Abstract
Italian music historiography has only recently oriented its attention towards music in silent cinema in its multifaceted aspects: praxis, musical repertoires, production contexts, the public, organization of performances and so forth. Research on music in Italian silent films has so far mainly focused on music expressly composed for specific films. Italy holds the chronological primacy for the first musical accompaniment ever written for a film: the music by Romolo Bacchini for La malia dell’oro, a film directed by Gaston Velle in 1905, whose score and film have unfortunately been lost. An ongoing survey counted about 40 films as being fitted with an original score throughout the entire silent era; of these only ten orchestral scores or piano scores survive, and some of the films have been digitalized with the synchronization of the original musical accompaniment (see Appendix 1).
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Notes
Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004): 12.
For some information on music in Italian cinemas see Ermanno Comuzio, ‘Industria e commercio dell’ “Incidental Film Music”’ , ‘Immagine 2 (1986): 16–21; and
Ermanno Comuzio, ‘Pianisti estemporanei e di carriera, orchestrine e orchestrone’, Immagine 23 (1993): 19–22.
Pier Antonio Gariazzo, Il teatro muto (Torino: Lattes, 1919); and
Sebastiano Arturo Luciani, Verso una Nuova Arte: il Cinematografo (Roma: Ausonia, 1920).
Edith Lang and George West, Musical Accompaniment of Moving Pictures. A Practical Manual for Pianists and Organists and an Exposition of the Principles Underlying the Musical Interpretation of Moving Pictures (Boston: Boston Music, 1920), repr. (New York: Arno Press, 1970);
Hans Erdmann, Giuseppe Becce and Ludwig Brav, Allgemeines Handbuch der Film-Musik (Berlin—Lichterfelde: Schlesinger, 1927).
For a general description of the Italian trade press in the silent cinema era, see Silvio Alovisio, ‘I libri e le riviste’, in Carla Ceresa and Donata Pesenti Campagnoni (eds.) Tracce. Documenti del cinema muto torinese nelle collezioni del Museo Nazionale del Cinema (Torino: Il castoro, 2007): 171–187.
Here is a list of some musical editors of music for orchestrina in Piedmont: Silmar (Torino); Ad Astra (Cuneo/Torino); Rex Edizioni (Torino); Casa editrice nazionale (Torino); Rolando (Asti); Casa editrice musicale sabauda (Torino); Gnocchi (Torino); Mac-Mac (Torino); Cines Pittaluga (Torino); Littoria (Tortona); Rotellini (Alba); Chiappo (Torino); Le Canzoni di Ripp (Torino); Leandro Chenna (Torino); Augusta (Torino); Agnello (Tortona); Ugo Ferri (Torino); Sampietro (Asti); Zoboli (Torino); Impero (Torino); La fisarmonica (Torino) Checchini (Torino); Gori. Minghetti (Torino); De Muro (Torino); Ars Nova (Torino). See Mario Dall’Ara, Editori di musica a Torino e Piemonte (Torino: Centro studi piemontesi, 1999).
Sergio Miceli, Musica per Film. Storia, Estetica, Analisi, Tipologie (Lucca: Ricordi/LIM, 2009): 59.
Archive of the Museo del Cinema di Torino. For an analysis of this score see Emilio Sala, ‘Per una drammaturgia del ri-uso musicale nel cinema muto: il caso di “Cabiria” (1914)’, in Annarita Colturato (ed.) Film Music. Practices and Methodologies (Torino: Kaplan, 2014): 73–107.
Riccardo Redi, ‘Musica del muto’, Immagine 36 (1996): 9–13.
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© 2014 Marco Targa
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Targa, M. (2014). The Use of Cue Sheets in Italian Silent Cinema: Contexts, Repertoires, Praxis. In: Tieber, C., Windisch, A.K. (eds) The Sounds of Silent Films. Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137410726_4
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