Largo Al Factotum

Modern silent films are a mixed bag. Too often the spirit is willing but the inspiration is weak. In particular the modern silent comedy tends towards lame pantomime and fails to learn the first lesson of the original silent comedy films, which is to be funny. That involves more than being in monochrome, aping Chaplinesque movements and throwing in an intertitle or two. It requires the ability to express humour visually. The gag has to be funnier seen than it appears to be written down. The camera reveals the comedy.

So it is a particular pleasure to bring you the video on display here, because I think it is a genuinely funny modern silent comedy. It is a comic sketch set to ‘Largo al Factotum’ from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, and the story revolves around a humble barber’s assistant who dreams of trichological glory. I won’t give the gag away, but suffice to say that it’s something beyond Rossini’s imagination.

Largo al Factotum is directed by Dougal Wilson (whose background is pop videos), photographed by Alvin H. Kutchler and produced by Matthew Fone for Blink Productions. The hero is played by Mat Baynton. The film is one of a number of ‘Opera Shorts‘ commissioned by Sky Arts for the English National Opera, which were first broadcast in February of this year. The ENO always sings in English, so we get Rossini’s aria in English.

It’s a classy piece of work, from the lateral tracking shots to the astute photography (looking both of the past and of today), with welcome points of detail such as the slightly wobbly intertitles. Mop-haired Mat Baynton is an engaging hero, resourceful as a Keaton or Lloyd would be in the face of the oddities of fate. And the film matches the music perfectly. Enjoy.

The Fotoplayer

Thanks are due to the Bioscope’s continental Europe correspondent, Frank Kessler, for this delightful YouTube clip. It features Maud Nelissen, regular accompanist for silent films at the Nederlands Filmmuseum, playing a Fotoplayer organ at the Utrecht musical museum Van Speelklok tot Pierement. Her explanation is in Dutch, part of which is to announce an upcoming screening in Utrecht, which was on 18 April, so apologies for being a late with that, but the Fotoplayer itself plays on.

The photoplayer (the Fotoplayer itself was one make, produced by the American Photoplayer Company) was a form of player piano, electrically-driven, with augmented orchestral effects, including organ pipes, percussion instruments and assorted sound effects (whistles, bird song, thunder etc.). The organ could be played manually, as shown above, but it also took piano rolls as with a conventional player piano, each of which would be designed for particular genres and scenes. An operator (often an usherette, it is said) would therefore have to switch from one roll to another as the action changed.

Photoplayers were first introduced around 1910, and were produced in their thousands in the United States. Generally they were installed in smaller cinemas throughout the silent era, as the amplification was not good enough to larger theatres. Their peak years were the late teens, and production tailed off after 1925. Only a hundred or so exist today. In part they were dumped once the talkies arrived, in part they suffered greatly from the wear-and-tear of all-day operation.

There is more information on the Fotoplayer at The Musical Museum and The Encyclopedia of Australian Theatre Organs.

Now would one of those be fun to have at Pordenone? Possibly a little tricky to transport, but even so…

Killruddery tales, and a touch of Dante

Kevin Brownlow at Killruddery Silent Film Festival 2009

Two interviews from the recent Killruddery Silent Film Festival, made by Irish company DOCUMENTAVi, have appeared online. The first is with Kevin Brownlow, an engaging twenty-minute film in which Kevin ranges widely over a lifetime promoting the silent film. He discusses discovering silent film while at school, the first films he collected, befriending silent directors (Al Parker in particular) and the task he took on of interviewing those who made the silent film. He covers film festivals, the Thames Silents series, Ireland and silent film, the power of silents experienced live as opposed to online or on TV, and the importance of live, ‘authentic’ (he is amusingly scathing of the taste for modern rock groups to dabble with silents). It’s a delightful encounter.

Stephen Horne at Killruddery Silent Film Festival 2009

Then, looking somewhat bleary-eyed, as anyone might who had just accompanied three silents in a row at the festival, pianist Stephen Horne talks about how he got into providing music for silent films, how this combines with the work he does accompanying dance, and his recent experiences performing the ‘original’ score for The Battle of the Somme. It’s an eloquent, informative seven-minute piece.

