The silence of the silents

Musical Quarterly

Volumn 80, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 648-718

  Altman, Rick ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61149658580     PISSN: 00274631     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/mq/80.4.648     Document Type: Review

References (140)

1. Views and Films Index, 29 Jan. 1907, 3
2. Complete coverage was given to Moving Picture World (1907-13)
3. New York Dramatic Mirror (1905-25)
4. Nickelodeon/Motography (1909-13)
5. Transactions of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (1916-29)
6. Variety (1905-11)
7. and Views and Films Index (1906-11)
8. Film Index, 1 May 1909, 11
9. Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 June 1904
10. quoted in Stanley Kauffmann with Bruce Henstell, American Film Criticism: From the Beginnings to Citizen Kane (New York: Liveright, 1972), 5
11. Moving Picture World, 9 Jan. 1909; quoted in Kauffmann, 20
12. Barton W. Currie, "The Nickel Madness," Harper's Weekly, 24 Aug. 1907, 1246
13. Alloy Orchestra, New Music for Silent Films (Cambridge, Mass.: Accurate Records, 1994)
14. Gillian B. Anderson, Music for Silent Films, 1894-1929 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1988), details the cue sheet holdings of the Library of Congress and the Museum of Modern Art
15. David Robinson, Music of the Shadows: The Use of Musical Accompaniment with Silent Films, 1896-1936 (supplement to Griffithiana 38/39 [Oct. 1990]), catalogs an important exposition held at Pordenone
16. Martin Marks, Music and the Silent Film: Contexts and Case Studies, 1895-1924 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)
17. An earlier very useful book by Q. David Bowers, Nickelodeon Theatres and Their Music (Vestal, N.Y.: Vestal Press, 1986), is primarily devoted to pictures of nickelodeon theaters and musical devices, along with extensive quotes from a series of 1916 Moving Picture World articles offering a city-by-city history of exhibition practices
18. Examples include Rick Altman, "Reading Positions, the Cow Bell Effect, and the Sounds of Silent Cinema," Cinéma(s) 3 (1992), 19-31
19. Altman, "Introduction: Sound/History," in Sound Theory/Sound Practice (New York: Routledge/American Film Institute, 1992), 113-25
20. Altman, "Naissance de la réception classique: la campagne pour standardiser le son," Cinémathèque 6 (1994): 98-111
21. Altman, "Penser l'histoire (du cinéma) autrement: un modèle de crise," Vingtième siècle 46 (1995): 65-74
22. Noël Burch, "Beyond the Peephole, the Logos," in Life to Those Shadows (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 234-42
23. André Gaudreault, "Bruitage, musique, et commentaires aux débuts du cinéma," Protée 13:2 (Summer 1985): 25-29
24. Gaudreault, "Showing and Telling: Image and Word in Early Cinema," in Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (hereafter Early Cinema), ed. Thomas Elsaesser with Adam Barker (London: British Film Institute, 1990), 274-81
25. Palle Schanz Lauridsen, "A Considerable Repertoire Was Necessary": Sound in Danish Silent Cinema (Copenhagen: Working Papers of the Center for Urbanity and Aesthetics, 1994)
26. Charles Musser, "The Nickelodeon Era Begins: Establishing the Framework for Hollywood's Mode of Representation," in Early Cinema, 256-73
27. Musser (with Carol Nelson), High-Class Moving Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition, 1880-1920 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)
28. Emmanuelle Toulet and Christian Belaygue, Musique d'écran: l'accompagnement musical du cinéma muet en France, 1918-1955 (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1994)
29. Tim Anderson, "Reforming 'Jackass Music': The Problematic Aesthetics of Early American Film Music Accompaniment," Cinema Journal, forthcoming
30. New York Dramatic Mirror, 13 Mar. 1909, 16; 5 July 1911, 21
31. but a similar set would be found in virtually any book devoted to film music, including Irwin Bazelon, Knowing the Score: Notes on Film Music (New York: Arco, 1975)
32. Royal S. Brown, Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)
33. Michel Chion, La musique au cinéma (Paris: Fayard, 1995)
34. Mark Evans, Soundtrack: The Music of the Movies (New York: Hopkinson and Blake, 1975)
35. Caryl Flinn, Strains of Utopia: Gender, Nostalgia, and Hollywood Film Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)
36. Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987)
37. Roger Manvell and John Huntley, The Technique of Film Music (London: Hastings House, 1957)
38. and Roy M. Prendergast, Film Music, A Neglected Art: A Critical Study of Music in Films (New York: Norton, 1992)
39. Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator, and the Avant-Garde," Wide Angle 8, no. 3-4 (Fall 1986): 63-70
40. Noël Burch, "Un mode de représentation primitif?" Iris 2, no. 1 (1984): 112-23
41. See, for example, David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985)
42. The Theatre Historical Society of America has recently moved to 152 North York Road, Elmhurst, Ill. 60126, where it maintains a significant archive relating to the physical aspects of film exhibition, with an emphasis on the picture palaces of the late silent period
43. George Beynon, Musical Presentation of Motion Pictures (New York: Schirmer, 1921)
44. and Erno Rapée, Encyclopedia of Music for Pictures (New York: Belwin, 1925; reprint, New York: Arno, 1970)
45. There have been all too few studies of the film musical practices of specific ethnic groups. In part, this is because the coverage offered by trade papers rarely extends to the African-American or Spanish-speaking communities (in fact, the whole Southwest is systematically silenced). For a model of what can be done using alternative sources, see Mary Carbine, "'The Finest Outside the Loop': Motion Picture Exhibition in Chicago's Black Metropolis, 1905-1928," Camera obscura 23 (May 1990)
46. reprinted in Silent Film, ed. Richard Abel (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996), 234-62
47. See also Fred Steiner and Martin Marks, "Film Music," in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie (London and New York: Macmillan, 1986), 2:118ff
48. The article in question is Norman O'Neill, "Music for Stage Plays," Proceedings of the [Royal] Musical Association 37 (1910-11): 85-102
49. Marks's Music for Silent Films constitutes a particularly welcome exception to this trend
50. Irving Thalberg, quoted in Paul F. Boller, Jr., "The Sound of Silents," American Heritage 36, no. 5 (Aug.-Sept. 1985): 99
51. Alberto Cavalcanti, "Sound in Films," in Elisabeth Weis and John Belton, Film Sound: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 98
52. Gaylord Carter, "Silents Were Never Silent," in Walter Wagner, You Must Remember This (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1975), 68
53. Allardyce Nicoll, Film and Theatre (New York: Crowell, 1936), 125
54. Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 337ff
55. Charles Merrell Berg, "An Investigation of the Motives for and Realization of Music to Accompany the American Silent Film, 1896-1927" (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1973), 64
56. Raymond Fielding, "The Technological Antecedents of the Coming of Sound: An Introduction," in Sound and the Cinema, ed. E. W. Cameron (Pleasantville, N.Y.: Redgrave, 1980), 3-5
57. Steve Neale, Cinema and Technology: Image, Sound, Colour (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 91
58. J. Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 19
59. Charles Hofmann, Sounds for Silents (New York: Drama Book Specialists, 1970), 7
60. Norman King, "The Sound of Silents," Screen 25, no. 3 (May-June 1984): 2
61. George Pratt, Spellbound in Darkness: A History of the Silent Film (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 2d ed., 1973), 477
62. André Gaudreault, "Showing and Telling," 274
63. Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York: Scribner's, 1990), 438-39
64. Noël Burch, Life to Those Shadows, 234
65. Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907-1915 (New York: Scribner's, 1990), 13
66. The most complete accounts are in Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 60ff
67. Musser, The Emergence of Cinema, 116 ff
68. and Marks, Music and the Silent Film, chap. 2
69. New York Times, 24 Apr. 1896
70. "Amusements," New York Daily News, 24 Apr. 1896, quoted in Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 61-62
71. New York Herald, 24 Apr. 1896, 11
72. quoted in Musser, Before the Nickelodeon, 63
73. New York Dramatic Mirror, 11 July 1896, 17; quoted in Pratt, 17
74. Clyde Martin, "Playing the Pictures," Film Index, 5 Nov. 1910, 6
75. Nickelodeon, July 1909, 4
76. Nickelodeon, 1 Jan. 1910, 15
77. Joe Laurie, Jr., Vaudeville: From the Honky Tonks to the Palace (New York: Holt, 1953), 326
78. Marks, Music and the Silent Film, chap. 2, n. 14
79. "Nickel Theaters Crime Breeders," Chicago Tribune, 13 Apr. 1907, 3
80. quoted in Lauren Rabinovitz, Temptations of Pleasure (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, forthcoming), chap. 4
81. Clarence E. Sinn, "Music for the Picture," Moving Picture World, 20 Dec. 1913, 1396
