Download Lecture Notes Chapter 6

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MUSIC 004 FILM MUSIC
Lecture Notes: Chapter 6- Foundations of Modern Film
Douglas Starr, Music Faculty Adjunct
Text: “Reel Music, Exploring 100 Years of Film Music,” Hickman, Roger, Norton & Company, © 2006
ISBN: 0-393-92574-9 Tests will be taken from chapter content in the text, lecture notes and directly
from musical passages on screened portions of films in class.
1908-1919 From craft to art form, three arts combine in film: visual, dramatic and musical arts
http://www.filmsite.org/pre20sintro3.html
Early art form grows in scale and artistry
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Films grew in length (multiple reels, each 10-15 minutes in length)
Theaters grew in size (as grows the demand for films, the market expands)
Actors become film stars (Remember Edison’s suppression of ACTORS?
The US film industry dominates(major US film directors emerge )
D.W. Griffith, the auteur, elevates film to a sophisticated art from developing the art form’s rules
(conventions)
1. His craft in making a film is developed by the sheer number of his output. Between 1908 and 1915 he
made over 450 films.
2. What are some of the conventions of film that Griffith developed?
Visual arts:
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Close-ups
Panoramas
Moving camera shots
Crosscutting
Dramatic Arts: A new style of acting unlike 19th c. live theater exaggerated gestures:
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Developed an ensemble of actors and a strict rehearsal regimen
Musical Arts: Featured the composition of original music to accompany his silent films in theaters
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Theater Pipe organs with a full range of sounds, dynamics and sound effects
In-house (theater) orchestras, small and large
Compilation scores (borrowed music) using fragments of
1) 19th c. classical music, (few copyright issues and many symphony musicians already knew
this repertoire)
2) patriotic, religious and pop. tunes, and
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3) (Non borrowed) newly composed music often designed to make transition between borrowed
fragments
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Cue sheets and music books (anthologies) for amateur in-house musicians to perform
appropriate music that portrays mood and drama (something a skilled improviser should be
able to do without musical notation)
Original Scores were mostly composed for piano alone. Because tide audience preferred music
for instruments, original piano scores fell into decline.
Composers for early film:
French classical composer Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921)- The Assassination of Duke Guise
(1908)
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All through film history we see a desire to entice established classical music composers to
compose for film to assure musical artistry.
2. Saint-Saens composed for twelve orchestral instruments and used Wagnerian leitmotifs,
associating his musical themes with characters
America’s first significant film composer, Joseph Carl Breil (1870-1926) Queen Elizabeth (1912)
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Continued the ideas of using leitmotifs
Composed for orchestral instruments, first composing a piano score and then an orchestration.
Later he composed for D. W. Griffith including, Birth of a Nation.
His film scores included borrowings (source music), always an audience favorite
American operetta and classical music composer, Victor Herbert (1859-1924) The Fall of a Nation
(1916)
1. He preferred composing original film music (underscoring) with no borrowings.
2. Continued the ideas of using leitmotifs
3. The first of many film classical composers who complained of requirement to alter their
music; e.g change instrumentations, respond to local community censorship, etc
4. These frustrations ended his film career (see Aaron Copland and others)