Music in the Si lent Era
The reg u lar pres ence of music as an ac com pa ni ment to film pro jec tions dur ing cinema’s in fancy— between 1895 and 1905—is not cer tain.1 At that stage, cin ema was seen as a kind of car ni val amuse ment, a low-brow draw based on “at trac-tions” pre sented in sim ple single-shot tab leaux run ning a few min utes.2 Music, how ever, be came an es sen tial part of the film ex pe ri ence in the 1910s.
With the rise of nick el o de ons—those urban store front the a ters spe cial iz ing in film pro jec tions at pop u lar prices, usu ally a nickel—from 1905 on, and then the spread of the posh pic ture pal aces in the teens,3 the du ra tion of films in creased and the phase of the “nar ra tive in te gra tion” began.4 In order to meet the bur geon ing de mand and to guar an tee a longer life for the in di vid ual films, it was no longer suf fi cient to re sort just to iso lated antics, short vaude ville skits, in ven tive op ti cal tricks, and sce nics and top i cals (short travel ogues and proto-typ i cal news reels). Cin ema could no longer set tle for and live on the nov elty ef fect given by re pro duc tion of mov ing im ages but had to re think it self in terms of more struc tured prod ucts. Cin ema needed to tell sto ries. The con ver sion to
10 • “The Classical Hollywood Music”
one line short
the nar ra tive form was ac com pa nied by the con sol i da tion of the re la tion ship between cin ema and music.
Many ex pla na tions have been given to ac count for the rea sons of this now- solid re la tion ship between music and cin ema, and good sum mar ies are avail able.5 Herein, one rai son d’être will be priv i leged over the oth ers: music’s con tri bu-tion to film nar ra bu-tion. The at ten bu-tion and care for music in terms of the matic con sis tency and co her ent in te gra tion with the film’s nar ra tive rose sig nifi cantly when cin ema turned from show ing at trac tions to tell ing sto ries. Im pro vised, un will ingly com ical, and in con gru ous forms of ac com pa ni ment such as those typ i cal of the “cin ema of at trac tions” were no longer tol er ated. Prac ti tion ers now re al ized that a botched-up per for mance or an un suit able mu si cal ac com-pa ni ment could be harm ful to the film’s re cep tion and could rad i cally mod ify the in tended ef fects that the film was de signed to have on the view ers.
In the 1910s there was a flour ish ing of ar ti cles that the or ized and pre scribed the man ner in which music should be writ ten and per formed in order to serve the film in a proper way.6 Ever since The Birth of a Na tion (David Wark Grif fith, 1915, music by Jo seph Carl Breil)—con sid ered to be the first case of an American score ex pressly com piled/com posed to sup port the film’s nar ra tion—music now proved to be able to con note the im plicit mean ing of the nar ra tive.7 In the case of The Birth of a Na tion, this im plicit mean ing is the film’s in fa mous ra cism:
“Music lends in sid i ous aid to em pha size the teach ing of the screen, for the tom- tom beats from time to time to con vince us that the col ored man, well drest [sic]
and ed u cated though he may be, came from Af rica.”8 Film music in the late si lent era had al ready de vel oped a num ber of tech niques to be come an in te gral tool of film nar ra tion.
Yet there was still a major prob lem: the ar bi trari ness of the live per for mance.
The strug gle of many crit ics and theo rists for music that should be con gru ent with the film’s nar ra tive clashed with a tech ni cal issue: music could not be stably placed on the film strip as hap pened with the vis u als, fol low ing the best pos sible stan dards and the producers’ exact in tent. The live per for mance was under the con trol of the in di vid ual ex hib i tors. Even if they had closely fol lowed the list of music pieces—the so-called cue sheet—pro vided by dis trib utors along with the ex hi bi tion prints, the ac tual per for mance would have var ied sig-nifi cantly de pend ing on the mu si cal means avail able in each venue. At tend ing the screen ing of a film at the Roxy Thea tre in New York with an or ches tra of 110 players was quite dif fer ent from at tend ing the screen ing of the same film in a small-town, third-rate movie house. Here the same music would be played from a piano re duc tion on a per haps out-of-tune up right piano by a per haps
one line short
drunk pi a nist. In short, from a mu si cal point of view, a si lent film was never the same from one venue to an other.
