Introduction: ‘The Birth of Cinema from the Spirit of Music’

Abstract

Paraphrasing the title of Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous book The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music has been tempting enough to call an introduction to a book about silent cinema music ‘The Birth of Cinema from the Spirit of Music’. Music’s ability to attract broad and varied audiences, to evoke emotions and to fulfill narrative and structural functions in combination with fictional art forms such as opera and operetta was heavily utilized by the young medium of film. Cinema’s special relationship with music had started even before moving images were invented in the early 1890s. Illustrated songs were, at least in the US, a precursor of cinema, insofar as this format helped define the relationship between narrative visual elements and music.’ Some early films were barely more than technically updated versions of illustrated songs.² In fact, music as a cultural practice entertained a crucial relationship with silent film on structural and narrative levels: in cinema’s history, the strategies of combining dramatic scenes with music were drawn from prior and contemporaneous media and art forms. This precise convergence of media practices constituted a large part of the attraction for contemporary audiences. Seen in this light, cinema is much more dependent on music and musical formats than is generally acknowledged and this volume aims to address that perspective.