Talking of the estimable Mr Horne, he can be heard this Sunday at the Barbican in London, accompanying Guiseppe di Liguoro’s L’Inferno (1911), together with percussionist Martin Pyne and a smattering of electronic samples amid the piano accompaniment. Stephen assures me that it will be nothing like Tangerine Dream (whose DVD score for the film has pained many – doubtless Kevin Brownlow among them), so there’s every reason to go along and catch the Dante-inspired film which caused such a sensation in its time (chiefly on account of copious nudity among the damned). Fragments from a second 1911 L’Inferno, directed by Giuseppe Berardi, will also be shown, apparently for the first time in the UK.

L’Inferno, from www.barbican.org.uk

Music while they worked

In The Parade’s Gone By, Kevin Brownlow has a short chapter on that intriguing aspect of studio practice in the silent era, the use of musicians on set to help the actors get into the right mood. Not all directors used it, and not all actors needed it, but Conrad Nagel recalled

Every set would have musicians. Mickey Neilan had an orchestra of four, so there was always fun on his set … These musicians would know a hundred to a hundred fifty pieces of music, and they’d have a piece to go with whatever happened on the set. For hundreds of years, when you went to war, the regiment would take a band along. The music would give a great lift to the soldiers. And it was the same on a silent-picture set; the music kept you buoyed up.

Marshall Neilan, King Vidor, William Wellman all approved of the practice; Charlie Chaplin and Edward Sloman never used it. It is such a familiar part of silent film history, and yet how much do we actually know about it, beyond the anecdotal? I received an enquiry from researcher Polly Goodwin the other day about the use of musicians on set, and I realised I knew next to nothing. So, with her permission, I am reproducing her request here, in the hope that readers will be able to suggest texts, films, photographs or whatever. Here’s her email:

I am a researcher into silent film acting and I am currently investigating the phenomenon of on-set music during the filming of (many) silent films. So far, whilst I can find a few mentions of the frequency with which musicians (I believe sometimes called ‘sideliners’?) were invited onto the set, to play whilst the cameras were rolling, accounts tend to be brief and sporadic. There are a few photographs showing them at work, and the odd anecdote from actors and other on-set workers and in contemporary articles, but that is as far as I have been able to go. I wondered if anyone could give me any advice about where I might find more information on this (if, indeed, there is much information to find?) As yet, I have not found any accounts by the musicians themselves, for instance, or (which would be most interesting) by actors/directors etc. really addressing the impact (positive or negative) that this music and those who played it had. I find it such an intriguing situation – acting with the presence of music, and also of the director’s ‘direction’, in many cases, and would love to really get a fuller picture of what this unique acting environment would be like to perform in.

Has anyone come across any information about this, or any evidence in the form of photos, or, even more pie-in-the-sky-optimistically, in any snippets of on-set ‘behind the camera’ footage?

Any advice or suggestions would be more than appreciated.

Well, the Brownlow book is a start – chapter 30 covers the practice, and has two photographs, one of William de Mille with Efrem Zimbalist Jr on set, the other showing Pauline Starke and Conrad Nagel in Edmund Goulding’s Sun-up, with violinist on location. But what else is there?

Early sounds

The programme for the Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain conference has been announced. Organised by the Institute of Musical Research, the conference takes places 7-9 June 2009 at Senate House and the Barbican Centre, London. The conference is intended to complement the British Silent Film Festival, which is taking place at the Barbican 4-6 June and has the theme of music and British silent film.

This is the provisional programme for the conference:

PROGRAMME

Sunday 7 June 2009: Barbican Centre, Cinema 1

3–3.15 Introduction to conference: Julie Brown
Introduction to D.W.Griffith and Way Down East: Professor David Mayer

3.15–6.15 Way Down East: original score by William Frederick Peters and Horace Silvers, reconstructed and conducted by Gillian Anderson (prog. includes short interval)

6.30–7 Gillian Anderson in conversation with Professor Ian Christie

7pm Depart for dinner

Monday 8 June 2009: Institute of Musicological Research

9am Registration

9.15 Welcome

9.30–10.45 Film Lecturers

• Film Lecturers in the UK, pre-1907, Dr Joe Kember, University of Exeter
• ‘Sound’ and silent cinema in Scotland, Dr Trevor Griffiths, University of Edinburgh

Coffee

11.15–1 Early musical practices

• ’Motivated Music’: the evidence for accompaniment practice in London cinemas, 1896–1913, Prof Ian Christie, Birkbeck College, University of London
• Music in Mitchell and Kenyon shows, Dr Vanessa Toulmin, National Fairground Archive, University of Sheffield
• Music for A Trip to the Moon? A Probable English Film Score for a French Film Fantasy, Prof Martin Miller Marks, Mass. Institute of Technology