82. "Adolph Zukor Quit Furs for Films," Moving Picture World, 15 July 1916, 415
83. Emmett Campbell Hall, "With Accompanying Noises," Moving Picture World, 10 June 1911, 1296
84. Robert Grau, The Stage in the Twentieth Century (New York: Broadway Publishing Co., 1912), ix
85. For example, in The Stage in the Twentieth Century, ix, xvi, xvii, 62, 64, 132, 138, 264, 301, 304, and 331. See also The Theatre of Science (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1914)
86. Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 133. Kracauer's footnote refers to London and Cavalcanti
87. Sir Peter Hall, Four Bars of Agit (London: Samuel French, 1983); quoted in Robinson, 6
88. Hanns Eisler and Theodor W. Adorno stress the terms "ghostly" and "magic," in Composing for the Films (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 75; their comments are quoted in Gorbman, 39, and Kalinak (who adds the terms "uncanny" and "dreamlike"), 45. Berg provides a long list of similar terms, 24
89. The only testimony I have found on this topic is a later reminiscence by George W. Beynon, who says of the so-called talking pictures, "During this experiment in making pictures into plays, the music was kept silent, as it interfered with the clearness of enunciation, especially as the talker had to project his voice through a muslin or canvas screen" (Musical Presentation of Motion Pictures [New York: Schirmer, 1921], 9)
90. The few exceptions to this rule involve superproductions like George Kleine's 1908-9 ninety-minute road shows, Henry Lee's Mimic World and Cyclo-Homo. Produced uninterrupted thanks to the use of three projectors, these multimedia entertainments featured live music and sound effects, recorded songs, and synchronized live dialogue spoken by actors behind the screen, as well as Lee's narration and vocal impressions. See Rabinovitz, chap. 4, and Musser and Nelson, 188 and 339
91. "Excessively obvious" is the phrase that David Bordwell uses to characterize classical Hollywood cinema, in Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson
92. Burch, Life to Those Shadows, 234
93. "Atlanta, Georgia, Claims Nineteen Model Houses," Moving Picture World, 15 July 1916, 404; my italics. The Atlanta Twin is one of two early duplex theaters reported on in this retrospective issue on "The Evolution of Exhibiting." The other is the Detroit Duplex, which gave its name to this type of theater; see 397-98
94. L. Gardette, "Conducting the Nickelodeon Program," Nickelodeon, Mar. 1909, 79; my italics
95. Richard Koszarski, "Offscreen Spaces: Images of Early Cinema Production and Exhibition," in Before Hollywood (Hudson Hills: American Federation of Arts, 1987), 35
96. and Musser, The Emergence of Cinema, 419, which shows the pattern above the ticket booth of Harry Davis's original nickelodeon. Placing the phonograph in the projection booth makes it possible for the projectionist to oversee its operation (as specified in Gardette's instructions), thus making one-man operation of a theater feasible (though often there was a ticket seller/doorman as well, in which case the phonograph might actually be located in the lobby). For example, the nickelodeon period operation of the Louisville Dreamland is described as follows: The Dreamland was the first picture theater in the city, and one of the first three in the country to have a "moving picture front." Mr. Baron, who is one of the topnotchers of the profession today, said that in the old days a man needed about a dozen sets of hands to properly handle an operating booth. For instance, it was necessary to turn the crank with one hand, rewind with the other, and use the foot as a brake to keep the film from running off too fast
97. David Hulfish, Cyclopedia of Motion Picture Work (Chicago: American Technical Society, 1911), 1:136-37
98. F. G. Aitken, "The Business of Exhibiting," Views and Films Index, 27 June 1908, 6-8
99. See, for example, Bowers, 8-9, and Moving Picture World, 15 July 1916, 405
100. Joseph Medill Patterson, "The Nickelodeons, the Poor Man's Elementary Course in the Drama," Saturday Evening Post (23 Nov. 1907), 10-11, 38
101. The work of Arthur A. Barrow, one of the first to recommend accompanying films with the universal wordless melodies of classical music rather than with popular songs, is first described in Views and Films Index, 16 May 1908, 4
102. J. M. Shellman, "Baltimore Has Long List of Motion Picture Pioneers," Moving Picture World, 15 July 1916, 385. The article does not specify the date of this innovation, but the context suggests 1907 as the most likely date
103. Views and Films Index, 4 Jan. 1908, 11
