Music and the Silent Film

Contexts and Case Studies, 1895-1924

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by Martin Miller Marks

Type

Studies

Subject

Silent Cinema

Keywords

silent cinema, music

Publishing date

1997

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Hardcover • 320 pages
6 x 9 ¼ inches (15.5 x 23.5 cm)

ISBN-10
ISBN-13

0-19-506891-2
978-0-19-506891-7

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Book Presentation:
Most people's view of silent film music is of a pianist playing old warhorse scores while watching the flickering screen. This innovative book shows that there was much more to silent film music and that often it was planned from the start as an integral part of the film. The first of three volumes investigating film music, this book devotes one chapter to films before 1900 and Camille Saint-Saëns's score for L'Assassinat du Duc de Guise (1908). Another chapter looks closely at film scores composed by Walter Cleveland Simon for several films of 1912. The two main chapters are devoted to significant films of the silent period, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) and René Clair's Entr'acte (1924). Breil's Birth of a Nation score was a compilation of many sources, but, when played by an orchestra accompanying the film in a theatre showing, it often matched the epic nature of the film and was one source of its great popularity.

About the Author:
Martin Miller Marks, Assistant Professor of Music, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Press Reviews:
Named as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Book of 1997

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press