M. Miller - Film Music the Material, Literature and Present State of Research

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.


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.)


(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.


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.


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.


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.


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.


? 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).


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.


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


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


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).


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.


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.


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.


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.


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).


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.


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.


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


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


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.


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.


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


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.


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.


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.


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


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.


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.


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.


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).


(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


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.


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.


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.


Documents

M. Miller - Film Music the Material, Literature and Present State of Research