Lunch

2–3.45 The 1910s: UK and US practices

• Entertainment licensing in the UK during the ‘silent’ film era, Dr Jon Burrows, University of Warwick
• The Sound of the City: Music, The Show, and the Picture Palace, Dr Jim Buhler, University of Texas at Austin
• “The efforts of the wretched pianist”: Fiction as Historical Resource, Prof Andrew Higson, University of York

Coffee

4.15–5.15 Resources 1: Film and Documents
Dr Phil Wickham, The Bill Douglas Centre, University of Exeter
Luke McKernan, Curator, Moving Image, British Library
Bryony Dixon, Curator, Silent Film, British Film Institute
Prof David Sanjek, University of Salford

End of day discussion, followed by Buffet (at IMR)

8pm Barbican Centre, Cinema 1
The Flag Lieutenant: original score by Albert Cazabon. Arranged and performed by Philip Carli (pno.) with Gunter Buchwald (vln.) and Paul Clarvis (perc.)

Tuesday 9 June 2009: Institute of Musicological Research

9.30 -10.45 Music and/as transition practice

• Another mystery from the pen of Mr. Edgar Wallace? The case of the vanishing part-talkie, The Crimson Circle (British Talking Pictures, 1929), Fiona Ford, University of Nottingham
• Live music and the transition to sound in Britain, Dr Julie Brown, Royal Holloway, University of London

Coffee

11.15-12.30 Retrospective Research: Early Sound Films and Silent Practice

• Scores in early sound film as sources for silent film accompaniment practices, Dr Ian Gardiner, Goldsmiths College, University of London
• The Development of Dialogue Underscoring in Sound Films in the Early 1930s, Prof David Neumeyer, University of Texas at Austin

Lunch

1.30-2.45 Resources 2: Technology and Ephemera
Phil Wickham, Curator, The Bill Douglas Centre, University of Exeter
Dr Mike Allen, Birkbeck College, University of London
Len Rawle, Cinema Organ Society
Other panel members tbc.

Coffee

3.15 – 4.30 Musical Performance on Film

• Silent Mancunians: Overcoming Silence in Silent Operas, Dr Chris P. Lee, University of Salford
• Variety Performance as Captured in Early Film, Prof Derek B Scott, University of Leeds

The conference closes at 5.30 pm after a short open forum.

The Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain research network is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, under their Beyond Text programme. The research team is Dr Julie Brown (Royal Holloway, University of London), Principal Investigator, and Dr Annette Davison (University of Edinburgh), Co-investigator. They describe the conference aims thus:

The aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring together researchers from widely divergent fields to share perspectives on the sonic practices associated with early film exhibition, particularly in Britain. The first decades of film exhibition in the UK were characterized by flux and experimentation. Musical and sonic practices were often improvisatory, but always contingent upon the resources available, their stage of technological development, and the exhibition venue itself, which might have been a music hall, fairground, theatre, or purpose-built venue. Elements of performativity and contingency continued well into the sound era; live musical performance long remained a key part of film exhibition in many cinemas. This conference is the first of four events organised by the AHRC-Funded Beyond Text Network “The Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain” to enable, encourage, and consolidate research and practical activity in this field, and is particularly concerned with the nature, limitations and potentialities of the sources available for studying these practices.

Programme and booking form can be found on the Institute of Musical Research site. Information on the British Silent Film Festival can be sound at http://britishsilent.wordpress.com.

The British Silent Film Festival returns

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain

After a prolonged period in the shadows, while dark and pressing operational matters were sorted out, the British Silent Film Festival is back. No longer based in Nottingham, the festival this year moves to the Barbican Cinema, London. It is taking place 4-6 June, and the theme is ‘Music and the British Silent Film’. It will therefore run harmoniously alongside the Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain conference, which is taking place at the Barbican from 7-9 June.

A blog has been set up as a temporary online home for the festival. It says:

Our theme this year is Music and the British Silent Film which will encompass all aspects of music and sound relating to silent film. The theme will encompass experimental sound systems before 1930, contemporary music and silent film and the visual depiction of sound in film. We have less time for papers this year but if you have specific suggestions for a presentation please email us at director@britishsilentfilm.org.uk.

The Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain conference which runs alongside the British Silent Film Festival is one output of the Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain project, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and based at Royal Holloway, University of London, which is examining “sound’s and music’s roles as practised in the exhibition of early and ’silent’ cinema in Britain”.

