Download or read book The Silent Cinema in Song 1896 1929 written by Ken Wlaschin and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2009 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study begins the documentation of the lost history of songs of the silent cinema. Part one chronologically lists and describes songs about movies created between 1896 and 1929. Part two provides an alphabetical list of movie stars, including a brief biography of each. Part three reviews the recordings of these songs"--Note de l'éditeur.

Download or read book Silent Cinema written by Paolo Cherchi Usai and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paolo Cherchi Usai provides a comprehensive introduction to the study, research and preservation of silent cinema from its heyday in the early 20th century to its present day flourishing. He traces the history of the moving image in its formative years, from Edison's and Lumière's first experiments to the dawn of 'talkies'; provides a clear guide to the basics of silent film technology; introduces the technical and creative roles involved in its production, and presents silent cinema as a performance event, rather than a passive viewing experience. This new, greatly expanded edition takes the reader on a new journey, exploring silent cinema in the broader context of technology, culture, and society, from the invention of celluloid film and its related machinery to film studios, laboratories, theatres and audiences. Among the people involved in the creation of a new art form were filmmakers, actors and writers, but also engineers, entrepreneurs, and projectionists. Their collective efforts, and the struggle to preserve their creative work by archives and museums, are interwoven in a compelling story covering three centuries of media history, from the magic lantern to the reinvention of silent cinema in digital form. The new edition also includes comprehensive resource information for the study, research, preservation and exhibition of silent cinema.

Download or read book Music for Silent Film written by Kendra Preston Leonard and published by A-R Editions, Inc.. This book was released on 2016-01-01 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1895 and 1929, more than 15,000 motion pictures were made in the United States. We call these works “silent films,” but they were accompanied by an enormous body of music, including works adapted or arranged from pre-existing works, as well as newly composed pieces for theater orchestras, organists, or pianists. While many films and pieces are lost, a considerable amount of material remains extant and available for use in research and performance. Music for Silent Film: A Guide to North American Resources is a unique resource on North American archives and English-language materials available in for those interested in this repertoire. Part I contains information about archives of primary source materials including full and compiled scores, sheet music, published anthologies of music, interviews with cinema musicians, periodicals, and instruction books. Part II surveys the English-language scholarship on silent film music in articles, book chapters, essay collections, and monographs through 2015. The book is fully indexed for ease of access to these important sources on film music.

Download or read book Silent Mystery and Detective Movies written by Ken Wlaschin and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2009-10-21 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The silent film era was known in part for its cliffhanger serials and air of suspense that kept audiences returning to theaters week after week. Icons such as Douglas Fairbanks, Laurel and Hardy, Lon Chaney and Harry Houdini were among those who graced the dark and shadowy screen. This reference guide to silent films with mystery and detective content lists more than 1,500 titles in one of entertainment's most popular and enduring genres. While most of the films examined are from North America, mystery films from around the world are included.

Download or read book Music and the Silent Film written by Martin Miller Marks and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1997-02-13 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, a leading authority on film music examines scores of the silent film era. The first of three projected volumes investigating music written for films, this thoughtful and pathbreaking study demonstrates the richness of silent film music as it details the way in which scores were often planned from the start as an integral part of the whole cinematic experience. Following an introductory chapter that outlines several key theoretical questions and surveys eight decades of writing on film music, Martin Miller Marks focuses on those scores created between 1895 and 1924. He begins by considering two early examples, one German (written by persons unknown for Skladanowsky's Bioskop exhibitions in 1895 and 1896) and one French (scored by Camille Saint-Saëns for the 1908 film L'Assassinat du Duc de Guise). Subsequent chapters fully discuss Walter Cleveland Simon's music for the American film An Arabian Tragedy (1912) as well as the Joseph Breil accompaniment to D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915). As described in this book, Breil's memorable score--though a compilation derived from many sources--was played by an orchestra as Griffith's sweeping images filled the screen, thus contributing significantly to the great film's success while also achieving remarkable power in its own right. Marks then concludes with a look at Erik Satie's witty and innovative music for the French film Entr'acte (1924), which was the first film score of consequence by an avant-garde composer. Giving unprecedented attention to a vibrant, important, and oft-neglected facet of twentieth-century music, Music and the Silent Film will interest scholars of film theory, film history, modern music, and modern aesthetics.

