to
present-day compositions and film music aesthetics. Steiner uses a study of Leith Stevens' music for The Wild One to trace the development of jazz idioms in film
scoring. Gorbman goes perhaps fur
thest of all beneath the surface analy sis. She plunges the depths of semio
logical and structural modes of film criti cism in order to come up with new
analytical methods and new ways of
talking about film music.
95Gallez, "Theories of Film Music," Cinema Journal 9, no. 2 (1970): 40-47; "Facing the Music in Scripts," CJ ll,no. 1 (1971): 57-62; "Satie's Entr'acte: A Model of Film Music," CJ
16, no. 2 (1976): 36-50; and "The Prokofiev Eisenstein Collaboration: Nevsky and Ivan
Revisited," CJ 17, no. 2 (1978): 13-35. Gorbman, "Music as Salvation: Notes on Fellini and Rota," Film Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1975): 17-25; "Clair's Sound Hierarchy and the Creation of
Auditory Space," Film Studies Annual (West
Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue Research Found., 1976), pp. 113-23, and "Vigo/Jaubert" (n. 8); "Narrative Film Music," and "Bibliography on
Sound in Film," both in Yale French Studies no. 60 (1980): 183-203, and 269-286; Steiner, "Herrmann's 'Black and White' Music for Hitch
cock's Psycho," Film Music Notebook 1, nos. 1-2 (1974): 28-36 and 26-46; and "An Examination of Leith Stevens' Use of Jazz in
The Wild One," FMN 2, nos. 2-3 (1976): 26-34 and 26-34. Besides these, the best recent ar ticles I know of are by Dietrich Stern, "Kom
ponisten gehen zum Film" (n. 47); Charles
Berg, "Cinema Sings the Blues," CJ 17, no. 2
(1978); [1]-12; and Jon Newsom's excellent
"David Raksin: A Composer in Hollywood," Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 35 (1978): 142-72, which comes with a 45 r.p.m. disc of recorded examples.
26 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
Gorbman's case studies of films by Fel lini, Clair and Vigo are all convincing demonstrations of the power of this new mode of criticism; likewise, her article on "Narrative Film Music" makes a fine theoretical introduction ?
especially when read in conjunction with the other articles in the same issue of Yale French Studies, devoted to the topic of "Cinema/Sound" (see nn. 14 and 95). This
important collection is perhaps the most valuable addition to the literature to be published in recent years. It reflects a
growing fascination among theorists and critics with cinema's "auditory dimen sion" (to use editor Rick Altman's
phrase); and it speaks with a "new and different voice" ?one grounded in film theory's most sophisticated contem porary language. In all likelihood, this language will be of great importance to film music research for many years to come.96
The literature, in recent years, has found new ways to proceed, and followed the old ways as well, at an accelerating pace. The same can be said of film music itself. In theaters today one encounters a wide spectrum of new styles ranging from popular songs of the hour to the latest avant-garde techniques.97 Yet there are
many recent scores that resonate with
allusive meanings, in parody and homage to the past.98 For all kinds of scores have "worked" ?that is, have been used in
films both artful and profitable. More over, even as film music's "golden age"
disappears from view (and for different
people this can be any time from the twenties to the fifties), sound tracks re surface and film music societies do their best to bring the age back.99 Thus film music research is being pushed forward
by waves of scholarship and nostalgia.
Film is still a babe among the arts, but it has outlived several generations of makers, composers, and researchers. Be
hind us, the origins of film music recede and even sink (no matter the waves of
nostalgia); before us, the art opens unto unknown but exciting horizons. Research attempts to move in both directions. But given its present state, will it be able either to recapture the past or to keep abreast of the present?
///. The Present State of Research into Film Music
Within this survey, five powerful cur
"Important related sources include
Michael Little, "Sound Track: The Rules of the Game," CJ 13, no 1 (1973): 35-44; and
Kristin Thompson, "Simple Sound Relations," and "Vertical Montage," in her book Eisen stein's "Ivan the Terrible": A Neoformalist
Analysis. Princeton: Princteon University Press, 1981, pp. 202-260.
97The 1975 edition of The Technique of Film Music contains discussions of "Four
Films since 1955," chosen for their "different
approaches toward film music": The Devils, with both seventeenth-century French music
and original work by Peter Maxwell Da vies; 2001: A Space Odyssey, with prerecorded works by Johann and Richard Strauss, Khat
chaturian, and Ligeti; Second Best, with a
somewhat more traditional score by Richard
Arnell; and Zabriskie Point, with an amalgam of popular music by groups such as the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Of more recent ex
amples one could cite the synthesizer-based score by Giorgio Moroder for Midnight Ex
press and Denny Zeitlin's superb blend of music and sound effects for Invasion of the
Body Snatchers.
98Examples are Obsession (1976), in which the music by Bernard Herrmann deliberately recalls his score for the film's "double," Ver
tigo (1958); L'Histoire dAdele H. (1975), for which Francois Porcile constructed a score en
tirely out of compositions by film composer Maurice Jaubert; and Star Wars (1977), with, at least in John Williams' main title music, dis tinct echoes of Korngold's swashbuckler style.
"The four American societies established in recent years are the Max Steiner Music
Society (1965), the Miklos Rozsa Society (1971), the Entr'acte Recording Society (1974), and the Elmer Bernstein Filmmusic Collection
(1975). Each offers both recordings and a jour nal, called, respectively, the Max Steiner
Music Society Newsletter, Pro Musica Sana, Main Title, and Film Music Notebook?all
listed with further information, in Bib
liography III. Foreign societies, clubs, and soundtrack newsletters are listed by Sharpies in his 1978 bibliography for Cinema Journal; of these, Soundtrack! (formerly SCN) is the most important.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 27
rents of literature have surfaced, with these points of origin and tendencies:
(1) The Edison Company's "Sugges tions for Music," 1909: aids for the
preparation of accompaniments. (2) Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Alexan
dra's "Statement," 1928: theoreti
cal speculation on the principles and potentials of the sound film.
(3) Antheil's "On the Hollywood Front," 1936: explanations and de bates focused on music in contem
porary films.
(4) Manvell and Huntley's The Tech nique of Film Music, 1956: general views of film music's theory and history, amplified by criticism.
(5) Gallez's "Theories of Film Music," 1970: scholarly studies of narrow
topics with broad implications for further research.
Charting the literature in this way, we have only skimmed its surface. Each of these currents has for a time been on top, but a more detailed study would reveal them all mixing and guiding the general flow. Still, we have seen enough to make clear that the literature is heterogeneous and abundant. Much of it has been writ ten for a lay audience, some for profes sionals; some of it is technical, much of it is not; it has been written by composers (they have perhaps contributed the
most), critics, filmmakers, theorists, in
terested observers, and scholars (who have certainly contributed least). Hence, it is difficult to generalize about its use fulness for research. One must place every piece of literature into its context, defining the position of the writer with
respect to his or her audience.
