The Sounds of Silent Films New Perspectives on History, Theory and Practice

by Tieber, Claus; Windisch, Anna Katharina

• ISBN13: 9781137410719
• ISBN10: 113741071X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-09-30
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The Sounds of Silent Films comprises up-to-date research on silent film sound, providing a particular focus on historical performance practices combined with detailed theoretical case studies. The contributions by eminent scholars in the fields of musicology, film studies and media studies, as well as by curators and archivists, explore crucial notions such as the historicity of interpretations of silent film music and the diverse acoustic manifestations of film exhibition. The volume stands among the first to integrate a large number of texts that cover a variety of cultural and historical sites and their particular regional and local historical
performance practices in, for example, Swedish, Polish, British, Italian, Austrian and Indian silent cinema. The contextualizations of silent film sound production are confronted with their reception in the United States and form a unique comparative perspective for the welldocumented North American literature.

Author Biography

Claus Tieber is Lecturer at the University of Vienna, Austria. He completed his MA with a thesis on the American Western film and his PhD with a dissertation on the Hollywood gangster films. He received his Habilitation in 2008. He worked as commissioning editor in the TV movie department of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF).
 
Anna K. Windisch studied Theater, Film, Media and Communication Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. She was a doctoral research fellow at the University of Alberta (2011/12) and project assistant at the University of Salzburg (2012/13). In 2014 she was awarded a doctoral fellowship by the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures
Notes on Contributors
Foreword; Rick Altman
Acknowledgements
Introduction: 'The Birth of Cinema from the Spirit of Music'; Claus Tieber, Anna K. Windisch
PART I: THE HISTORICAL PRACTICE OF SILENT FILM SOUND
1. Organizing a Music Library for Playing to Pictures in Britain: Theory vs. Practice; Julie Brown
2. The Formation of a Swedish Cinema Music Practice, 1905–1915; Christopher Natzén
3. The Use of Cue Sheets in Italian Silent Cinema: Contexts, Repertoires, Praxis; Marco Targa
4. Music, Singing and Stage Practice in the Cinemas of Upper Silesia during the 1920s; Urszula Biel
5. The Sound of Music in Vienna's Cinemas, 1910-1930; Claus Tieber and Anna K. Windisch
6. The Moving Picture World, W. Stephen Bush, and the American Reception of European Cinema Practices, 1907-13; James Buhler and Catrin Watts
7. Musical Beginnings and Trends in 1920s Indian Cinema; Olympia Bhatt
PART II: NEW APPROACHES TO SILENT FILM MUSIC HISTORY AND THEORY
8. Deconstructing the 'Brutal Savage' in John Ford's The Iron Horse; Peter A. Graff
9. The Hermeneutic Framing of Film Illustration Practice. The Allgemeines Handbuch der Film-Musik in the Context of Historico-Musicological Traditions; Maria Fuchs
10. Sergei Eisenstein and the Music of Landscape: the 'Mists' of Potemkin between Metaphor and Illustration; Francesco Finocchiaro
11. Paradoxes of Autonomy. Bernd Thewes' Compositions to the Rhythmus-films of Hans Richter; Marion Saxer
12. The Tradition of Novelty – Comparative Studies of Silent Film Scores: Perspectives, Challenges, Proposals; Marco Bellano
13. Germaine Dulac's Silent Film La Souriante Madame Beudet (1923) and its Scores by Arthur Kleiner and Manfred Knaak; Jürg Stenzl
Select Bibliography
Index