• MUSIC IN DIVIDED GERMANY, Department of Music at the University of California, Berkeley announces the finalized program for a three-day international conference, “Music in Divided Germany,” taking place September 9-11, 2011.

• “Music in the Eighteenth Century”

       Session of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music (SECM)
at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Society of
Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS).
San Antonio, TX – March 22-25, 2012

The Society for Eighteenth-Century Music will hold a session dedicated
to “Music in the Eighteenth Century” at the 2012 ASECS Annual Meeting
that will take place on March 22-25, 2012 in San Antonio (TX).

While the session is open to any proposal submitted, preference will
be given to papers addressing in particular the relationships between
music and society. What role and part had music in eighteenth-century
society? How were musical genres expression of social changes or
manifestations of specific social strata?

Please send a 250 word abstract by September 15, 2011 to:

Guido Olivieri: olivieri at mail.utexas.edu. Include in the subject
line: “ASECS Music Session.

Three to four papers will be accepted. We actively encourage
presentations by younger and untenured scholars. Papers should be
limited to 20 minutes with 10 minutes for discussion afterwards.
Please include your telephone number and e-mail address and specify
any audio-visual needs.

The ASECS’s rules permit members to present only one paper at the
meeting.  Members may, in addition to presenting a paper, serve as a
session chair, a respondent, or a panel discussant, but they may not
present a paper in those sessions they also chair. All participants
must be members in good standing of ASECS or a constituent society of
ISECS.

• The Alfred Newman Symposium for Musicological Film Studies – CFP

presents

From Nineteenth-Century Stage Melodrama to Twenty-First-Century Film Scoring:
Musicodramatic Practice and Knowledge Organization

in association with

USC Cinematic Arts Library and Warner Bros. Archives
Society for American Music
Institute for Film Music Studies
USC Doheny Memorial Library
February 23-24, 2012

The musicological study of film is exemplified today by interpretive “readings” of individual films, of film genres, or of some narrative aspect of film, thereby following the lead of literary criticism and film studies more than musicology. Because of that proportionately less attention is devoted to examining musical practice in film within the traditions of dramatic musical art. There is a need now for historical analysis and synthesis, such that individual studies can be related to a more comprehensive perspective in which music of the cinema is understood in the broader historical context of theater music.

In this regard the art of film scoring taught in USC’s Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television Program and similar programs in other academic institutions is known to have its historical origins in the musical practice of stage melodrama, which was adapted for early silent film accompaniment in the late 19th century. Original composition for individual productions was the exception rather than the rule in 19th-century stage melodrama just as it was in silent film accompaniment. Much generic “stock music” was written for both, and the agitato, misterioso, and appassionato virtually defined the musical idiom of both traditions. These pieces were called “melos” in melodrama, and a representative selection of titles published in the 1860s illustrates a veritable lexicon of title usage that carried over into early cinema practice in England and the United States: “Mysterious music,” “Dreamy music,” “Thieves’ pizzicato,” “Creeping murderer’s music,” “Triumphant virtue music,” “Hunting music,” “Lively dreamy music,” “Hurries,” “Dying music,” “Wild music,” and even “Angel and demon music.” These repertories of “characterist
ic music” may well constitute the first “mood music” libraries, whose corollary in the silent film era came to be known as photoplay music (or “Kinobibliotek” in German). These short pieces composed (or adapted) and published for silent film accompaniment thus constitute the first music composed specifically for film.

In the 1920s considerable effort was devoted to the systematic classification of the published pieces acquired by movie theater music libraries (or organists). The two most ambitious works of this nature were the Encyclopedia of Picture Music by Erno Rapee (1925) and the Allgemeines Handbuch der Film-Musik by Hans Erdmann, Giuseppe Becce, and Ludwig Brav (1927), the latter containing a chart organizing pieces according to mood, tempo, and form (genre). This resulted in a system of musicodramatic knowledge organization that was reflected in the classification schemes and that in turn funneled newly composed pieces into the existing categories of agitato, misterioso, and appassionato, et al. By the end of the silent era this system was understood and used (sometimes with regional variations) wherever there were movies and musicians (recent research has discovered published compilations of photoplay music published in Japan).

