8: Early Film Music

Improvisation

A musician (or musicians) improvised music along with a film. These improvisations might have been entirely new music, or the musical selections might have been drawn from pre-existent pieces. In the early 1920s, some enterprising folks like composer and conductor Erno Rapée published collections of music for cinema pianists. His Motion Picture Moods (1924) was a valuable resource for a solo musician who wanted a quick and easy way to sight-read music that had been categorized into “fifty-two moods and situations,” according to the title page. Some of these moods and situations included: “battle,” “gruesome,” “Misterioso,” and “sadness,” and included a host of dance forms and national songs (organized by nation or ethnic group). It had the added benefit of being a “Rapid-Reference” collection, and this was achieved by a handy list on the outer margin of each page, which would quickly send you to the next mood or situation you needed to accompany.

If you’re interested in seeing more of Motion Picture Moods, the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive has the entire book beautifully scanned at their website.

Cue Sheets

Now, Rapée’s book was a great resource, but it also required that the musician in the cinema quickly (and correctly) interpret the visuals on screen. There was no way to control what they chose. Enter cue sheets! The cue sheet was a list of musical cues (either pre-existent or newly written) suggested for scenes in a specific film. The idea for such a thing is usually credited to Max Winkler (although others assembled cue sheets as well), clerk at Carl Fischer, Inc. a music publisher based in New York.

In his account of the development of cue sheets, Winkler explained that one of the important credos of the film industry was this: “On the silent screen music must take the place of the spoken word.” (Cooke 6) When you think of it like that, it really drives home how important it was to get the music right. Winkler described the situation before cue sheets:

“Only in a few isolated theaters in big cities was any effort made to coordinate the goings-on on the screen with the sounds in the musical pit. Thousands of musicians never had a chance to see a picture before they were called upon to play music for it! There they were sitting in the dark, watching the screen, trying to follow the rapidly unfolding events with their music: sad music, funny music, slow music—sinister, agitated, stormy, dramatic, funereal, pursuit, and amorous music. They had to improvise, playing whatever repertoire came to their worried minds, or whatever they made up themselves on the spur of a short moment. It was a terrible predicament—and so, usually, was the music.” (Cooke 6-7)

To fix this, Winkler proposed making a list to go with a film (and selling the sheet music from Carl Fischer, of course). He drew this example up for an imaginary movie: (Cooke 8)

MUSIC CUE SHEET

for

The Magic Valley

Selected and compiled by M. Winkler

Cue

1. Opening—play Minuet No. 2 in G by Beethoven for ninety seconds until title on screen “Follow me dear.”
2. Play—“Dramatic Andante” by Vely for two minutes and ten seconds. Note: Play soft during scene where mother enters. Play Cue No. 2 until scene “hero leaving room.”
3. Play—“Love Theme” by Lorenze-for one minute and twenty seconds. Note: Play soft and slow during conversations until title on screen “There they go.”
4. Play—“Stampede” by Simon for fifty-five seconds. Note: Play fast and decrease or increase speed of gallop in accordance with action on the screen.

In 1912 Winkler wrote to Universal Film Company and shared his idea for the cue sheet. Soon, he was being shown screenings of films before they were distributed, and he was suggesting pre-existent pieces for the various scenes and moods. You can imagine that many musical cliches were forged in this process—some of which we still live with today. Orchestras who played in movie houses were concerned about repeating music, so once you used, say, Brahms’ Lullaby for a movie, it was out as a choice for a few months after. This meant that new music was going to have to help meet the demand. Composers were hired to write the cues music that the rapid distribution of films required. Still unable to meet the extremely high demand, they took to arranging works that weren’t under copyright. As Winkler puts it: “We began to murder the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Grieg, J.S. Bach, Verdi…” (Cooke 11). Simply put, it was a frenzy. And the sudden popularity of cue sheets died out suddenly as well, with the advent of sound film. More on that later.

Compilation scores

This is a somewhat glorified version of the cue sheet, but one that was not tied to a publishing house. Instead, the “most ambitious musical accompaniments for silent films were those offered by the huge picture palaces in major cities.” (Cooke 16) These theaters had enormous orchestras and many musicians at their disposal. Also, the practice of creating scores in this manner roughly coincided with Hollywood epic films like the controversial Birth of a Nation. When Birth of a Nation premiered in 1915, Joseph Carl Breil’s “compilation score” replaced the classical pieces chosen by Carli Elinor. These types of scores, facilitated by the music directors at major theaters, used pre-existent music and newly written music. According to a 1920 article in American Organist, music directors took great pains to choose music that would support the dramatic action without pulling focus from the action on screen. They would cut, arrange, and time out musical selections to fit a film. They might also require that certain aspects—like opening titles—be projected at a faster or slower rate to fit the musical selections. This was a time-consuming art form. (Cooke 19) In extreme cases (like Birth of a Nation), a group of musicians might actually travel along with a film, like a tour. (New Grove, "Film Music," 549)

In the 1980 New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (a well-respected music encyclopedia) article on “Film Music” talks about these scores and their influence:

“The music director studied the film with his librarian, selecting music and arranging the cues for changes of scene. He was helped by a suggestion list (sent with the film); the pieces recommended were obtainable in arrangements for all sizes of orchestra from 50 players (in the larger theaters) down to five (the usual size of the band that relieved the orchestra for brief intervals). The silent film thus acquainted millions of people with ‘classical’ music, even if in modified form, and created lucrative employment for many performing musicians.” (New Grove, "Film Music" 549)

Things would begin to change with “talkies,” or motion pictures with synchronized sound. This happened in 1927. For now, let's get a little deeper into scoring methods for silent films.