About the project

As few as the anachronistic term silent film is able to capture the soundscapes in early cinema, music composed especially for a specific film is the exception from the rule in early films. More than 120 surviving scores of special music for individual films up to 1918 are a relatively small number, but in absolute terms they are considerable. Even though the complete films of only c. 25% of this music have been preserved, the entire corpus will be considered for the first time in this research project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as a Reinhart Koselleck Project running from 2024–2029. The project includes two ongoing dissertations:

Fabian Müller

American Silent Film Music up to 1914

Silent films such as The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) hold a significant place in film history, which has led to scholarly attention being mainly devoted to the film music of Joseph Carl Breil. However, upon closer examination and with the inclusion of additional musical sources, it becomes clear that both the film music and the intended forms of musical accompaniment were already present in earlier film scores. Therefore, the proposed dissertation will examine forms of film music accompaniment in the United States prior to 1915. Film composers active between 1910 and 1914 not only scored a diverse range of subjects but also, due to their diverse musical backgrounds, employed various forms of musical accompaniment drawn from repertoires familiar to them. By referencing opera, popular musical theatre, popular songs, and other concert pieces of the time, composers sought to more closely bind the music to the action of the film and to legitimize both film and music as a “serious” art form. The primary objective of this dissertation is to identify the influences shaping silent film music through a detailed analysis of the musical text of printed scores and to trace the origins and development of film musical accompaniment.

Levent Altuntas

The Music of 1916’s Super-Productions

In 1916, some of the most lavish and expensive film productions up to that time emerged in Hollywood. Original film scores—often written by renowned composers specifically for these films—greatly contributed to their prestige and, frequently employing large orchestral ensembles, were in no way inferior to the visual spectacle in terms of scale and ambition. Despite their historical significance, these film scores have largely been overlooked in scholarly discussion until now.

This dissertation aims to bridge that gap through detailed analyses of six major silent film scores from 1916: A Daughter of the Gods (music by Robert Hood Bowers), The Fall of a Nation (music by Victor Herbert), Joan the Woman (music by William Furst), Intolerance (music by Joseph Carl Breil), Gloria’s Romance (music by Jerome Kern), and Civilization (music by Victor Schertzinger). Key areas of interest include compositional techniques, harmony, melodic structure, motivic-thematic development, and orchestration, in cases where orchestral parts or annotated piano reductions exist. Depending on the availability of sources, these musical parameters are also examined in terms of their narrative function within the filmic context.

The overarching goal is to reconstruct as precisely as possible a picture of musical practices in early Hollywood super-productions, to critically examine prevailing assumptions, and to offer a new perspective based on the findings.