Because Prendergast and Morton, in their negative assessments, failed to do this, they underestimated the litera ture's value. When Morton, in 1953, described the literature as mostly "mere
reportage," "ant's-eye views" and "spe cial pleading," generally with no "perma nent value," he had in mind the third current of writing, which had predom
inated in America for nearly twenty years. The primary example of the kind of literature Morton wished to see ?the
"general view" written from "either a critical or historical perspective" ?was London's Film Music (1936), a book very much out of date. Since the fifties, such views have become more common; and if
they in turn seem "not very dis tinguished," it is partly because they do so little with the literature that pre cedes them. The perspectives of books by writers such as Bazelon, Evans, and
Prendergast are too closed-in. Prender
gast complained of a lack of "intelligent and perceptive writing," but we have seen instances of such writing in every phase of film music's history. What con
tinually changes is the direction in which the intelligence and perception are ap plied. The author of A Neglected Art (1977) wished to end neglect through the
development of a "critical literature." By this he presumably meant careful, critical studies of film music within a his torical context (for that is what his own book attempts to be). But if such studies are to be of much use, they must begin to swim with the literature's eariier cur
rents.
It is the very impermanence of the older literature, the speed with which it disap pears beneath the surface, that makes it useful for research. If, for example, we
look for "general views" in the manuals of Eugene Ahern and Frank Skinner, we will be disappointed; but we can make use of them as informative sources on (1) silent film music as heard in rural com munities and small towns from 1910 to 1915, and (2) the composer in Hollywood from 1945 to 1950. The obsolete anthol ogies and indexes of music from the silent period have become keys to the buried treasure of that bygone aesthetic; they can help both to establish control of that vast repertoire and to develop a typology of music for film (and, by exten sion, to shed light on the age-old ques tions concerning the "meaning" of music). The "mere reportage" of Film Music Notes will lend assistance to historians of film music in the forties and fifties, as will Moving Picture World and its com
28 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
panions for earlier decades. The "special pleading" of writers such as Eisler, Keller, and Morton (along with Eisen stein, Arnheim, Pudovkin, and so forth) have become important texts for film music's criticism and theory.
These are some examples of how, owing to the growth of scholarly interest in film
music, yesterday's research can become
today's primary resources. As of yet, however, these examples remain largely hypothetical. Careful scrutiny both of the literature and of the music itself is in
creasing, but we can not, like London, take the encouraging signs for the whole
pattern. Scholarly research may have be
gun to awaken, but it is still quite early in the day. The very fundamentals elude us. We lack comprehensive indexes, bio
graphical data, and editions (critical or otherwise) of film music. Our histories have not progressed much beyond unsub stantiated generalizations and anec
dotes, which, however amusing, do little to sort out what is imaginary and what is real in an industry that delights in con
fusing the two. Our analyses wrestle with the basic problem of what an analy sis of film music should do. Indeed, the materials are so scattered and the methods so tentative that a true "state" of research can hardly be said to exist.
Instead of a community of scholars working with a common set of pro cedures toward a set of mutually agreed upon goals, we are isolated individuals,
coping as best we can with the materials and methods we can come up with.
We face the following fundamental tasks:
1. To find the materials (films, scores, literature, and so on).
2. To make the materials available for research (at the proper facil ities, in catalogues and editions).
3. To devise methods of analyzing the materials so that we can come to an
understanding of film music, both a. in its own terms ?that is, the
function of music within the audio-visual whole; and
b. in its social context ?that is, the history of this music and its rela
tionship to other kinds of music past and present.
To carry out these tasks, if only for the first half century of film music's exis tence, may well require another half century of patient teamwork. It will certainly re
quire changes of attitude on the part of studios, composers, and scholars. It will be a long time before we have a Reper toire Internationale des Sources
Musicales du Cinema, or a Riemanns Filmmusiklexikon. In the meantime, lines of communication must begin to open up, while scholars chisel at projects bit by bit. And these tasks must be kept ever in view. Without them, research is sure to drift, in the power of one current or another; with them, we may presently arrive at a true state of research, in which our understanding of film music, and thus the art itself, can flourish.
A Selective Bibliography of Film Music Publications
Note: Items with an asterisk are dis cussed in the text of the article.
/. Bibliographies
Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums, 1950 ? .
2nd & 3rd ser. Var. ed., publ., d. Last 11 vols., Mainz: Schott, 1969-77.
Entries under "Filmmusik." Very good on central European sources.
Catalogue of the Book Library of the British Film Institute, vol 3: Subject Catalogue. Bos ton: G.K. Hall, 1975.
Extensive, eclectic listings under "Anima
tion," "Film Music," "Sound," and so forth.
"Composers on Film Music: A Bibliography." Films no. 1 (1940): 21-24.
Mostly articles from the thirties by influ ential composers. Published in conjunction with a symposium on "Music in Films," pages 5-20.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 29
The Critical Index: A Bibliography of Articles on Film in English, 1946-1972. Ed. John &
Lana Gerlach. New York: Teachers College Press, 1974.
"Sound," "Music," and "Music for Silents,"
pages 516-20. Occasional brief summaries.
The Film Index: A Bibliography; VoL 1: The Film as Art, by the WPA Writers' Program. Ed. Harold Leonard. New York: Museum of
Modern Art and H.W. Wilson, 1941.
"Music: Silent Era," pages 202-7; "Sound
Era," pages 207-11. American and British
sources, mostly cultural and trade maga zines. Detailed summaries.
Film Literature Index, 1974?. Ed. Vincent J.
Accto et al. Albany: Filmdex, SUNY, 1975-.
Entries under "Music." Favors popular American periodicals.
Film Music. British Film Institute Book Li
brary, No. 5. London: British Film Institute, 1977.
Selections from the Catalogue (q.v.), plus some new items.
Claudia Gorbman, comp. "Bibliography on
Sound in Film." Yale French Studies no. 60
(1980): 269-286.
Ca. 350 English and French sources, drawn
primarily from film books and periodicals. Entries under "General Theory and Aes
thetics," "Technology: General," "Tech
nology: History ?The Coming of Sound," and "Music."
Georges Hacquard, comp. "Bibliographie," in
his La Musique et le cinema. Bibliographie in
ternationale de musicologie. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1959, pp. 101-4.
Mostly French sources from the thirties to
the fifties.
International Index to Film Periodicals, 1972?. Ed. Karen Jones. New York: Bowker, 1973,1974; St. Martin's Press, 1975-.
Entries under "Music" and "Sound." Anno tations.
Zofia Lissa, comp. "Bibliographie," in her Aesthetik der Filmmusik. Berlin: Henschel, 1965, pp. 409-24.