Download or read book Film Music A Very Short Introduction written by Kathryn Kalinak and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-11 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film music is as old as cinema itself. Years before synchronized sound became the norm, projected moving images were shown to musical accompaniment, whether performed by a lone piano player or a hundred-piece orchestra. Today film music has become its own industry, indispensable to the marketability of movies around the world. Film Music: A Very Short Introduction is a compact, lucid, and thoroughly engaging overview written by one of the leading authorities on the subject. After opening with a fascinating analysis of the music from a key sequence in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Kathryn Kalinak introduces readers not only to important composers and musical styles but also to modern theoretical concepts about how and why film music works. Throughout the book she embraces a global perspective, examining film music in Asia and the Middle East as well as in Europe and the United States. Key collaborations between directors and composers--Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Akira Kurosawa and Fumio Hayasaka, Federico Fellini and Nino Rota, to name only a few--come under scrutiny, as do the oft-neglected practices of the silent film era. She also explores differences between original film scores and compilation soundtracks that cull music from pre-existing sources. As Kalinak points out, film music can do many things, from establishing mood and setting to clarifying plot points and creating emotions that are only dimly realized in the images. This book illuminates the many ways it accomplishes those tasks and will have its readers thinking a bit more deeply and critically the next time they sit in a darkened movie theater and music suddenly swells as the action unfolds onscreen. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Download or read book The Origins of the Film Star System written by Andrew Shail and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, Andrew Shail traces the emergence of film stardom in Europe and North America in the early 20th century. Modifying and supplementing Richard deCordova's account of the birth of the US star system, Shail describes the complex set of economic circumstances that led film studios and actors to consent to the adoption of a star system. He then explores the film industry's turn, from 1908, to making character-based series films. He details how these characters both prefigured and precipitated the star system, demonstrating that series characters and the 'firmament' of film stars are functionally equivalent, and shows how openly fictional characters still provide the model for 'real' film stars.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of American Opera written by Ken Wlaschin and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-10-16 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This encyclopedia lists, describes and cross-references everything to do with American opera: works (both operas and operettas), composers, librettists, singers, and source authors, along with relevant recordings. The approximately 1,750 entries range from ballad operas and composers of the 18th century to modern minimalists and video opera artists. Each opera entry consists of plot, history, premiere and cast, followed by a chronological listing of recordings, movies and videos.

Download or read book Empire of Dreams written by Scott Eyman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-09-07 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: BEST KNOWN AS THE DIRECTOR of such spectacular films as The Ten Commandments and King of Kings, Cecil B. DeMille lived a life as epic as any of his cinematic masterpieces. As a child DeMille learned the Bible from his father, a theology student and playwright who introduced Cecil and his older brother, William, to the theater. Tutored by impresario David Belasco, DeMille discovered how audiences responded to showmanship: sets, lights, costumes, etc. He took this knowledge with him to Los Angeles in 1913, where he became one of the movie pioneers, in partnership with Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s brother-in-law Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn). Working out of a barn on streets fragrant with orange blossom and pepper trees, the Lasky company turned out a string of successful silents, most of them directed by DeMille, who became one of the biggest names of the silent era. With films such as The Squaw Man, Brewster’s Millions, Joan the Woman, and Don’t Change Your Husband, he was the creative backbone of what would become Paramount Studios. In 1923 he filmed his first version of The Ten Commandments and later a second biblical epic, King of Kings, both enormous box-office successes. Although his reputation rests largely on the biblical epics he made, DeMille’s personal life was no morality tale. He remained married to his wife, Constance, for more than fifty years, but for most of the marriage he had three mistresses simultaneously, all of whom worked for him. He showed great loyalty to a small group of actors who knew his style, but he also discovered some major stars, among them Gloria Swanson, Claudette Colbert, and later, Charlton Heston. DeMille was one of the few silent-era directors who made a completely successful transition to sound. In 1952 he won the Academy Award for Best Picture with The Greatest Show on Earth. When he remade The Ten Commandments in 1956, it was an even bigger hit than the silent version. He could act, too: in Billy Wilder’s classic film Sunset Boulevard, DeMille memorably played himself. In the 1930s and 1940s DeMille became a household name thanks to the Lux Radio Theater, which he hosted. But after falling out with a union, he gave up the program, and his politics shifted to the right as he championed loyalty oaths and Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anticommunist witch hunts. As Scott Eyman brilliantly demonstrates in this superbly researched biography, which draws on a massive cache of DeMille family papers not available to previous biographers, DeMille was much more than his clichéd image. A gifted director who worked in many genres; a devoted family man and loyal friend with a highly unconventional personal life; a pioneering filmmaker: DeMille comes alive in these pages, a legend whose spectacular career defined an era.

Download or read book Music and Sound in Silent Film written by Ruth Barton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite their name, the silent films of the early cinematic era were frequently accompanied by music and other sound elements of many kinds, including mechanical instruments, live performers, and audience sing-alongs. The 12 chapters in this concise book explore the multitude of functions filled by music in the rapidly changing context of the silent film era, as the concept of cinema itself developed. Examples are drawn from around the globe and across the history of silent film, both during the classic era of silent film and later uses of the silent format. With contributors drawn from film studies and music disciplines, and including both senior and emerging scholars, Music and Sound in Silent Film offers an essential introduction to the origins of film music and the cinematic art form.

