Photoplay Albums for Silent Film Scores

Not until the mid-1920s did technological developments allow for recorded synchronization between sound and image. Before then, film screenings relied on live performances of music. As the film industry underwent exponential growth, only a small number of what we would today regard as blockbuster films received unique, custom-created scores (the article A Warning Flame – The Musical Presentation of Silent Films details those complex and complicated issues). Many conductors and performers instead relied on pre-existing music. Classical works and popular tunes alike could be heard accompanying a film.

To meet a growing need for stock music accompaniment, publishers began to create and deliver an array of tools to aid in film compilation and accompaniment: existing catalogs of classical and popular works for reduced orchestra, sometimes referred to as “salon music”; compendiums of works for keyboard; music suggestions published in trade journals; cue sheets that listed melodies to use throughout one specific film; and photoplay albums that provided arrangements and original compositions for specific use in silent film accompaniment.

Photoplay albums were collections comprised of relatively short pieces of incidental music. They could be employed in a variety of film contexts that offered the flexibility in live accompaniment that performers needed. As film grew into an artistic and commercial powerhouse in the early twentieth century, the expansion of photoplay albums simultaneously increased. By the late 1920s, over 130 different photoplay album series had been published and were circulating in the United States. According to photoplay music composer George W. Beynon:

to be of practical benefit to every exhibitor, a Score must be playable with any combination from two pieces up to fifty, and at the same time not exceed the limitations of the piano or organ. ¹

Indeed, the term orchestra was regularly applied to groups as small as a piano/percussion duo or the common combination of piano, drums, and violin. ²

Publishers continued to issue more music for use in silent film accompaniment to sate theaters’ weekly need for new content. In so doing, they sometimes recycled early compilations from the 1910s, such as the popular Moving Picture Folio by M.L. Lake. Publishers likewise combed European publications for content. As the American agent for the London-based Hawkes, Belwin distributed the Hawkes’ Photo Play Series. Belwin also distributed Giuseppe Becce’s Kinothek, originally published in Berlin in 1919. But classical music endured by far the most plundering. Max Winkler, a well-known cue sheet compiler and photoplay music composer, made clear the process:

In desperation we turned to crime. We began to dismember the great masters. We began to murder the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Grieg, J.S. Bach, Verdi, Bizet, Tchaikovsky and Wagner—everything that wasn’t protected by copyright from our pilfering.

The immortal chorales of J.S. Bach became an “Adagio Lamentoso for sad scenes.” Extracts from great symphonies and operas were hacked down to emerge again as “Sinister Misterioso” by Beethoven, or “Weird Moderato” by Tchaikovsky. Wagner’s and Mendelssohn’s wedding marches were used for marriages, fights between husbands and wives, and divorce scenes: we just had them played out of tune, a treatment known in the profession as “souring up the aisle.” If they were to be used for happy endings we jazzed them up mercilessly. Finales from famous overtures, with William Tell and Orpheus the favorites, became galops. Meyerbeer’s “Coronation March” was slowed down to a majestic pomposo to give proper background to the inhabitants of Sing Sing’s death-house. The “Blue Danube” was watered down to a minuet by a cruel change in tempo. Delibes’ “Pizzicato Polka” made an excellent accompaniment to a sneaky night scene by counting “one-two” between each pizzicato. Any piece using a trombone prominently would infallibly announce the home-coming of a drunk; no other instrument could hiccup with such virtuosity. ³

This decidedly negative critique of photoplay music accentuates the fact that many composers of the genre used pseudonyms for their compositions. Maurice Baron frequently composed under the names Morris Aborn and Frances Delille. M.L. Lake used Lester Brockton, among many others, and J.S. Zamecnik used Dorothy Lee and Lionel Baxter, also among many others.

