History of Music in Film

1. History of Music in Film The Begiinning

2. No Music, Different Music How does the absence of music or playing different music in a movie clip make you feel? Does is change the mood? Does it change your view of the clip? Does it make the movie’s plot change?

3. History of music in film • The root of music in film harks back to the Greek melodramas, a cross between a play and fledgling opera in which spoken word is accompanied by music. • Since the days of ancient Greeks, music has been an integral part of drama and theatre.

4. History continued • As time passed, these melodramas developed into opera we know today, giving rise to types of performances known as number opera and continuous opera. • Many composers wrote music to accompany plays, and sometimes the music became more well-known than the play it was written for.

5. History continued • Movie music was not born in the movie theaters but in the worlds of opera, musical theater, and vaudeville. • Concert Music too, particularly the romantic and melodramatic scores of the 1800’s (so very popular in the early 1900’s) provided a large and immediately available library of recognizable and memorable material suitable for film underscoring.

6. A few examples: • Medelssohn’s“Fingel’s Cave Overture” • Wagner’s “Ride of Valkyrie’s” • Lizt’s“Les Preludes” • Rossini’s “William Tell Overture”

7. Opera • Number Opera- those composed of a collection of closed pieces. • Continuous Opera- those including nonstop music. *Film soundtracks will later echo these divisions.

8. Musical Theater • Musical theatreis the art of telling stories either through or with songs, dating back to the ancient India's NatyaShastra, or at least to the ancient Greeks, who included music and dance in their stage comedies and tragedies as early as the 5th Century B.C. • Musicals have had many different names throughout time: comic operas, operettas, opera bouffe, burlesque, burletta, extravaganza, musical comedy, etc. Revues have their roots in variety, vaudeville, music halls and minstrel shows.

9. Terms you should know: • Comic Operas- denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending. • Operettas-a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre. • Opera bouffe-a genre of late19th-century French operetta, known for elements of comedy, satire, parody and farce. • Burlesque- a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.

10. Burletta-(Italian, meaning little joke) is a musical term generally denoting a brief comic Italian (or later English) opera. • Extravaganza-a literary or musical work (often musical theatre) characterized by freedom of style and structure and usually containing elements of burlesque, pantomine, music hall and parody. It sometimes also has elements of cabaret, circus, revue, variety, vaudeville and mime. Etravaganza may more broadly refer to an elaborate, spectacular and expensive theatrical production.

11. Musical Comedy- A comedic play or movie in which dialogue is interspersed with songs, especially one with a focus on musical numbers and a simple plot. • Revues- A musical show consisting of skits, songs, and dances, often satirizing current events, trends, and personalities. • Music Halls-a type of British theatrical entertainment popular between1850 and 1960. It involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts and variety entertainment. • Minstrel Shows-an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface, or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface.

12. Vaudeville • American Vaudeville, more so than any other mass entertainment, grew out of the culture of incorporation that defined American life after the Civil War. The development of vaudeville marked the beginning of popular entertainment as big business, dependent on the organizational efforts of a growing number of white-collar workers and the increased leisure time, spending power, and changing tastes of an urban middle class audience. Business savvy showmen utilized improved transportation and communication technologies, creating and controlling vast networks of theatre circuits standardizing, professionalizing, and institutionalizing American popular entertainment.

13. Program Music/Absolute Music • Program Music-Musical compositions intended to depict or suggest nonmusical incidents, ideas, or images, such as those drawn from literature, as Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, or from works of art. • Absolute Music-Instrumental music that is free of any explicit verbal reference or program.

14. Richard Wagner • Wagner’s full-fledged support of program music at this time, as opposed to the absolute music that had previously reigned supreme, resulted in his novel invention of leitmotifs. • Leitmotif- themes recurring throughout a work that were meant to evoke associations with an idea, character, or place.

15. Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” • Leitmotif’s were first used in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. • Wagner's Ring Cycle

16. Pairing of the Arts • Wagner also put forth his idealistic notion of pairing all of the arts together in an opera. For example… • Music=The Score • Poetry= The Libretto • Painting= The Scenery *He called the finished product a total work of art, or Gesamtkunstwerk.

17. First Films • It never occurred to anyone to NOT include music in films, even in the first silent films and “talkies”. • Film music developed rapidly with new technologies, and became an entirely new and exciting musical field that many composers took very seriously.

18. Music in Films • Music is considered an important part of film, from cartoons, sitcoms and television drama, to movies. • The history of music in American film, although less than a century in scope, offers a fascinating variety of musical styles and the techniques in which they are integrated into the film.

19. Music in film continued • The history of music as an accompaniment to visual entertainment is surely a long one. Without going back to antiquity, there is all manner of theatre (musical or non-musical), variety shows and various forms of opera. In all of these forms of theatre, music can adopt a range of roles.

20. Roles of music in film • An Intrinsic part of the entertainment ( a collection of songs or a musical). • An Accompaniment to other visual or verbal forms of entertainment.

21. Music as an Accompaniment • As an accompaniment music can simply “be there” in the background, but often the music is chosen with a particular purpose of enhancing the spectacle in some way (creating atmosphere) or in a more sophisticated way to create or enhance an emotional reaction among members of the audience.