Download or read book Foundations in Music Bibliography written by Richard D Green and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As more and more music literature is published each year, librarians, scholars, and bibliographers are turning to music bibliography to retain control over the flood of information. Based on the Conference of Music Bibliography, this timely book provides vital information on the most important aspects of the scholarly practice of music bibliography. Foundations in Music Bibliography provides librarians with great insight into bibliographic issues they face every day including bibliographic control of primary and secondary sources, the emergence of enumerative and analytical bibliography, bibliographic instruction, and bibliographic lacunae. Foundations in Music Bibliography features the perspectives of prominent scholars and music librarians on contemporary issues in music bibliography often encountered by music librarians. It offers practical insights and includes chapters on teaching students how to use microcomputer programs to search music bibliographies, organizing a graduate course in music bibliography, and researching film music bibliography. The book also provides a supplement to Steven D. Westcott’s A Comprehensive Bibliography of Music for Film and Television. This insightful volume demonstrates the many ways that bibliography relates music publications to each other and endows grander meaning to individual scholarly observations. Some of the fascinating topics covered by Foundations in Music Bibliography include: the history of thematic catalogs indexing Gregorian chant manuscripts general principles of bibliographic instruction analyses of Debussy discographies musical ephemera and their importance in various types of musicological research bibliographical lacunae (i.e. lack of access to visual sources, failure to control primary sources, and lack of communication with the rest of the performing arts) Foundations in Music Bibliography shows librarians how bibliography can be used to help music students and researchers find the information they need among the innumerable available sources. It is an indispensable asset to the shelves of all music reference libraries that wish to provide their patrons with the latest bibliographic tools.

Download or read book The Maciste Films of Italian Silent Cinema written by Jacqueline Reich and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-19 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Italian film star Bartolomeo Pagano's "Maciste" played a key role in his nation's narratives of identity during World War I and after. Jacqueline Reich traces the racial, class, and national transformations undergone by this Italian strongman from African slave in Cabiria (1914), his first film, to bourgeois gentleman, to Alpine soldier of the Great War, to colonial officer in Italy's African adventures. Reich reveals Maciste as a figure who both reflected classical ideals of masculine beauty and virility (later taken up by Mussolini and used for political purposes) and embodied the model Italian citizen. The 12 films at the center of the book, recently restored and newly accessible to a wider public, together with relevant extra-cinematic materials, provide a rich resource for understanding the spread of discourses on masculinity, and national and racial identities during a turbulent period in Italian history. The volume includes an illustrated appendix documenting the restoration and preservation of these cinematic treasures.

Download or read book Horror in Silent Films written by Roy Kinnard and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-10-09 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though the horror film was not officially born until Universal Pictures released Frankenstein in 1931, there were many silent films that contained terrifying scenes and horrific elements. Many of the early horror soundies drew much of their inspiration for visual design and thematic development from the silents. This filmography includes all silent films that were horrific in nature, containing one or more of the stock horror movie elements, e.g., haunted houses, ghosts, witches, monsters, the occult or hypnotism. Each entry includes release date, running time, cast and credit information, contemporary review quotes when available, and in the case of foreign films, the original title and country of origin.

Download or read book Silent Film Sound written by Rick Altman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silent films were, of course, never silent at all. However, the sound that used to accompany the screen picture in the early days of cinema has been neglected as an area of study. Altman explores the various musical, narrative, and even synchronized sound systems that enriched cinema before Jolson spoke.

Download or read book Celluloid Symphonies written by Julie Hubbert and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-03-02 with total page 1050 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celluloid Symphonies is a unique sourcebook of writings on music for film, bringing together fifty-three critical documents, many previously inaccessible. It includes essays by those who created the music—Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein and Howard Shore—and outlines the major trends, aesthetic choices, technological innovations, and commercial pressures that have shaped the relationship between music and film from 1896 to the present. Julie Hubbert’s introductory essays offer a stimulating overview of film history as well as critical context for the close study of these primary documents. In identifying documents that form a written and aesthetic history for film music, Celluloid Symphonies provides an astonishing resource for both film and music scholars and for students.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Film Music written by Mervyn Cooke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stimulating and unusually wide-ranging collection of essays overviewing ways in which music functions in film soundtracks.

Download or read book The Sounds of Early Cinema written by Richard Abel and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2001-10-03 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sounds of Early Cinema is devoted exclusively to a little-known, yet absolutely crucial phenomenon: the ubiquitous presence of sound in early cinema. "Silent cinema" may rarely have been silent, but the sheer diversity of sound(s) and sound/image relations characterizing the first 20 years of moving picture exhibition can still astonish us. Whether instrumental, vocal, or mechanical, sound ranged from the improvised to the pre-arranged (as in scripts, scores, and cue sheets). The practice of mixing sounds with images differed widely, depending on the venue (the nickelodeon in Chicago versus the summer Chautauqua in rural Iowa, the music hall in London or Paris versus the newest palace cinema in New York City) as well as on the historical moment (a single venue might change radically, and many times, from 1906 to 1910). Contributors include Richard Abel, Rick Altman, Edouard Arnoldy, Mats Björkin, Stephen Bottomore, Marta Braun, Jean Châteauvert, Ian Christie, Richard Crangle, Helen Day-Mayer, John Fullerton, Jane Gaines, André Gaudreault, Tom Gunning, François Jost, Charlie Keil, Jeff Klenotic, Germain Lacasse, Neil Lerner, Patrick Loughney, David Mayer, Domi-nique Nasta, Bernard Perron, Jacques Polet, Lauren Rabinovitz, Isabelle Raynauld, Herbert Reynolds, Gregory A. Waller, and Rashit M. Yangirov.