Hundreds of items, listed chronologically from 1881 to 1964; many from the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe. Incorporates many of the entries from Manvell & Hunt
ley (see below) as they stand.
Roger Manvell & John Huntley, comps. "A
Select Bibliography," in their Technique of Film Music. 1957; 2nd ed. New York: Hastings House, 1975, pp. 291-302.
Mostly British sources, arranged chrono
logically in four divisions: Books on Film Music, Articles and Reports on Film Music, Silent Film Music Publications, and Books Containing Film Music References. Exten
sive, but error-prone and inconsistent. Ex
amples: McCarty's Film Composers in
America is dated 1954 instead of 1953, and its reprint is not mentioned; Skinner's Un
derscore is dated from its 1960 reprint rather than the 1950 original; Biamonte ap
pears to be the author of Musica e film, rather than the editor; and a whole 1971 is sue of Filmmakers Newsletter is said to be
"devoted to the subject of film music," but
it contains only a few articles on sound.
Robert U. Nelson & Walter Rubsamen, comps. "Literature on Music in Film and Radio."
Hollywood Quarterly: Annual Communi cations Bibliography, Supplement to vol. 1 (1946): 40-45.
See Rubsamen below.
The New Film Index: A Bibliography of Maga zine Articles in English, 1930-1970. Ed. Richard Dyer MacCann & Edward S. Perry. New York: Dutton, 1975.
"Sound," pages 63-68, includes "Technical
Aspects of Sound," "Theory and Function
of Film Music," "History of Music," "Tech
nical Aspects of Music," "Case Studies and
Criticism," and "Dubbing." Arranged chronologically within each section, with
summaries.
Edmund Nick, comp. "Literatur," from the ar
ticle "Filmmusik," in Musik in Geschichte und
Gegenwart. Cassel: B?renreiter, 1955.
Mostly German sources, including general works on film.
Francois Porcile, comp. "Bibliographie som
maire," in his Presence de la musique a
Vecran. Paris: Editions du CERF, 1969, pp. 329-31.
30 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
French sources from the forties to the six ties. (Cf. Hacquard.)
Roy Prendergast, comp. "Bibliography," in his A Neglected Art: A Critical Study of Music in Films. New York: New York University Press, 1977, pp. 254-60.
An eclectic range of mostly American sources keyed to each chapter.
Retrospective Index to Film Periodicals, 1930-1971. Ed. Linda Batty. New York: Crown, 1975.
"Music," pages 311-12. Less extensive than either the Critical Index or the New Film Index. Some brief annotations.
RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, 1967?. Ed. Barry S. Brook. New York: International RILM Center, City University, 1968-.
Entries under "Dramatic Arts (Including Film)," indexed under "Film Music." World-wide coverage of musicological sources.
Walter Rubsamen, comp. "Literature on
Music in Film and Radio: Addenda (1943-48)." Hollywood Quarterly 3 (1949): 403-3; re printed, combined with the Nelson & Rubsa
men bibliography in Hinrichsen's Musical Year
book 6(1950): 318-31.
Subject headings: "Music for the Silent Film," "The Function of Music in the Sound
Film," "Recordings and Reproduction of Film Music," "History of Film Music," "The Sound Film as an Audio-Visual Ex
perience," "Criticism of Film Music," and
"Legal Rights of Film Composers."
Win Sharpies, Jr., comp. "A Selected and An
notated Bibliography of Books and Articles on
Music in the Cinema." Cinema Journal 17, no.
2 (1978): 36-67.
Over 400 sources, divided into "Reference
Works, Including Bibliographies," "Books," and "Periodical Articles," plus supplemen
tary lists of film music clubs, soundtrack
sources, and films on film music. Many an
notations. The most recent of bibliogra
phies, wide-ranging (though weak on for
eign periodicals), and mostly accurate.
Mario Verdone, comp. "Nota bibliografica," in La musica nel film. Ed. Luigi Chiarini & Enzo Masetti. Rome: Bianco e nero editore, 1950, pp. 139-45.
Of value principally for Italian sources.
John V. Zucker man, comp. "A Selected
Bibliography on Music for Motion Pictures." Hollywood Quarterly 5 (1950): 195-99.
Unique headings: "Psychological Articles on the Effects of Music," "Professional ar
ticles ... by Critics, Composers and Musi
cians," and "Bibliographies and Sources of Information on Film and Radio Music."
//. Sources from the Silent Period (through 1929).
Note: The following lists contain no more than samplings of these types of literature, selected to suggest the range of such publications. References to many others can be found in the books by Berg and Birett, cited in section III.
A. Anthologies and/or Indexes of Music
Ascherberg's Ideal Cinema Series. 8 vols. London: Ascherberg, Hopwood & Crew, 1928 29.
Forty-eight numbers, six per volume, each volume by a different composer: Walford
Hyden, Philip Cathie, Reginald Somer ville, Walter R. Collins, Herman Finck,
Percy Elliot, H. Baynton-Power, and Ar thur Wood. Piano and orchestra parts.
Lacey Baker, comp. Picture Music: A Collec tion of Classic and Modern Compositions for the Organ Especially Adapted for Moving Pic tures with Practical Suggestions to the
Organist. 2 vols. New York: H.W. Gray [1919].
Thirty numbers, fifteen per volume, with the "classics" in the first and the "mod erns" in the second. Each piece is pro vided with a "synopsis" of its affective character.
John L. Bastian. The Theatre: Dramatic and
Moving Picture Music. Chicago: Bastian Sup ply Co., 1913.
_. The World: Dramatic and Moving Pic ture Music. Chicago: Bastian, 1913.
Thirty numbers and thirty-four numbers,
respectively, each very short. Piano.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 31
Hubert Bath. Feldman's Film Fittings. Lon don: B. Feldman, 1925.
Eight numbers, namely, Heroic, The Vil lain, Parental Affection, Grief, Happy
Thoughts, Evil Intention, The Dispute, and Reconciliation. Piano, also published for small or full orchestra in sets of two numbers each.
Giuseppe Becce. Kinotheh Neue Filmmusik. 12 vols. Berlin: Schlesinger, [ca. 1920-1927].
Eighty-one numbers, in volumes 1A (7) and IB (8), Tragisches Drama; volumes 2A (8) and 2B (7), Lyrisches Drama (Chopiniana); volumes 3A (9) and 3B (6), Grosses Drama; volumes 4A (6) and 4B (6), Hochdrama tisches Agitatos; volumes 5A (6) Ernste In
termezzi, and 5B (6) Exotika, and 6B (6) Verschiedenes. Large, small orchestra, trio, or piano (arr. Richard Tourbie). See, also, Hans Erdmann, below.
Joseph Carl Breil's Original Collection of Dramatic Music for Motion Picture Plays. London: Chappell, 1917.
