The use of cue sheets in Italian silent cinema

contexts, repertoires, praxis

Marco Targa

pp. 49-65

in: Claus Tieber, Anna K. Windisch (eds), The sounds of silent films, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014

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).