Sometimes for major film releases in New York, the photoplay music composers were commissioned to write scores, which tended to be very similar to compiled scores of photoplay music. With the coming of sound in 1928, some of these composers were brought to Hollywood. At first the studios continued the practice of scoring films with the existing photoplay music that had been used for silent films. The individual pieces were called “cues,” essentially equivalent to the melos of stage melodrama. For a time in the early sound era the same titling practice continued. This was gradually replaced by cue titles uniquely associated with a given film, featuring the names of the characters in the film, or descriptions of film action or locations. But the traditional silent film classification schemes were still employed to classify the cues of newly composed scores: each was assigned an existing classification type (or mood), so that it could be re-used in other films. During the 1930s through the 1950s the original score still remained the exception, as many “B” films and serials, for example, were scored with existing cues. Starting in the 1950s, television music also relied heavily on stock music and has ever since.

This system of classification allowed movie studio music libraries to maintain a high level of bibliographic control over their holdings. It also provides a conceptual framework for musicologists to use in studying and teaching film music. The system furthermore illuminates a tradition too often defined pejoratively in terms of conventions, formulas, and clichés. In addition to music manuscript material, the classification schemes, card catalogs, and associated instruments of bibliographic access (such as cue sheets) now form an integral part of primary source materials as preserved in the extensive film music holdings of the USC Cinematic Arts Library and USC Warner Bros. Archives.

The Symposium will focus on exploring this system of musicodramatic knowledge organization and on understanding both its origins in stage melodrama and how the practice continues as a living tradition in film scoring today. To a greater or lesser extent current practice can be seen as “new wine in old bottles,” because while musical styles have changed, the same underlying musicodramatic schema has remained relatively unchanged. Papers and proposals for panel sessions and roundtables on this topic or other musicological aspects of film study should be sent to William H. Rosar at rosar@ifms-jfm.org<mailto:rosar@ifms-jfm.org> by October 15, 2011.

Film Music at USC and the Alfred Newman Symposium for Musicological Film Studies

Prior to the mid-1980s when the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television Program was inaugurated by the Thornton School for Music, USC had long been the nation’s leader in film music education, since the School of Cinematic Arts was founded in conjunction with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. As early as 1930, United Artists music director-photoplay music composer Hugo Riesenfeld was a lecturer, and the first film music course was formally proposed in 1933 by New York song writer-composer Ann Ronell, whose husband Lester Cowan developed and coordinated the film curriculum. After World War II USC pioneered in offering two courses, one a professional seminar in film scoring for composers taught by celebrated Hollywood composer Miklos Rozsa, the other a comprehensive survey for the non-music major taught by composer-musicologist Ingolf Dahl, who was a member of the College Committee of Film Music. In 1976 the Alfred Newman Memorial Library was created by the composer’s choral director and long time associate, Ken Darby, becoming the first film music research library in the United States. In connection with it, the first doctoral dissertation in musicology on a film music subject in the country “The Making of an American Film Composer: A Study of Alfred Newman’s Music in the First Decade of the Sound Era,” was completed in 1981 by Fred Steiner, himself a seasoned film and TV composer who had worked with Newman on the scores for The Greatest Story Ever Told and Airport. The Symposium has been named in Newman’s honor and will be the first meeting of the newly established Institute for Film Music Studies, a non-profit educational organization devoted to the musicological study of film.

Organizing Committee: William H. Rosar (University of California, San Diego, editor of The Journal of Film Music), Richard Smiraglia (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), Mariana Whitmer (University of Pittsburg, Executive Director of the Society for American Music), Steve Hanson (Director, Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California), Sandra Garcia-Myers, Director of Archives of Performing Arts, Cinematic Arts Library, University of Southern California, and Sandra Joy Lee Aguilar (Curator, Warner Bros. Archives and Director of Archives, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California).

The URL for the Symposium is http://www.usc.edu/libraries/about/programs_exhibitions/events/FilmMusic