Twelve numbers, constructed in sections so "That it is possible to pass from one sec tion of one number into almost any section of another . . . [the composer's "Fore
word"]." Piano, organ, large or small or chestra. An important early collection by the man who collaborated with Griffith on scores for Birth of a Nation and Intoler ance, besides composing many other origi nal scores.
Ditson's Music for the Photoplay. Boston: Oliver Ditson, [1918-1925].
Fifty numbers in five looseleaf series (10
each). Composers: Nicolas Amani (1), Gas ton Borch (11), Lucius Hosmer (3) Otto Langey (21), Christopher O'Hare (12), T.H. Rollinson (1), and Berthold Tours (1). Multi ple arrangements.
Hans Erdmann & Giuseppe Becce. Allge meines Handbuch der Filmmusik. Ed. Ludwig Brav. 2 vols. Berlin: Schlesinger, [1927].
Volume 1: Introductory essay on "Musik und Film," followed by two indexes (of com
posers and headings) referring to the second volume, plus twenty pages of adver tisements for film music publications. Vol
ume 2: "Thematisches Skalenregister" of
3,050 numbers, arranged in a fascinating table by mood, tempo, and form. The most
complex and valuable work of its kind.
Carl Fischer Moving Picture Folio, Especially Designed for Moving Picture Theatres, Vaudeville Houses, etc. New York: Carl
Fischer, [1913].
Fifty-eight numbers: "National Songs and Melodies, Marches, Waltzes, Mazurkas ...
Dramatic and Characteristic Music." Small orchestra. Many composers; principal ar
ranger, M.L. Lake (q.v.).
Carl Fischer, Inc. What to Play for the Movies: A Complete Motion Picture Music Guide for Pianists and Conductors. New York: Carl Fischer, n.d.
Twenty categories of lists of titles, and their tempo, key, meter, composer, and
price, followed by several pages of adver
tisements, for Fischer publications. (Cf. Julius Seredy.)
Gregg A. Freiinger. Motion Picture Piano Mu sic: Descriptive Music To Fit the Action, Character or Scene of Moving Pictures. La
fayette, Indiana: G.A. Freiinger, 1909.
Fifty-one numbers. Among the earliest of
such publications. According to a note on
the work in Moving Picture World 5 (1909): 879, Freiinger was "known as one of the best descriptive pianists in America," and had been "engaged in theatrical work for the past twenty years."
Adam Gregory, comp. Denison's Descriptive Music Book for Plays, Festivals, Pageants and
Moving Pictures. Chicago: T.S. Denison, 1913.
Nearly 150 numbers, mostly well-known
tunes, in simple arrangements.
Chfarles] Grelinger. Musical Cinema Guide [sic] Guide musical a Vusage du pianiste de cinema. Paris: Edition A. de Smit, 1919.
Twenty-five numbers: Berceuse, Reverie, Duo d Amour, Chagrin, and so forth.
The Hawkes Photo-Play Series. London:
Hawkes, 1922-28.
Among the largest collections: 120 num bers in twenty loose-leaf albums, normally
32 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
one composer per album. Multiple arrange ments.
M.L. Lake & Lester Brockton, comps. Carl Fischer's Loose Leaf Motion Picture Collec tion for Piano Solo. 3 vols. New York: Carl
Fischer, 1915,1916,1918.
Forty-five numbers, fifteen per volume. Lake composed and arranged volumes 1 and 2, Brockton volume 3. Includes thir teen "Hurry"s and ten "Agitato"s.
PianOrgan Film Books of Incidental Music, Extracted from the World Famous "Berg" and "Cinema." Incidental Series. 7 vols. New York: Bel win, n.d.
Approximately 42 nos. republished under new headings: Dramatic and Pathetic (7), Neutral Love Themes (7), Emotional Music
(5), Western Music and Galops (7), Ani
mated Cartoonix (5), American, Indian and Mexican Music (6), and Preludes (volume
incomplete). Composers most frequently represented: Morris Aborn, Gaston Borch, Chas. K. Herbert, Sol P. Levy, and Adolf
Minot, plus sixteen others.
Erno Rapee. Encyclopedia of Music for Pic tures. NY: Belwin, 1925; reprint New York:
Arno, 1970.
_. Motion Picture Moods for Pianists and
Organists. New York: G. Schirmer, 1924; re
print New York: Arno, 1974.
The latter book is an anthology of about 270 pieces, arranged and indexed under
fifty-two headings; the former is a much more "encyclopedic" index, listing numer ous compositions under each of its detailed
headings ("Abyssinian Music," "Aero
plane," "Aesop's Fables ?See 'Comedy Pictures'" [sic]). Rapee composed and con
ducted in several of New York City's
largest theatres and sought in these two
expansive works to condense and summar
ize his "six years' experience in the Motion
Picture game" {Moods, p. iii).
Ernest Reeves, arr. Augener's Cinema Music
for Piano, Violin & Violoncello, to Which May be Added Violin II, Bass & Harmonium. Lon
don: Augener, 1921-1923.
Twenty-five loose leaf nos. An example of how publishers converted stocks of salon music (e.g. Liselotte: Valse, by Leon
Adam) to use in cinemas.
Schirmer's Photoplay Series: A Loose Leaf Collection of Dramatic and Descriptive Musi
cal Numbers . . . Arranged for Small or Full
Orchestra and Playable for Any Combination
of Instruments Which Includes Violin and
Piano. 7 vols. New York: G. Schirmer, 1915
1929.
Seventy numbers, ten per volume, by J.E. Andino (2), Irenee Berge (3), W.W. Ber
gunker (6), Gaston Borch (5), Arcady Du
bensky (4), Edward Falck (2), William Lo witz (6), Otto Langey (21), Adolf Minot (4), Hugo Riesenfeld (3), Domenico Savino (1;), and Walter C. Schad (4). Several num
bers were reprinted in Rapee's Motion Pic ture Moods.
Julius Seredy, comp. Carl Fischer Analytical Orchestra Guide: A Practical Handbook for the Profession. New York: Carl Fischer, 1929.
Even more extensive than Rapee's Ency
clopedia, although limited to the music
published by Fischer alone. Over 300 sub
ject headings, with extensive cross-refer
ences, "every number listed according to
Mood and Form, with indications of Time,
Key, Tempo and Duration" (title p.). Be
cause of its late date, the index affords a
comprehensive survey of the output of this
active film music publisher. Extensive ad
vertisements at the end of the book.
Julius S. Seredy, Chas. J. Roberts and M. Lester Lake, comps. Motion Picture Music Guide to the Carl Fischer Modern Orchestra
Catalogue. New York: Carl Fischer, 1922.
Much less extensive than the above cata
logue, with only nine general headings and some subdivisions; but expressly prepared for motion picture use, and interspersed with many paragraphs that cover impor tant problems for the silent film musician
(e.g., the use of silences, well-known songs, leitmotifs, etc.). Many advertisements.