Despite Winkler’s harsh characterization of photoplay music, in film, music operates within a different context than the concert hall. Sound and image must cooperate in an integrated medium. Moreover, newly composed music proliferated in photoplay albums, even as these publications reused and rehashed previous content—all arranged for ensembles of various sizes. Photoplay music also employed multiple strategies to provide conductors and performers the means to unite music and visuals more effectively. First, photoplay collections began to offer multiple numbers (either in one volume or in serialized publications), often beginning and ending in the same or related key. In so doing, they allowed performers and conductors more creativity and fluidity in selecting suitable music. Second, because scene length would vary between and within films, much of the music consists of linked short passages that can be repeated. Further demonstrating the diversity of approaches within the genre, other photoplay albums, such as the Photo Play Music Company’s Incidental Symphonies,arose out of a need for increasingly longer scenes, while others, like M.L. Lake’s The Synchronizer, fashioned connected suites with topically-themed variations of one melody.  

In researching the music of these photoplay albums, the items included in Silent Film Scores and Arrangements present a perspective distinct from collections housed elsewhere. Many collections of photoplay albums and other stock music were once working libraries from which theater conductors, accompanists, and staff would select to curate a film score performance. Annotations and other marginalia frequent the pieces in these libraries, lending clues to how the music was implemented, edited, and otherwise used.

Photoplay albums in the Library of Congress Music Division, however, offer a rare vantage point – one centered on possibility and conceptualization. The photoplay albums in Silent Film Scores and Arrangements primarily arrived at the Library of Congress through copyright registration. Music publishers (and in some instances, self-publishing individuals) sent copies of their photoplay albums and series to fulfill the U.S. Copyright Office’s requirement of mandatory deposit. Additionally, these items rarely (if ever) have additional markings that indicate their use. On their own, we have little information on when, where, or how they were used – or if they were ever purchased and played at all.

The photoplay albums included in Silent Film Scores and Arrangements supply researchers and performers alike with a wealth of information to explore a range of questions:

• How were music publishers, composers, and arrangers of the time conceptualizing music for film?
• What musical and linguistic vocabularies did publishers, composers, and arrangers employ to create and market photoplay albums?
• Were there regional differences between publishers and creators of music for silent film?
• What foreign photoplay albums were submitted for copyright, and how might they have circulated to American audiences?
• What strategies did creators use to integrate pre-existing music within new arrangements and compositions?
• How did creators take into account different ensemble configurations for performance?
• How did creators manage works intended for performance contexts beyond just film accompaniment?
• What musical gestures, harmonies, or rhythms were frequently used, and in what contexts?
• How did creators musically signify non-white peoples, women, and other historically marginalized communities?

Music plays a vital role in interpreting film and comprehending its expansion as a dominant cultural force. Through their various musical topics and suggestions, photoplay albums provide a unique pathway to trace that development and its impact on society. Within this digital collection, descriptive titles such as “Heavy misterioso – agitato-hurry – plaintive” are further described as “musical description for premeditated murder scenes.” Music intended for use as a “hurry” can be found in over 120 items, but there are also over a dozen hurries that are specifically labeled as related to fire. Titles described as for “love” similarly abound, with over 150, but range in their more specific descriptors, from “sinfulness” to “prelude to heroical love drama.” The broad term “misterioso” also appears in a variety of titles, including “Gruesome misterioso (for infernal or witch scenes),” “pizzicato misterioso (for burglary and stealth),” and “weird misterioso.”

Some of the photoplay titles and terminology used in this digital collection reflect racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes deemed acceptable at the time of their publication. But by studying the music used for offensive titles such as “Southwestern Idyl (country life, love-scenes, also Mexican),” “Prelude to Oriental Drama," and “Indian War Dance,” we can begin to recognize and articulate how harmful stereotypes are sonically linked and perpetuated in the film music we consume to this day.

As the film industry swelled and matured through the 1910s and 1920s, so too did its music. The photoplay music in Silent Film Scores and Arrangements is just one of the many avenues that can be used to trace and contextualize those developments.

Notes

1. George W. Beynon, Musical Presentation of Motion Pictures (New York: G. Schirmer, 1921), 51. [Return to text]
2. Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 289. [Return to text]
3. Max Winkler, “The Origin of Film Music” in The Hollywood Film Music Reader, edited by Mervyn Cooke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010),22 [Originally published in 1951]. [Return to text]