Music
and the Com ing of Sound
Sound tech nol ogy was intro duced with the aim of fix ing the film’s mu si cal di men sion, rather than of hav ing char ac ters talk. Al fred Hitch cock claimed that “the ac com pa ny ing music came at last en tirely under the con trol of the peo ple who made the pic ture.”9 Now it was pos sible to bring the im pec cable per for mance of a large or ches tra, which one might have heard only in a lux u ri-ous pic ture pal ace, even to small provincial-circuit the a ters. There fore, in 1926 War ner Bros. could present its Don Juan (Alan Cros land, music by William Axt and David Men doza) in every equipped the a ter with the flaw less ren di tion of the New York Phil har monic Or ches tra.10
In the early years of sound films, the use of non-diegetic music was not a widely ac cepted con ven tion, al though re cent stud ies have shown ev i dence of a num ber of ex cep tions: The Sing ing Fool (Lloyd Bacon, 1928) has wall pa per music ac com pa ni ment under most di alogue scenes, and some early-thirties Ernst Lu bitsch pro duc tions at Par a mount, like Mon te carlo (1930), have epi sodes of di alogue under scor ing.11 In most films non-diegetic music was rare, lim ited to the open ing ti tles, to a couple of chords em pha siz ing the “The End” title, to bridg ing pas sages between two scenes, and to mon tage se quences. In the drama Dis hon ored ( Jo seph Von Stern berg, 1931), Mar lene Die trich plays an am a teur pi a nist spy, X27, who man ages to smug gle stra te gic in for ma tion from the enemy by en cod ing it into mu si cal notes. Her die getic piano play ing pro vides most of the mu si cal parts of the film; there are even some un usu ally ato nal pieces, which is what the codes would sound like if played. The only epi sode of non-diegetic music is a brief mon tage se quence sum mar iz ing some war ac tions.
The final, dra matic scene of X27 fac ing the fir ing squad after being sen tenced to death, has no music at all, which sounds rather strange to the ears of a present-day viewer. The same can be said of Madam Satan (Cecil B. De Mille, 1930), a com edy with only die getic music, and Anna Chris tie (Clar ence Brown, 1930), a drama that has vir tu ally no music at all. The pres ence of music was mostly at the die getic level: music had to seem to come from the nar ra tive world and was syn chron ized with some kind of on-screen per for mance—a singer, an or ches tra, a pi a nist—or had to be mo ti vated re alis ti cally by show ing or im ply ing the pres ence of some kind of sound source such as a phono graph or a radio,
12 • “The Classical Hollywood Music”
hence the term “source music.” For ex am ple, in a couple of scenes in the com edy In dis creet (Leo McCarey, 1931), we see Glo ria Swan son ask ing for some music;
in the first scene her maid switches the auto pi ano on and in the sec ond she her self turns on a radio set, so as to mo ti vate re alis ti cally the mu si cal back ground of the fol low ing ac tion or di alogue.
Most di rec tors—Von Stern berg being one of them— thought that non-diegetic music could be harm ful to drama and re al ism. The com poser Max Steiner pro vides an ex am ple of this “mu si cal re al ism”:
But they [pro duc ers and di rec tors] felt it was nec es sary to ex plain the music pic to ri ally. For ex am ple, if they wanted music for a street scene, an organ grinder was shown. It was easy to use music in [a] night club, ball room or the a ter scene, as here the or ches tras played a nec es sary part in the pic ture. Many strange de vices were used to intro duce the music. For in stance, a love scene might take place in the woods and in order to jus tify the music thought nec es sary to ac com pany it, a wan der ing vi o lin ist would be brought in for no rea son at all. Or, again, a shep herd would be seen herd ing his sheep and play ing his flute, to the ac com pa ni ment of a fifty-piece or ches tra.12
H
ow can this ob ses sion with mu si cal re al ism be ex plained? One clar ifi ca tion is of an aes thetic na ture and con nected with the new idea of cin ema that de rived from syn chron ized di alogue. In the si lent era, the lack of words im plied a more styl ized con cep tion of cin ema as a kind of spir i tual, paint like art, a sort of vis ual sym phony. Since re al ity in sound films could be re pro duced with greater fi del ity, the aes thet ics of the me dium slipped to ward a greater re al ism, which ob vi ously fa vored the di alogue over the ar ti fi cial non-diegetic music.An other mo ti va tion is of an eco nomic na ture. At first—in the years 1927–28—sound films were pro duced fol low ing the 1926 model of Don Juan.