J[ohn] S. Zamecnik. Sam Fox Moving Picture Music. 4 vols. Cleveland: Sam Fox, 1913 (vols.
1-2), 1914(3), and 1923(4).
Ninety-six numbers (25, 24, 21, and 26), for
piano, by one of the most prolific of silent film composers. This was the first of nu
merous film music series brought out by Fox, most of them containing pieces com
posed or arranged by Zamecnik.
B. Performance Manuals
Eugene A. Ahern. What and How to Play for Pictures. Twin Falls, Idaho: n.p., 1913.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 33
Bernard Barnes. From Piano to Pipe Organ: An Instruction Book Written for the Pianist Who Wishes to Become an Efficient Organist. Educational Library for the Music Student, no. 17. New York: Belwin, 1928.
Scattered references to motion picture playing, but heavy emphasis on "Organ Tricks and Effects ... accepted as a perfect accompaniment to the Motion Picture"
(Barnes' "Introduction").
George W. Beynon. Musical Presentation of Motion Pictures. New York: G. Schirmer, 1921.
One of the most detailed sources on the
history and practice of silent film music, by a composer/compiler of broad experience.
P. Kevin Buckley, The Orchestral and Cinema
Organist. London: Hawkes, 1923.
Technical treatise on a fairly simple level.
G. Roy Carter. Theatre Organist's Secrets: A Collection of Successful Imitations, Tricks and Effects for Motion Picture Accompani ment on the Pipe Organ. Los Angeles: pub lished by the author, n.d.
A loose leaf pamphlet. More technical de tails than in Barnes.
Hans Erdmann & Guiseppe Becce. All
gemeines Handbuch der Filmmusik
(See under section II-A.)
Frank Fruttchey. Something New: 400 Self
Help Suggestions for Movie Organ Players. Detroit: n.p., n.d.
A book of maxims, seemingly designed for the player who has never considered what he is doing.
W. Tyacke George. Playing to Pictures: A Guide for Pianists and Conductors of Motion Picture Theatres. London: Kinematograph Weekly, [1912]; 2nd ed. London: E.T. Heron, 1914.
An exhaustive manual for its early date. Both editions contain lists of music pub lishers.
Edith Lang & George West. Musical Accom
paniment of Moving Pictures. Boston: Boston
Music Co., 1920; reprint New York: Arno, 1970.
For the advanced performer, with detailed advice on technical problems such as thematic development, the requirements of individual genres, and the proper use of the theatre organ.
Ernst Luz. Motion Picture Synchrony: For Motion Picture Exhibitors, Buyers and Or chestras. New York: Music Buyers' Corp., 1925.
Proposes a new method of "cueing motion
pictures" according to a complex "Sym phonic Color Guide." The method ap parently never caught on, but the author remains noteworthy as a compiler of scores for many Metro films of the twenties.
[T.J.A. Mapp]. The Art of Accompanying the
Photo-Play. New York: Photo-Play Musical Bureau, 1917.
Sixteen pages of "ideas and suggestions based on the practice of some of the lead
ing New York Theatres" (p. 3).
May Shaw Meeker. The Art of Photoplaying . . . In Operating Any Photoplayer or Double Tracker Piano Players for Theatres. St. Paul:
n.p., 1916.
How to accompany pictures using player piano rolls.
May Meskimen Mills. The Pipe Organist's Complete Instruction and Reference Work on the Art of Photo Playing. [Philadelphia]: n.p., 1922.
A brief introduction on the "Requirements of the Movie Organist," followed by an ex tensive encyclopedia of "Notes."
M[ax] Muhlenau. Kinobrevier: Anleitung zur musikalischen Filmillustration. Berlin: Maxi milian Muller, [1926].
Primarily of use for the "unwissende Kino
kapellmeister," according to Ottenheym (see Section III), page 46.
The [Maude] Stolley-McGill Ten Lesson Course in Moving Picture Piano Playing. Portland, Ore.: Stolley-McGill Publ. Co., 1916; reprint as a column in Melody, 1922.
34 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
The first five lessons offer the performer mostly general technical advice; the last five take up the requirements of specific genres.
William E. Talmadge. How To Play Pictures. N. p., n. pub., 1914.
Advice in a folksy style from one of the early Northwest professionals. (Cf. Ahern and True.)
George Tootell. How to Play the Cinema Or gan: A Practical Book by a Practical Player. London: Paxton, 1927.
The most informative of the organ manu als.
Lyle C. True. How and What To Play for Pic tures: A Manual and Guide for Pianists. San Francisco: The Music Supply Co., 1914.
"Emphasizes the 'What' over the 'How'"? see Berg (cited below), page 167.
///. Books, Dissertations, Pamphlets and Periodicals on Film Music, from 1930 to the Present
Theodor Adorno & Hanns Eisler. Kom
position f?r den Film. Munich: Rogner & Bernhard, 1969.
The first edition of this work to be pub lished under both authors' names. See
Eisler below.
George Antheil. Bad Boy of Music. New York: Doubleday, 1945.
Chapter V, "Hollywood," pages 281-368.
Yves Baudrier. Les Signes du visible et de
Vaudible; Premiere Partie: Le Monde sonore. Paris: IDHEC, 1964.
Three very philosophical chapters. Second
part apparently never published.
Irwin Bazelon. Knowing the Score. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1975.
Charles Merrell Berg. An Investigation of the Motives for and Realization of Music to
Accompany the American Silent Film, 1896 1927. Ph.D., dissertation University of Iowa, 1973; New York: Arno, 1976.
The best work to date on this period, al
though many topics and sources are treat ed in a superficial manner.
Herbert Birett. Stummfilm-Musifa Material
sammlung. Berlin: Deutsche Kinemathek, 1970.
Martin Bookspan & Ross Yockey. Andre Previn: A Biography. New York: Doubleday, 1981.
Part 1, "The Hollywood Life," pp. 3-96. Ex cellent index and photographs.
Jack Bornoff & Lionell Salter. Music and the Twentieth Century Media. International Music Council Publications in Music and
Communication, vol. 3. Florence Olschki, 1972.
"Cinema et musique (1960-1975)." Ed. Alain Lacombe. Special issue of Ecran no. 39 (Sept tember 1975).
A chronology, a round table, four articles, and a biographical dictionary.
"Cinema/Sound." Ed. Rick Altman. Special issue of Yale French Studies no. 60 (1980).
The most stimulating anthology to date. 5 articles on the theory of sound, 3 on its his
tory, 4 on music, plus 3 case studies and a
bibliography (see Gorbman above). The ar ticles by Brown, Gorbman (n. 95), Insdorf,
Metz, Percheron, and Ropars-Wuilleumier (n. 14) are especially valuable.
Gerald Cockshott. Incidental Music in the Sound Film. Pamph. London: British Film In
stitute, 1946.