The Dodge Brothers

There’s no programme for the festival as yet (clearly, since suggestions for presentations are still invited), but “a very exciting public event” on 4 June is promised, featuring the Dodge Brothers, who include one Mark Kermode – film critic, double bassist, TV personality and defiant haircut; and the universally worshipped Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain.

More information on the festival as and when we receive it, but at least you can now fill that gap in your diaries.

Update: The full programme has now been published.

Down to the sea in ships

The latest DVD offering from the creative and painstaking people at Flicker Alley is a rather surprising package, Under Full Sail. Following on from the imaginative packaging of silent film on the immigrant experience as Perils of the New Land, this latest offering brings together a selection of silent films on the theme of sailing ships. The centrepiece is The Yankee Clipper (1927), directed by Rupert Julian and produced by Cecil B. De Mille, a drama of the China tea trade, filmed aboard an 1856 wooden square-rigger, starring William Boyd, Elinor Fair and Frank ‘Junior’ Coghlan. The additional titles are Around the Horn in a Square Rigger (1933), Alan Villiers’ account of the voyage of the barque Parma from Australia to England in the 1933 Grain Race; The Square Rigger (1932), a sound short showing life aboard the schoolship Dar Pomorza; Ship Ahoy (1928), a record of a schooner employed in the North American lumber trade; and a ten-minute sequence from Down to the Sea in Ships (1922), which records a whale hunt on board the 1878 wooden ship Wanderer out of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

All of which looks like an interesting attempt to beef up The Yankee Clipper, which is not that well-known a title, with films which would otherwise have been unlikely to find their way onto DVD, producing a package that ought to reach beyond silent film specialists to a wider market intersted in sailing history. Films don’t just tell stories, they tell histories, so let’s hope the release is a success and that Flicker Alley can provide us with more such socio-historically informed DVDs. For the silent film music buffs, the release is also notable for being (surprisingly) the solo DVD premiere of renowned organist Dennis James, who accompanies The Yankee Clipper on an original-installation 1928 Wurlitzer pipe organ, recorded at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre.

Silent strumming

Gary Lucas playing to Entr’acte, from www.garylucas.com

This being my blog and no one else’s, I can go off at a tangent if I feel like it, and every now and then I like to throw in my interest in modern (veering on the experimental side) guitar music. Happily, a number of guitarists on the cutting edge of things have dabbled with accompanying silent films, admittedly with some mixed results.

The leading exponent is Gary Lucas, and it is upcoming activity in the field that is the reason for this post. Lucas is best known in rock music circles for playing for Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band in its latter years (the Ice Cream for Crow years) and for his close association with Jeff Buckley. The extent of his musical activity is almost as bewildering as his quick-fingered skills, and this has included two forays into accompanying silent film, with which he has toured extensively. Sounds of the Surreal combines René Clair’s Entr’acte (1924), Fernand Léger’s Ballet mécanique (1924) and Ladislaw Starewicz’s The Cameraman’s Revenge (1912). His splendid score to The Golem has been showcased widely – though not, surprisingly, at any silent film festival, so far as I am aware.

There’s a YouTube extract from his score (which might change a few expectations of what a guitar score can sound like) to the film, and four parts of a 1998 Slovenian documentary (with Lucas interviewed in English) on the film and his interpretation if it, here, here, here and here.

Gary Lucas accompanying Der Golem at the Valladolid Film Festival in 2008, from www.garylucas.com

And now there is news of two new silent film scores, accompanied live by Lucas, happening this year. In mid-April his score for the Lon Chaney classic The Unholy Three, commissioned by The Film Society of Lincoln Center, will have its premiere at the Walter Reade Theater in New York City in mid-April. Then the Holland Festival has commissioned a new live solo guitar score by Lucas in collaboration with Dutch-Iranian composer Reza Namavar and ensemble for Abel Gance’s J’Accuse which will have its premiere live mid June in the Amsterdam Stadtsshouwburg.

How well does the guitar (and it’s usually the electric guitar) go with the silent film? The jury’s out on this, as those guitarists who have taken on the task have varied in the degree to which they have accompanied the film or the film has accompanied them. At its best, the electric guitar can bring colours and expressions that illuminate the films without dominating them (with a tendency towards ambient sounds). At its worst you get music inspired by the film that doesn’t connect with the film in a live content in any meaningful way at all, and which sounds too thin to take on the weighty task of accompanying a film drama at its fullest.

Jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, the best-known among these exponents, has taken a haunting, almost doom-laden approach to his scores for the films of Buster Keaton, which can be found on his CDs Go West and The High Sign/One Week. I haven’t seen them played to the films themselves, so I can’t judge their effectiveness. Fred Frith, doyen of the avant garde guitar, and Marc Ribot (known for work with Tom Waits especially) appeared at the 2007 Strade del Cinema festival in Aosta, Italy, playing to Giovanni Pastrone’s Il Fuoco (1916). Henry Kaiser (probably best known for scoring Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man) accompanied Kinugasa Teinosuke’s A Page of Madness (1926) and guitarist Alex de Grassi took on Yasujiro Ozu’s A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) at the 2006 New York Guitar Festival. And there have been others. Here’s American ambient guitarist Rob Byrd, playing to The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927) in an intriguing twin-screening setting:

Only last month Scottish acoustic guitarist David Allison played to Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) at the Glasgow Film Festival (see interview with him here). Let me know of other examples, if you can.

Finally, I don’t know if the guitar was ever used to accompany silent films originally (it seems unlikely), but it is a little known fact Max Schreck was a guitarist of considerable ability, shown here in this recently-discovered archive clip, during a break in filming Nosferatu. Well, I believe it anyway…

There’s no business like show business

The programme from the 2009 StummFilmMusikTage (the German festival of silent film and music) has been announced. The theme for this year’s festival, which takes place on 24 January (apparently just the one day – it was a three-day festival last year) at Erlangen, is There’s no Business Like Showbusiness:

16 Uhr / 4 pm
Filmens Helte (Pat und Patachon, die Filmhelden / Film Heroes)
Dänemark/Denmark 1928, 68 min
Regie/Director: Lau Lauritzen, Sr.
mit/with: Carl Schenstrøm, Harald Madsen, Holger Reenberg, Eli Lehmann
Musik und Ausführung: Miller the Killer con Conny Corretto

18 Uhr / 6 pm
Lesung: Der ewige Tramp /Reading: The Eternal Tramp
Eintritt frei / free entrance

19 Uhr / 7 pm
The Circus (Der Zirkus)
USA 1928, 71 min
Regie/Director: Charles Chaplin
mit/with: Charles Chaplin, Merna Kennedy, Al Ernest Garcia
Musik: Charles Chaplin
Ausführung: Ensemble Kontraste
Leitung: Christian Schumann

21 Uhr / 9 pm
When Silence Sings: Der Filmkomponist Aljoscha Zimmermann im Gespräch/ A Conversation with film composer Aljoscha Zimmermann
Eintritt frei / free entrance

22 Uhr / 10 pm
Varieté (Variety)
D 1925, 112 min
Regie/Director: E.A. Dupont
mit/with: Emil Jannings, Maly Delschaft, Lya De Putti, Warwick Ward
Musik und Ausführung: Aljoscha und Sabrina Zimmermann

Pre-sale tickets are now available (the organisers advise that if you are considering acquiring tickets from outside Germany, please to write to asynchron@stummfilmmusiktage.de to check about reserving tickets).

Turn up the gramophone

Projecting with the De Forest Phonofilm system, from The Gramophone, March 1927

It’s been a while since we’ve been able to bring you news of digitised newspapers or journals accessible online, but here’s a treat for the new year. The Gramophone, the esteemed classical music journal, has just put up in its entire archive since 1923.

It’s searchable by keyword, date range and type of item, with results refinable by decade. So searches can be narrowed to the 1920s, and there is plenty on silent cinema for us to investigate. Search results give you the item title, the first few lines, date and page number. Individual items then give you a PDF of the page (though it is necessary to register first to access these), with the option to browse further through that issue, and the OCRed text (with the occasional wobble in the character recognition). It is very easy to use,with an array of handy extras you can explore for yourselves. How it was paid for, it doesn’t say, but the service is free.

So, what will we find on silent films in The Gramophone? A surprising amount, if sometimes tangentially expressed. A good example is this piece by J.B. Hastings, from April 1925, entitled ‘The Gramophone and Film Music’, on how cue sheets were put together:

The average person will be astonished to find how much time and trouble are spent in fitting suitable music to film plays. But the big film companies have come to realise that a really good picture play can be ruined by the accompaniment of inappropriate music, and, incidentally let me whisper, they have found that even a feeble production can be made fairly, tolerable by the ingenious use of the orchestra. So, with each super film, is issued a list of ” musical suggestions,” complete with the cues and signs necessary to fit the various selections to the screen action. In many cases the actual full music score, timed to a note, is hired out with the film. Since I have had the experience of compiling a large number of such lists—I forget whether the exact number runs into millions or merely thousands—perhaps I may be permitted to indicate here how it is done.

