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coming of classical Hollywood sound

A night at the opera / Metro Goldwyn Mayer presents ; directed by Sam Wood ; screen play by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) Universal

march for opening credits, military and sober (Broekman). diegetic music sung or whistled by characters. German volunteers sing patriotic songs. (Darby and Du Bois, American Film Music, 1990, p. 10).

Anna Christie (1930)/ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ; produced and directed by Clarence Brown. German version directed by Jacques Feyder.

opening orchestral theme, reprised when action concluded. diegetic music by phonograph, saloon piano, character sings. "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" from carnival carousel during romantic dilemma scene. (Darby and Du Bois, American Film Music, 1990, p. 9).

College swing / a Paramount Picture ; Adolph Zukor presents ; directed by Raoul Walsh ; produced by Lewis E. Gensler. The big broadcast of 1938 / a Paramount Picture ; Adolph Zukor presents ; screen play by Walter DeLeon, Francis Martin and Ken Englund ; p

Don Juan / a Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. and the Vitaphone Corporation present ; directed by Alan Crosland ; screen play by Bess Meredyth.

Dracula (1931)/ Universal Studios ; produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr. ; directed by Tod Browning.

According to Darby and Du Bois, American Film Music (1990, p. 12):

uses passages from Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Schubert during opening credits and scene in concert hall.

Family classics - A Farewell to Arms (1932) Paramount

Farewell to Arms - original love theme during opening credits and at key moments. Italian atmosphere established by opening of Mendlssohn's Fourth Symphony, "La donna é mobile" from Verdi's Rigoletto and traditional "Santa Lucia". Borrowings from Wagner: "Ride of the Valkyries" during battle scene, brassier treatment of Wagner while Frederic searches for Catherine, music from Tristan and Isolde while Catherine dies in Frederic's arms. (Darby and Du Bois, American Film Music, 1990, p. 13)

Film music 1 / edited, with an introduction by Clifford McCarty ; Rudy Behlmer ... et al.

Film music 1 / edited, with an introduction by Clifford McCarty ; Rudy Behlmer ... et al. [0824019393 (alk. paper)] New York : Garland Pub., 1989.
Call#: Van Pelt Library ML2075 .F448 1989

Fred Steiner, "What Were Musicians Saying About Movie Music During the First Decade of Sound? A Symposium of Selected Writings," 81-107.

Most frequently written about topics 1930-39 were "nature of film music and its integration with the other elements of cinema, problems of form and style, the status of the composer and his relationship with the film director, the attitudes of directors and producers toward music, the quality of current film scores, the opportunities for composers, and the pitfalls that might await them." (84) This selection focuses on functional and theoretical aspects and excludes "historical and biographical writings, discussions of composition methods or orchestration, special topics such as musicals and filmed opera, technical matters such as studio routine, recording and microphone technique, and, with a few exceptions, reviews of film scores." (84)

Darius Milhaud had written origianl scores for silent films, one of first to write about musical situation in earliets days of sound film.

Herman Closson in "The Case Against Gebrauchsmusik," Modern Music, 7/2, 15-19 (1930) discusses problem "It sometimes happens in the movies that the music suddenly asserts its rights, taking one away from the visual images into a blind world of sound." further mentions symphonic poem as regressive, mistakes of program music, hazardous impressionism.

Raybould, Britich composer for documentary films, complains of sound quality, banjo, plucked string and saxophone comee off ok but "There has as yet ben no film recording of an orchestra, or even a part of one, to my knowledge which can stand comparison with the standard tonequality of the best gramophone records." 1933 in Sight and Sound.

Virgil Thompson "To break the music with every shot or change of scene is an error and ineffective." MM: 188, 1933. echoed in coming years by Antheil, Calvocoressi and Sabaneev. problem of musical form/unity vs. visual/narrative variety.

Constant Lambert, British compower and conductor in book Music Ho! (1934): In spite of its ephemeral nature it is the only art whose progress is not at the moment depressing to watch...Films have the emotional impact for the twentieth century that operas had for the nineteenth. Pudovkin and Eisenstein are the true successors of Mussorgsky, D.W. Griffith is our Puccini, Cecil B. DeMille our Meyerbeer and Rene Clair our Offenbach. (260)

Maurice Jaubert, French composer of film music, and interesting character. "Into the raw materials of cinema - which acquire artistic meaning only from their relations to one another - music brings an unreal element which is bound to break the rules of objective realism...All its power of suggestion will serve to intensify and prolong that impression of strangeness, of departure from photographic truth, which th director is seeking." ("Music on the Screen" in Footnotes to Film, ed. Charles Davey, 1937, p. 109)

Hollywood composers Herbert Stothart (in Behind the Scenes, ed. Stephen Watts, 1939) and Ernst Toch (Modern Music 13/2, 1936) believed sound film could bring good music to "the masses." (102)

David Raksin's article "Holding a Nineteenth Century Pedal at Twentieth Century-Fox" an engaging tale of film scoring c. 1938.

Seven D. Wescott's "Miklos Rozsa's Ben-Hur:The Musical-Dramatic Function of the Hollywood Leitmotiv" a detailed blow-by-blow analysis.

Kalinak, "Mas Steiner and the Classical Hollywood Film Score: An Analysis of the Informer"

Rosar, "Stravinsky and MGM"

Frankenstein (1931)/ Carl Laemmle presents ; produced by Carl Laemmle, Jr. ; Universal Pictures Corp. ; screen play by Garrett Fort, Francis Edwards Faragoh ; directed by James Whale.