(See n. 73).
"Colonna sonora." Ed. Glauco Pelligrini & Mario Verdone. Special issue of Bianco e nero
28, nos. 3/4 (1967).
Five articles, a filmography of Pellegrini, and reprints of eight earlier sources: four "Documente," and four "Testimonianze."
Henri Colpi. Defense et illustration de la musique dans le film. Lyons: SERDOC, 1963.
Ermanno Comuzio. Film music lexicon. Pa via: Amministrazione provinciale, 1980.
The most recent biographical dictionary, by a critic who has written frequently on film music for Italian periodicals.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 35
Robert Emmett Dolan. Music in Modern Media, New York: G.Schirmer, 1967.
Manual. Part 2, "Films" pages 51-144.
Die drei grossen "F": Film-Funk-Fernsehen.
Ed. Heinrich Lindlar & Reinhold Schubert.
Musik der Zeit: eine Schriftenreihe zu Musik und Gegenwart, NS, vol. 2. Bonn: Boosey &
Hawkes, 1958.
Anthology; fourteen articles, philosophical and technical.
*Hanns Eisler. Composing for the Films. New York: Oxford University Press, 1947; reprint Freeport, New York: Books for Libraries
Press, 1971.
The text of this book was originally writ
ten in German, by Adorno & Eisler, in 1944. For publication by Oxford in 1947, it was translated ?with significant changes
?by Eisler in collaboration with George MacManus and Norbert Guterman. Adorno
withdrew his name from this edition with
Eisler's consent, seeking to avoid the kinds
of political problems the latter was
experiencing with the United States gov ernment. After Eisler returned to Ger
many, he brought out a German edition
(East Berlin: Henschel, 1949), but it was
much revised in accordance with anti American and pro-Soviet doctrine, along with a desire to make the language more
popular in style. Subsequently, however, Eisler gave Adorno publication rights to the book, and the latter brought it out as
Komposition fur den Film (Munich: Rog ner & Bernhard, 1969). What Adorno was
in fact publishing was the original German
version, for the first time, with both au
thors named; and he explained the book's
complicated history in a postscript, "Zum Erstdruck der Originalfassung" (pp. 212-13).
Although the 1971 Books for Libraries Press edition contains a translation of this
postscript, the text remains identical to the 1947 Oxford version. Thus an English translation of the original Adorno-Eisler text still awaits publication.
Hartmut Engmann, comp. Filmmusik- eine Dokumentation. Munich: Wolf gang Gielow, 1968.
An anthology of short excerpts, all trans lated into German, connected by short edi torial paragraphs.
Entr'acte Newsletter.
(See Main Title.)
*Mark Evans. Soundtrack: The Music of the Movies. Cinema Study Series. New York:
Hopkinson & Blake, 1975; reprint New York: Da Capo, 1979 (Pap.).
Robert R. Faulkner. Hollywood Studio Musi cians: Their Work and Careers in the Record
ing Industry. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971.
_, Music on Demand: Composers and Careers in the Hollywood Film Industry. New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1982.
Due in July. A highly technical sociological study, based on data gathered from 40 of
Hollywood's principal composers from 1964 to 1978.
Wilhelmine Fey. Die Verwertung musikscha
pferischer Werke finsbes. bei Funk, Film und
Schallplatte). Dissertation Munich, 1941;
Wiirzberg: Triltsch, 1941.
Cited in the Nelson & Rubsamen biblio graphy, under "Legal Rights of Film Com
posers."
"Film Music." Ed. John L. Fell. Special issue of Cinema Journal 17, no. 2 (1978).
Articles by Charles Berg on jazz and
Douglas Gallez on Eisenstein and Proko
fiev, plus the Win Sharpies, Jr., biblio
graphy.
*Film Music Notes.
The first periodical devoted to film music, edited by Grace Mabee, published under various titles: Film Music Notes 1-10
(1941-51), Film Music 11-15 (1951-55), and Film and TV Music 16-17 (1956-57). The contents included news items, general ar
ticles, and many reviews of current film
scores, frequently with score excerpts, and more often than not by the composer. An index to volumes 6-11 (1947-52) is in 11, no. 5 (1952): 19-23; volume 12 is indexed in 13, no. 1; 15 in 16, no. 1; and 16 in 17, no. 1.
"Le Film Sonore: L'Ecran et la musique en
1935." Special issue of La Revue Musicale [no. 151] (December 1934).
36 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
(See n. 52.)
Film Music Notebook.
Publication of the Elmer Bernstein Film Music Collection, P.O. Box 261, Calabasas, CA 91302. Edited by Eve Adamson. Four issues per year, beginning with volume 1, number 1 (Autumn 1974). Some excellent
articles, especially those by *Fred Steiner. The Notebook has also provided a film
ography of a leading Hollywood composer in every issue, and has coordinated its new
recordings with these. Composers dealt with in the first ten issues are Max Steiner (vol. 1, no. 1), Elmer Bernstein (vol. 1, no. 2),
Franz Waxman (vol. 1, no. 3), Bernard Herrmann (vol. 1, no. 4), Miklos Rozsa (vol. 2 no. 1), Alfred Newman (vol. 2, no. 2), David Raksin (vol. 2, no. 3), John Green (vol. 2, no. 4), Alex North (vol. 3, no. 1),
Leigh Harline (vol. 3, no. 2), Jerry Fielding (vol. 3, no. 3), Henry Mancini (vol. 4, no. 1) and Bronislau Kaper and Dmitri Tiomkin
(both in vol. 4, no. 2).
Reginal Foort. The Cinema Organ: A Descrip tion in Non-Technical Language of a Fascina
ting Instrument and How It Is Played. [1932]; 2nd rev. ed., Vestal, New York: Vestal Press, 1970.
Properly belongs under Section II-B ex
cept for its late date; but most of the book concerns the workings of the organ and Foort's career, rather than film music as such.
Hugo Friedhof er: An American Film Institute Louis B. Mayer Foundation Oral History. In terviewer & comp. Irene Kahn Atkins. TS in the Feldman Library of the AFI, 1974.
Comprehensive, detailed and witty remin
iscences, with an outstanding filmography.
Richard Henry Gerrero. "Music as a Film Variable." Ph.D. dissertation Michigan State
University, 1969.
A study of the value of music as an influ ence on learning in an instructional film.
Claudia Gorbman. "Film Music: Narrative Functions in French Films." Ph.D. disser
tation, University of Washington, 1978.
Georges Hacquard. La Musique etle cinema.
Bibliographie internationale de musicologie. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1959.
Among the weaker general views of the
subject.
Earle H?gen. Scoring for Films: A Complete Text. New York: EDJ Music, 1971.