104. W. Stephen Bush, "Hints to Exhibitors," Moving Picture World, 24 Oct. 1908, 316-17
105. James S. McQuade, "Chicago Reports Many Variations in Picture Shows," Moving Picture World, 15 July 1916, 414
106. Gregg A. Frelinger, Motion Picture Piano Music (Lafayette, Ind.: G. A. Frelinger, 1910). This is certainly one of the first, if not the first, publication wholly devoted to music collected specifically for the purpose of film accompaniment
107. Louis Reeves Harrison, "Jackass Music," Moving Picture World, 21 Jan. 1911, 124-35. Two of H. F. Hoffman's delightful illustrations for "Jackass Music" accompany the present article
108. Moving Picture World, 28 Jan. 1911, 176
109. William Calhoun, "My Impression of Motion Pictures - Three Years behind the Screen," Moving Picture News, 15 Apr. 1911, 13
110. S. H. "Hopp" Hadley, "Our 'Hopp' Some Pioneer Picture Man," Moving Picture World, 15 July 1916, 421
111. Our Band Goes to the Competition (Pathé, Sept. 1907)
112. The Irresistible Piano (Gaumont, Nov. 1907)
113. The Merry Widow (Kalem, Jan. 1908)
114. The Mad Musician (Selig, Mar. 1908)
115. F. H. Richardson, "Plain Talks to Theatre Managers and Operators, Chapter 22: Seating/Music," Moving Picture World, 30 Oct. 1909, 590
116. A musician's sensitivity to style, we are reminded by Martin's prose, does not always extend to language. Clyde Martin, "Playing the Pictures," Film Index, 4 Mar. 1911, 11. The three-to six-minute break amounts to 20 to 50 percent of the twelve-to fifteen-minute films then in vogue
117. Eugene A. Ahern, What and How to Play for Pictures (Twin Falls, Id.: Newsprint, 1913), 16, 17, 59
118. See also A. McA., "A Cheerful Idiot," Moving Picture World, 24 Dec. 1910, 1465, for similar claims regarding sound effects
119. L. C. Moen, "Statistics of the Motion Picture Industry," Motion Picture News, 2 Dec. 1922, 2644
120. quoted in Richard Koszarski, An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture 1915-1928 (New York: Scribner's, 1990), 41
121. Harry Alan Potamkin, "Music and the Movies," Musical Quarterly 15, no. 2 (Apr. 1929): 281
122. Vachel Lindsay, The Art of the Moving Picture (1915; reprint, New York: Liveright, 1970), 224-25
123. For extended presentation and specific applications of the crisis model, see Altman, Sound Theory/Sound Practice, 62-64 and 113-25
124. On the notion of reality codes and representational models, see Rick Altman, "Toward a Theory of the History of Representational Technologies," Iris 2, no. 2 (1984): 111-25
125. This campaign to standardize sound is the subject of Altman, "Naissance de la réception classique," 98-111. On this topic see also Altman, "Reading Positions," 19-31
126. Douglas Gilbert, American Vaudeville: Its Life and Times (New York: Whittlesey House and McGraw-Hill, 1940), 32
127. Philadelphia Record, 11 Aug. 1896, 2
128. Philadelphia Record, 23 Nov. 1897, 2
129. Lyman Howe and his chief sound effect man, LeRoy Carleton, are mentioned throughout the nickelodeon period as important models for sound practice. It is interesting to note, however, that Howe and company are virtually always cited for their sound effects; the rare mentions of music in relation to Howe typically refer either to intermission music or to music-as-effect. See Musser and Nelson, in particular 64, 65-66, 84, 90, 174, 186, and 207-8
130. Howe's resident lecturers were, in turn, himself until 1899, Arthur Lane (aka George Channing Darling, aka Norman Howe) in 1899-1900, Ackland Lord (Von) Boyle in 1900-1901, Jay Paige (aka Jay P. Kern), in 1901-2, E. George Hedden in 1902-3, and LeRoy Carleton starting in 1903. For these names and dates, see Musser and Nelson, 86, 96, 105, 114, 119, 133
131. New York Dramatic Mirror, 12 Aug. 1899, 23; quoted in Musser and Nelson, 96
132. New York Clipper, 14 Sept. 1901; illustrated in Musser and Nelson, 115
133. Pittsburgh Post, 21 July 1908, 4; quoted in Musser and Nelson, 186
134. "Exhibitions with Sense," Views and Films Index, 4 Jan. 1908, 11. Interestingly, in describing a popular 1907 behind-the-sheet talking picture group called the "Spook Minstrels," this same article praises what it calls "one of the best examples of the value of mechanical effect" and "an act entirely dependent on 'props.' "
135. Variety, 18 Apr. 1908, 13
136. New York Dramatic Mirror, 1 Aug. 1908, 7
137. Clarence E. Sinn, "Music for the Pictures," Moving Picture World, 10 Dec. 1910, 1345
138. "Incidental Music for Edison Pictures," Kinetogram, 15 Sept. 1909, 12
139. Clarence E, Sinn, "Music for the Pictures," Moving Picture World, 10 Dec. 1910, 1345
140. New York Dramatic Mirror, 25 Jan. 1911, 30