Original theme during opening credits. Grand Appasionata by Giuseppe Becce - standard silent film rep - during end credits. (Darby and DuBois, American Film Music, 1990, p. 12).

Gone with the wind / Selznick International Pictures ; directed by Victor Fleming ; screenplay by Sidney Howard ; producer, David O. Selznick.

Good earth / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ; screenplay by Talbot Jennings, Tess Slesinger and Claudine West ; adapted by Owen Davis and Donald Davis ; associate producer, Albert Lewin ; directed by Sidney Franklin.

Grand hotel (1932)/ Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer ; Loew's Inc. ; directed by Edmund Goulding.

borrows from Johann Strauss (waltzes) during shots of hotel's main floor. Rachmaninoff love theme, jazz for Kringelein's liberation. Music separate from dialogue. (Darby and Du Bois, American Film Music, 1990, p. 13).

There is in fact copious underscoring of dialogue with music.

The ballerina's manager, lamenting the empty house, says after this he will do no more dancing, just jazz.

With the entrance of the maid into the ballerina's room (34:25) pop-jazz-dance music starts. It continues during the entrance of several more people, a subtlely comic sequence. When the ballerina returns and her manager dumps her the music turns briefly minor, ominous. A muted trumpet solo accompanies the ballerina's undressing. It stops when she exits the frame in the nick of time not to expose herself. There are then some moments of silence as the baron takes his gloves off. Then music reenters with the ballerina, this time Russian-flavored accompanying her phone call. It smoothely transitions into pop-dance music and continues quite incompatibly with her desperate monologue and the baron's intervention, and continues to the end of the scene with some nuances changes appropriate to the dialouge (end 42:46).

Sign for American Bar Jazz Band at 57:45.

1:39 - "The music has stopped. How quiet it is tonight. It was never so quiet in the Grand Hotel."

Innovative concentration of (7) stars in one film.

Novel (Menschen im Hotel) first translated to broadway. Also Vitaphone musical comedy picture Nothing Ever Happens (1933).

King Kong [sound recording] : complete 1933 film score / Max Steiner.

Steiner, Max, 1888-1971. . King Kong [sound recording] : complete 1933 film score / Max Steiner. [S.l.] : Naxos, [2005].
Call#: Van Pelt Library Ormandy Music and Media Center Naxos 8557700 CD

Little Caesar (1931)/ First National Pictures, Inc. ; Warner Bros. Pictures ; screen adaptation by Francis Edwards Faragoh ; directed by Mervyn LeRoy.

strings during opening credits. dance music. Italian-sounding music. "only conventional musical effects in obvious places." (Darby and Du Bois, American Film Music, 1990, p. 12).

Mildred Pierce / Warner Bros. Pictures Inc. ; Turner Entertainment Co. ; screenplay by Ranald MacDougall ; produced by Jerry Wald ; directed by Michael Curtiz.

Morocco (1930)/ Paramount Publix Corporation ; Paramount Pictures Corp. ; written by Jules Furthman ; directed by Josef von Sternberg.

"Oriental" theme by drummer in street and native singer. Foreign Legion represented by marches as soldiers leave and return. waltz at high society party. "What Am I Bid for My Apples" symboizes heroine's sordid past. (Darby and Du Bois, American Film Music, 1990, p. 9-10).

Public enemy (1931)/ Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. & the Vitaphone Corp. ; story by Kubec Glasmon and John Bright ; adaptation by Harvey Thew ; directed by William A. Wellman.

"I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" during opening credits and later at nightclub and again on gramophone in Powers' home - mood of song contrasts with events'. "There are Smiles" and "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" at nightclub. Putty Nose dies while singing. "Romantic musical kitsch" during romantic scene. (Darby and Du Bois, American Film Music, 1990, p. 12-3).

Quo vadis? / Silent Screen Classics ; directed by Enrico Guazzoni.

Rain (1932)/ Lewis Milestone's production and direction.

Original rain theme at beginning. Saide Thompson identified with jazz mostly from her radio. No music for (religious) Davisons. (Darby and Du Bois, American Film Music, 1990, p. 14)

Scarface (1932)/ Universal; screen story by Ben Hecht ; continuity and dialogue by Seton I. Miller, John Lee Mahin, W.R. Burnett ; directed by Howard Hawks.

Tony whistles "Slaves' Chorus" from Verdi's Nabucco in opening murder scene.

Stage to studio : musicians and the sound revolution, 1890-1950 / James P. Kraft.

Kraft, James P.. Stage to studio : musicians and the sound revolution, 1890-1950 / James P. Kraft. [0801850894 (alk. paper)] Baltimore, MD : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
Call#: Van Pelt Library ML3795 .K82 1996

The Big Trail (1930) Fox

more music than most contemporary films. usually occurs in scenes with little or no dialogue. officially by Arthur Kay but others involved. soaring strings for snow falling on pioneers and hero. idyllic air by brass when settlers have survived first winter and heroine prays for Coleman's return. love theme by harp and violin. martial music during fight into "Abide with Me" during mourning. also honky-tonk, "Indian," hoedown music. (Darby and Du Bois, American Film Music, 1990, p. 11).

The birth of a nation, and, The Civil War films of D.W. Griffith / directed by D.W. Griffith ; screenplay by D.W. Griffith & Frank E. Woods.

The Virginian (1929) Paramount

orchestral fanfares during opening and closing credits. otherwise, diegetic music: characters whistle or sing, "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" for death of Steve (Richard Arlen). trail drives, romantic interludes, final gunfight without music (Darby an Du Bois, American Film Music 1990, p. 9).

Unfaithfully yours / Twentieth Century Fox presents ; written, directed, and produced by Preston Sturges.