Fifteen technical chapters, using excerpts from scores for the I Spy television show
(by H?gen and Friedhofer) as illustration. Followed by a symposium on "The Psychol ogy of Creating Music for Films," fea
turing Friedhofer, Jerry Goldsmith, Quincy Jones, Alfred Newman, and Lalo Schifrin.
James C. Hamilton. "Leith Stevens: A Critical
Analysis of His Works." D.M.A. disseration
University of Missouri at Kansas City, 1976.
Esther S. Hanlon. "Improvisation: Theory and
Application for Theatrical Music and Silent Film." Ph.D. dissertation University of Cincin nati, 1975.
Hans W. Heinscheimer. Menagerie in F
Sharp. New York: Doubleday, 1948.
Two chapters on Hollywood, pages 209 256.
Jean-Roland Hippenmeyer. Jazz sur films: 55 annees de rapports jazz-cinema vus a travers
plus de 800 films tournes entre 1917 et 1972.
Yverdon, Switz.: Editions de la Thiele, [1973].
(Cf. Meeker, below.)
Charles Hof mann. Sounds for Silents. New York: Drama Books Specialists, 1970.
Hofmann played accompaniments at the Museum of Modern Art. His short book is informative and well illustrated, and comes
with a recording of performances made
during screenings at the Museum, 1968-69.
John Huntley. British Film Music. London: Skelton Robinson, [1947]; reprint New York: Arno, 1972.
(See n. 73.)
Edward Johnson. Bernard Herrmann: Holly wood's Music-Dramatist. Triad Press Biblio
graphical Series, no. 6. Rickmansworth, Eng.: Triad, 1977.
Klaus Jungk. Musik im technischen Zeitalter: von der Edison-Walze zur Bildplatte. Bu
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 37
chereihe des Sender Freie Berlin, no. 11. Berlin: Haude & Spener, 1971.
Scattered sections on film in this short overview of all the new media and their
problems for music.
Hans Keller. The Need for Competent Film Music Criticism. Pamphlet. London: British Film Institute, 1947.
Luzi Korngold. Erich Wolfgang Korngold Ein Lebensbild. Osterreichische Komponisten des xx. Jahrhunderts, vol. 10. Vienna. Elisabeth Lafiti & Ost. Bundesverlag, 1967.
Alain Lacombe & Claude Rocle. La Musique du film. Paris: Editions Francis Van de Velde, 1979.
The most recent French Book, following the same general format as Colpi and Por cile. Nearly 140 pp. of general discussion, followed by close to 500 biographies and selective filmographies.
Helga de la Motte-Haber & Hans Emons. Filmmusik: eine systematische Beschreibung. Munich: Carl Hanser, 1980.
Indeed the most systematic and sophisti cated general study to date. A solid theo retical introduction, followed by analysis of dozens of excerpts in both technical and functional terms.
George A. Lazarou. Max Steiner and Film Music. Athens, Greece: The Max Steiner Music Society, 1971.
Oscar Levant. A Smattering of Ignorance. NY: Doubleday, 1940.
Chapter 3, "A Cog in the Wheel," pages 89 144. See n. 63.
Louis Levy. Music for the Movies. London:
Sampson Low, 1948.
James L. Limbacher. Film Music: From Vio lins to Video. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scare crow Press, 1974.
Part 1, an anthology of fifty-two short ar ticles (many of them excerpts); part 2, a series of indexes of composers and films. Useful but unreliable. (See n. 85.)
-, Keeping Score: Film Music, 1972-1979. Metuchen: Scarecrow, 1981.
A sequel to Film Music: revised, partially corrected and updated. Still many prob lems, but a distinct improvement over the
original.
Zofia Lissa. Aesthetik der Filmmusik. 1964 in Polish; German trans. Berlin: Henschel, 1965.
Kurt London. Film Music: A Summary of the Characteristic Features of Its History, Aesthetics, Technique and Possible Develop ments. Trans. Eric S. Bensinger. London:
Faber, 1936; reprint New York: Arno, 1970.
Milton Lustig. Music Editing for Motion Pic tures. Communication Arts Books. New York:
Hastings House, 1980.
The first manual for this specialized techni cal profession. Excerpts from four scores of the 70s (e.g., Heaven Can Wait) are in cluded.
Main Title.
Quarterly Newsletter of the Entr'acte Re
cording Society, P.O. Box 2319, Chicago, IL 60690. Ed. John Stephen Lasher. Irreg ularly published 1974-1978. Now replaced by the Entr'acte Newsletter. The society has issued many outstanding recordings.
Henry Mancini. Sounds and Scores: A Practical Guide to Professional Orchestration. New York: Northridge Music, 1962.
Roger Manvell & John Huntley. The Tech
nique of Film Music. Focal Press Library of Communication Techniques. London: Focal, 1957; 2nd ed., revised and enlarged by Richard
Arnell and Peter Day, New York: Hastings House, 1975.
Clifford McCarty. Film Composers in America: A Checklist of Their Work Los Angeles: Valentine, 1953; reprint New York: Da Capo, 1972.
One-hundred sixty-three composers, with their film scores listed by date.
Robert Guy McLaughlin. "Broadway and
Hollywood: A History of Economic Interac tion." Ph.D. dissertation. University of
Wisconsin, 1970.
Focuses on the ties between commercial theater and Hollywood, but very little on film music.
38 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)
David Meeker. Jazz in the Movies: A Guide to
Jazz Musicians, 1917-1977. London: Talisman, 1977.
Contains 2,239 entries. Supersedes Jazz in the Movies: A Tentative Index (London:
BFI, 1972).
"The Men Who Write the Music Scores." Pam
phlet. Hollywood: Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, 1943.
Useful information on scoring personnel and methods in the early forties. (See n.
69.)
Motion Picture Music. Ed. Luc Van de Ven.
Mechelen, Belgium: Soundtrack, 1980.
Paperbound anthology of 24 articles culled from issues 1-12 of SCN (q.v.
? now Sound track!). Includes discographies, filmogra phies, and/or interviews for eight com
posers.
Music and Dance in California Ed. Jose Rod
riguez; comp. William J. Perlman. Hollywood: Bureau of Musical Research, 1940.
Wide-ranging anthology on matters of the
ory and practice, including film music (6 ar
ticles), plus a biographical dictionary.
Music and Dance in California and the West. Ed. Richard Drake Saunders. Hollywood: Bureau of Musical Research, 1948.
Format similar to 1940 volume.
Music in Film and Television: An Internation al Selective Catalogue, 1964-1974. Comp, and ed. International Music Centre, Vienna. Paris: Unesco Press, 1975.
Lists films and tapes of operas, concerts, educational programs, and experimental programs.
Musica e film. Ed. S.G. Biamonte. Rome: Edizioni dell' Ateneo, 1959.
Thirteen papers read at the XX Mostra In ternazionale dArte Cinematografica di
Venezia, plus eight more from the * Sev enth International Music Congress at Flor ence (1950).