The film is projected in the cinema company’s private theatre and there I see the film with an assistant—and a stop watch. From the moment the first scene starts I am literally thinking in music. With a love scene I try to imagine just that type of sentimental melody that will exactly fit the picture, and move on in sympathy with it. A fight—then I endeavour to find an “agitato” of a tempo that will synchronise as near as possible with the speed and tensity of the film. Dramatic situations, storms, fires, sea scenes—all call for special treatment. As the film goes through, the “changes” are noted either by the sub-titles that precede them, or action on screen. In illustration of this I reproduce here a fragment of a typical “musical suggestions” sheet.

The first column contains the cues, column 2 the music and composer, column 3 the style of the piece. Those cues marked with a (*) are the opening words of the sub-titles. Brackets indicate action on screen. Both types of cue indicate a change in the action or tempo. No. 9, for instance, shows a quick change from a quiet appealing melody to a pulsating allegro. It will be easily seen that a cinema orchestral leader must be on the alert the whole time. It might almost be said that he must work with one eye on the screen and the other on his music.

Many big photoplays call for a great number of “changes”—absolutely essential if the resultant entertainment is to be perfect. One of the most difficult films I have ever had to “fit” is Captain Blood, which is now showing throughout the country.

Mr. Rafael Sabatini’s story is so full of action and varying moods, and has been filmed with such faithfulness that no less than seventy changes are necessary, though this does. not mean seventy different selections. The chief “themes” in this story are (a) love; (b) dramatic; (e) sea battles and (ci) the “Captain Blood” theme itself. All these are there in various shades and emphasis.

As an introduction we start with the Captain Blood song, specially written as an overture or prologue. This is followed by Admirals All (Hubert Bath) and is used, in all, in eight different places.. For the love theme I have chosen The World is a Beautiful Song (Vane), and the principal seafighting scenes, Beethoven’s King Stephen overture from “presto,” varying this with various “incidental symphonies” specially written for film use.

Here is an extract from the music which I have fitted to the comparatively quiet first reel of Captain Blood:

Compare this with the smashing character of the music towards the end, when the terrific battle of Port Royal, Jamaica, is introduced. Here you will notice indication of “effects”.

Naturally, many cinemas cannot, for various reasons, follow the “official” musical suggestions in their entirety, especially as it is only in cases of exceptional films like Captain Blood that the complete score, correctly numbered and marked, can be hired from the film company.

No orchestra library under the sun can hope to contain every composition that may be wanted; and no musical director knows off-hand the exact nature of every composition in existence. It is here that the gramophone is so useful. When he finds himself “stuck” for a suitable number the musical director can always turn to the gramophone for guidance as to the style and tempo of any selection, the title of which seems to indicate possibilities. Moreover, many cinema orchestral leaders, to my knowledge, gain valuable hints from the reviews of records and music published in THE GRAMOPHONE.

In conclusion, I would say that the modern super-cinema, with its often excellent orchestra, together with the great study given to the musical side of films by cinema companies, is having a marked effect upon the musical taste of the British public.

What with this and broadcasting—both tending to familiarise the “Man in the Street” with all that is best in music—it is not surprising that the gramophone firms are experiencing what can most aptly be termed “a record boom.”

And, briefly, an editorial from April 1929 casts an interesting light on payment for musical accompaniment in cinemas, in this case involving the future composer of many a British film score, Malcolm Sargent:

Dr. Malcolm Sargent, at the age of thirty-three, has just refused to play the cinema organ for half an hour every day at 12s. 9d. a minute. This shows a more genuine horror of the instrument than even I could have fancied possible in these days of hard struggling for economic existence. What puzzles me, however, even more than Dr. Sargent’s devotion to art is why it should be worth while for a West End cinema theatre to pay £7,000 a year to any man, whatever his acrobatic and musical ability, to play their organ three times daily throughout the year for ten minutes at a session. I really should very much like to know the name of the cinema theatre which was prepared to offer this price, and I think Dr. Sargent owes it to his professional brethren with lower ideals than himself to reveal the name…

And there’s much more to discover, including some fascinating material on the coming of sound, as the illustration of the De Forest Phonofilm system at the top of this post indicates. Just type in ‘cinema’ or ‘film’ as a keyword, and start browsing.