These films were ba si cally si lent with syn chron ized music tracks. An other fa mous ex am ple is Sun rise (Frie drich Wil helm Mur nau, 1927, music by Hugo Rie sen feld). After the huge box of fice suc cess of The Sing ing Fool (1928, music by Louis Sil vers et al.) and the first “all-talking” Lights of New York (Bryan Foy, 1928), it was clear that the nov elty of syn chron ized sound was quite suc cess ful in at tract ing the au di ence, thus bring ing in big profi ts. In such films as Sun rise, this in no va tion was less ev i dent. Al though music was in deed syn chron ized with the im ages from a tech ni cal point of view, from the au di ence per spec tive the in no va tion could hardly be no ticed. The sound of the or ches tra that once came
out live from the or ches tra pit now sim ply emerged through loud speak ers from a re corded sup port. At this point, the in no va tion could be bet ter ex ploited if the syn chron iza tion pro cess were ex pli citly dis played. This meant fa vor ing di alogue, on-screen music num bers, and the die getic use of music, vis ibly syn chron ized with an iden tifi able on-screen source. Con se quently, Hol ly wood pro duced talk ies hav ing a re alis tic nar ra tive and set ting, like that in Scar face (Ho ward Hawks, 1932), a film with no music at all besides the die getic whis tling by Paul Muni/Tony Ca monte. An other much ex ploited genre was the mu si cal, where die getic music pre vailed, es pe cially in the revue sub genre, which was made up of a string of mu si cal num bers: fa mous ex am ples are The Hol ly wood Revue of 1929 (Charles Re is ner, 1929, music by Nacio Herb Brown et al.) and Par a mount on Pa rade (Dor o thy Arz ner et al., 1930, music by Ho ward Jack son).
The third fac tor that dis cou raged the use of non-diegetic music was a tech ni cal one: be fore 1932 sound ed it ing and mix ing were very dif fi cult, and this could pre vent the si mul ta ne ous pres ence of multi ple audio tracks.13 The re sult of this was the in abil ity to blend music and di alogue in terms of ac cept-able sound qual ity. The tech ni cal lim i ta tions made fea sible nei ther postrecording (later used to stage die getic num bers in mu si cals) nor dub bing (later used to add non-diegetic music to the sound track).14 In the ear li est years of sound cin ema, music was re corded dur ing the film ing at the same time as the di alogue. Music num bers had to be staged by shoot ing the ac tion and si mul ta ne ously re cord ing the or ches tra and sing ers play ing live on set. Hav ing the or ches tra and sing ers on set with ac tors, and hav ing to han dle the film ing and re cord ing of all the sound ele ments meant an in crease in pro duc tion costs and shoot ing time.15 Be cause this pro cess was so dif fi cult, music was ob vi ously used only when ab so-lutely nec es sary and profi t able, in other words, only in die getic num bers, in which the in no va tion of syn chron ized sound could be pat ently shown off to at tract the au di ence and off set the high costs.
The tech ni cal is sues were solved in 1932, when sound ed it ing and multi-track mix ing be came fea sible. Non-diegetic music, called back ground music, could now find its place in the sound cin ema. The eco nomic rea son dis ap peared in 1930, after the un ex pected flop of mu si cal films at the box of fice. The au di ence had had enough of all those songs and mu si cal num bers that were partly a kind of re vi val of the prim i tive “cin ema of at trac tions” rather than a nar ra tive cin ema.
As a con se quence, many pro duc ers de cided to dis miss musi cians and to re duce the pro duc tion of mu si cals, with the in tent of fo cus ing on talk ies with out music.16
Max Steiner (1888–1971) had moved to Hol ly wood dur ing the early years of sound films and was one of those com pos ers in dan ger of being laid off. Even tu-ally, though, he man aged to in vert the trend in Hol ly wood. His non-diegetic
14 • “The Classical Hollywood Music”
score for Ci mar ron (Wes ley Rug gles, 1931) is quite short and cov ers only about 3 out of the 120 min utes of run ning time. Ac cord ing to the pre vail ing poet ics, most of the music pieces are die getic. In the last shot, how ever, “there is not die getic jus tifi ca tion for the or ches tral music which swells the sound track transcend ing the film’s die getic boun dary and spill ing over into the final cred its.
The im por tance of Steiner’s score for Ci mar ron, how ever, rests not only upon its trans gres sion of the industry’s pri or ity on die getic re al ism in a dra matic con text (it was not the first or only film to do so), but also upon rec og ni tion within the in dus try of Steiner’s de par ture from the ac cepted norm.”17
The last ob sta cle to the emer gence of the clas si cal style—the poet ics of mu si cal re al ism—was re moved by Steiner with four sub se quent RKO films that fi nally con vinced the pro duc ers on the ef fec tive ness of non-diegetic music in a sound film. The first film was the drama Sym phony of Six Mil lion (Greg ory La Cava, 1932), then came The Most Dan ger ous Game (Er nest B. Schoed sack, Ir ving Pichel, 1932) and Bird of Par a dise (King Vidor, 1932), two very dif fer ent dra mas—
The last ob sta cle to the emer gence of the clas si cal style—the poet ics of mu si cal re al ism—was re moved by Steiner with four sub se quent RKO films that fi nally con vinced the pro duc ers on the ef fec tive ness of non-diegetic music in a sound film. The first film was the drama Sym phony of Six Mil lion (Greg ory La Cava, 1932), then came The Most Dan ger ous Game (Er nest B. Schoed sack, Ir ving Pichel, 1932) and Bird of Par a dise (King Vidor, 1932), two very dif fer ent dra mas—