*La musica nel film. Ed. Luigi Chiarini, and
comp. Enzo Masetti. Special double issue of Bianco e nero, 11, nos. 5-6 (1950); also pub lished the same year in book form (Rome: Bianco e nero editore).
Published on the occasion of the Seventh Forence Congress, and also the XIMostra Internazionale. Twenty-seven papers.
Konrad Ottenheym. "Film und Musik bis zur
Einfuhrung des Tonfilms: Beitr?ge zu einer Geschichte der Filmmusik." Dissertation,
Berlin Friedrich-Wilhelm, 1944.
A little known but very fine contribution.
Christopher Palmer. Mikl?s Rozsa: A Sketch
of His Life and Work. London: Breitkopf & H?rtel, 1975.
Chapter 4, "Film Music," pages 28-47.
Francois Porcile. Maurice Jaubert: Musician
populaire ou maudit? Paris: Les Editeurs
fran?ais reunis, 1971.
The best biography of a film musician to date. Thoughtful and scholarly presenta tion.
_. Presence de la musique a Vieran.
Paris: Editions du CERF, 1969.
Roy M. Prendergast. A Neglected Art: A
Critical Study of Music in Films, New York: New York University Press, 1977; also Norton
Paperback,1977.
Andre Previn & Antony Hopkins. Music Face to Face. New York: Scribner's, 1971.
The two men converse and compare careers.
Fred K. Prieberg. Musica ex Machina: ?ber
das Verh?ltnis von Musik und Technik Berlin: Ullstein, 1960.
"Filmmusik," pages 234-43, plus many re
lated chapters.
Pro Musica Sana
Quarterly Publication of the Mikl?s Rozsa
Society, 319 Ave. C, No. 11-H, New York, NY 10009. Ed. John Fitzpatrick. Twenty six nos. to date (Spring 1979), beginning
with vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 1972). The focus is
always on Rozsa, in print, on disc and on
tape; but other composers and recordings receive consideration. The society is not to be confused with John Stevens' Austra lian-based Mikl?s Rozsa Cult (which also publishes a newsletter).
F. Rawlings. How To Choose Music for Amateur Films. London: Focal Press, 1956; 2nd ed. London: Focal Press, 1961.
A throwback to the catalogues and manu als of the silent film period, except that re
cordings are the subject, rather than music in live performance.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982) 39
Friedrich G. Robbe. Die Einheitlichkeit von Bild und Klang im Tonfilm: Untersuchung '?ber das Zusammenwirkung der ver
schiedene Sinnorgane und seine Bedeutung f?r die tonfilmische Gestaltung. Dissertation Hamburg, 1940; Hamburg: Niemann &
Moschinski, 1940.
Cited in the Nelson & Rubsamen bibliogra phy under "The Sound Film as an Audio Visual Experience." The literature on this
important topic is small; so it is to be re
gretted that this work is difficult to con sult.
Leonid Sabaneev. Music for the Films: A handbook for Composers and Conductors. Trans. S.W. Pring. London: Pitman, 1935; re
print New York: Arno, 1978.
Stanley Schwartz. "Film Music and Attitude
Change: A Study to Determine the Effect of Manipulating a Musical Soundtrack upon
Changes in Attitude toward Militarism-Paci fism Held by Tenth Grade Social Studies Students." Ph.D. dissertation Syracuse University, 1970.
(Cf. Gerrero above.)
SCN: Soundtrack Collector's Newsletter.
Soundtrack, P.O. Box 3895, Springfield, MA 01101 or Luc Van de Ven, Editor, As tridlaan 165, 2800 Mechelen, Belgium. In
terviews, reviews, short articles and su
perb international discographics. Marlin Skiles. Music Scoring for TV and Mo tion Pictures. Blue Ridge Summit, PA.: Tab
Books, 1976.
The most recent manual, concisely written, and especially valuable because it includes interviews with several Hollywood com posers.
Frank Skinner. Underscore. Los Angeles: Skinner Music Co., 1950; reprint New York:
Criterion, 1960.
The only manual to proceed by tracing the composition of one film score.
Frederick Steiner. "The Making of an American Film Composer: A Study of Alfred Newman's Music in the First Decade of the Sound Era." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Southern California, 1981.
The first dissertation by a musicologist? one who has enjoyed a distinguished career as a composer and conductor for films and television.
The Max Steiner Music Society Newsletter. P.O. Box 45173, Los Angeles, CA 90045. Ed. Albert K. Bender. Forty-nine numbers published from 1965 to 1976, supplemented
by ten Max Steiner Annuals. An indispen sable series of sources for information on one of Hollywood's giants, with attention
given to other composers as well.
Stummfilmmusik Gestern und Heute- Bei trage und Interviews anlasslich ein Sym
posium ins Kino Arsenal am 9 juni 1979 in Berlin. Ed. Walter Seidler. Berlin: Spiess, 1979.
Hans Alex Thomas. Die deutsche Tonfilm musik: von den Anfangen bis 1956. Neue Bei
trage zur Film und Fernschforschung, Vol. 3. G?tersloh: Bertelsmann, 1962.
Two large sections: the first half a chain of historical and conceptual essays; the second, indexes of composers.
Tony Thomas. Music for the Movies. South
Brunswick, NJ: Barnes, 1973. (Also in paper back.)
Entertaining and full of information, but not at all a scholarly presentation.
_. Film Score: The View from the Podium. South Brunswick and New York: A.S.
Barnes, 1979.
Articles by 20 Hollywood composers, with biographical sketches, a discography by Page Cook (from 1970), and a reprint of the Sharpies bibliography. Some of the articles are reprints, taken from out-of-the-way places; several lack a source attribution; Frederick] Steiner's, and perhaps a few others, are newly written.
Dmitri Tiomkin & Prosper Bucanelli. Please Don't Hate Me. New York: Doubleday, 1961. Der Tonfilm: eine Gefahr fur den Musiker beruf und fur die Musikkultur. Pamphlet Berlin: Deutscher-Musiker-Verlag, 1930.
Indicative of the strong resistance to re corded sound on the part of professional si lent film musicians.
?ber die Musik im Film: Vier Aufsatze Sowjetischer Autoren. Ed. Tamara Krause. 2nd rev. ed. Beitrage zu Fragen der Film kunst, No. 2 Berlin: Henschel, [between 1950
55]. Essays by Dunayewsky, Khatchaturian, and two by Shostakovitch.
Reginald Whitworth. The Cinema and Theatre Organ: A Comprehensive Descrip tion of This Instrument, Its Constituent
Parts, and Its Uses. London: Musical Opin ion,1932.
Even more than Foort (see above), Whit worth is primarily concerned with the
workings of the instrument rather than the music played.
40 JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM AND VIDEO ASSOCIATION XXXIV, 1 (Winter 1982)