Abstract
Since the beginnings of western media culture, sound synthesis has played a major rol... more Abstract
Since the beginnings of western media culture, sound synthesis has played a major role in articulating cultural notions of the fantastic and the uncanny. As a counterpart to sound reproduction, sound synthesis operated in the interstices of the original/copy correspondence and prefigured the construction of a virtual reality through the generation of novel sounds apparently lacking any equivalent with the acoustic world. Experiments on synthetic sound crucially intersected cinema’s transition to synchronous sound in the late 1920s, thus configuring a particularly fertile scenario for the redefinition of narrative paradigms and the establishment of conventions for sound film production. Sound synthesis can thus be viewed as a structuring device of such film genres as horror and science fiction, whose codification depended on the constitution of synchronized sound film. More broadly, sound synthesis challenged the basic implications of realism based on the rendering of speech and the construction of cinematic soundscapes.
Résumé
Synthèse sonore, représentation et narration à l’époque de la transition vers le cinéma sonore (1926-1935)
Depuis les débuts de la culture médiatique occidentale, la synthèse sonore a largement contribué à façonner notre conception culturelle du fantastique et de l’étrange. Contrepartie de la reproduction sonore, la synthèse sonore venait brouiller la distinction entre copie et original tout en préfigurant la réalité virtuelle grâce à sa capacité de créer des sons inédits, sans équivalent dans le monde acoustique. À la fin des années 1920, la recherche sur le son synthétique entre dans une période cruciale, alors que s’opère la transition du cinéma vers le son synchrone et que le contexte s’avère particulièrement propice à une redéfinition des paradigmes narratifs en place et à l’élaboration de standards pour la production de films sonores. La synthèse sonore apparaît dès lors comme un principe structurant au sein de genres tels que l’horreur et la science-fiction, dont la codification reposait largement sur l’usage d’une trame sonore synchronisée. Plus largement, la synthèse sonore questionne les implications fondamentales d’un réalisme qui serait fondé sur la transmission de la parole et la construction de paysages sonores.
On March 18th 1918, the feature film Pax Æterna (DNK 1917, Holger Madsen) was screened as part of... more On March 18th 1918, the feature film Pax Æterna (DNK 1917, Holger Madsen) was screened as part of a benefit performance in the main concert hall of the Viennese Konzerthaus, an event organized by the women's committee of the Red Cross in order to raise funds for the tuberculosis relief. The music score for this performance was composed by relatively unknown Viennese Kapellmeister Franz Eber.
Being shown in one of Vienna's most prestigious concert halls, the performance was undoubtedly staged as a social event and, after a successful tour through Scandinavia and other European countries, the film was warmly welcomed by the war-weary Viennese public. While Eber's score is clearly an original composition (likely due to copyright considerations), it nonetheless furnishes the peace-promoting images of the film with local musical traits, thus creating a testimony for music as an agent that can shape and confirm national identity.
Over the last few years, sound and music practices during the silent
film period have received an... more Over the last few years, sound and music practices during the silent film period have received an increasing attention from the academic community, both in film studies and musicology. The emergence of interdisciplinary networks, such as “The Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain” (Brown and Davison 2013) and the “Cabiria Research Project” in Italy (Colturato 2014), have contributed to widen the frame of this field, revealing the importance of national, regional and local specificities in the construction of early cinema as an auditory experience. In the context of the thematic issue on “Music, sound and cinema”, Aniki interviewed Claus Tieber and Anna K. Windisch.
ABSTRACT Findings of a research project about sound and music in Viennese cinemas during the sile... more ABSTRACT Findings of a research project about sound and music in Viennese cinemas during the silent era
Abstract
Since the beginnings of western media culture, sound synthesis has played a major rol... more Abstract
Since the beginnings of western media culture, sound synthesis has played a major role in articulating cultural notions of the fantastic and the uncanny. As a counterpart to sound reproduction, sound synthesis operated in the interstices of the original/copy correspondence and prefigured the construction of a virtual reality through the generation of novel sounds apparently lacking any equivalent with the acoustic world. Experiments on synthetic sound crucially intersected cinema’s transition to synchronous sound in the late 1920s, thus configuring a particularly fertile scenario for the redefinition of narrative paradigms and the establishment of conventions for sound film production. Sound synthesis can thus be viewed as a structuring device of such film genres as horror and science fiction, whose codification depended on the constitution of synchronized sound film. More broadly, sound synthesis challenged the basic implications of realism based on the rendering of speech and the construction of cinematic soundscapes.
Résumé
Synthèse sonore, représentation et narration à l’époque de la transition vers le cinéma sonore (1926-1935)
Depuis les débuts de la culture médiatique occidentale, la synthèse sonore a largement contribué à façonner notre conception culturelle du fantastique et de l’étrange. Contrepartie de la reproduction sonore, la synthèse sonore venait brouiller la distinction entre copie et original tout en préfigurant la réalité virtuelle grâce à sa capacité de créer des sons inédits, sans équivalent dans le monde acoustique. À la fin des années 1920, la recherche sur le son synthétique entre dans une période cruciale, alors que s’opère la transition du cinéma vers le son synchrone et que le contexte s’avère particulièrement propice à une redéfinition des paradigmes narratifs en place et à l’élaboration de standards pour la production de films sonores. La synthèse sonore apparaît dès lors comme un principe structurant au sein de genres tels que l’horreur et la science-fiction, dont la codification reposait largement sur l’usage d’une trame sonore synchronisée. Plus largement, la synthèse sonore questionne les implications fondamentales d’un réalisme qui serait fondé sur la transmission de la parole et la construction de paysages sonores.
On March 18th 1918, the feature film Pax Æterna (DNK 1917, Holger Madsen) was screened as part of... more On March 18th 1918, the feature film Pax Æterna (DNK 1917, Holger Madsen) was screened as part of a benefit performance in the main concert hall of the Viennese Konzerthaus, an event organized by the women's committee of the Red Cross in order to raise funds for the tuberculosis relief. The music score for this performance was composed by relatively unknown Viennese Kapellmeister Franz Eber.
Being shown in one of Vienna's most prestigious concert halls, the performance was undoubtedly staged as a social event and, after a successful tour through Scandinavia and other European countries, the film was warmly welcomed by the war-weary Viennese public. While Eber's score is clearly an original composition (likely due to copyright considerations), it nonetheless furnishes the peace-promoting images of the film with local musical traits, thus creating a testimony for music as an agent that can shape and confirm national identity.
Over the last few years, sound and music practices during the silent
film period have received an... more Over the last few years, sound and music practices during the silent film period have received an increasing attention from the academic community, both in film studies and musicology. The emergence of interdisciplinary networks, such as “The Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain” (Brown and Davison 2013) and the “Cabiria Research Project” in Italy (Colturato 2014), have contributed to widen the frame of this field, revealing the importance of national, regional and local specificities in the construction of early cinema as an auditory experience. In the context of the thematic issue on “Music, sound and cinema”, Aniki interviewed Claus Tieber and Anna K. Windisch.
ABSTRACT Findings of a research project about sound and music in Viennese cinemas during the sile... more ABSTRACT Findings of a research project about sound and music in Viennese cinemas during the silent era
Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Bedeutung der Musik für die Entwicklung des frühen Films. Als... more Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Bedeutung der Musik für die Entwicklung des frühen Films. Als Grundlage wird im ersten Teil der aktuelle Forschungsstand zur Stummfilmmusik skizziert, sowie ein allgemeiner Eindruck über die Gründe für den Einsatz von Filmmusik geliefert. Dem folgt eine Darstellung der Stummfilmmusikentwicklung vom Pianisten hin zum Symphonieorchester in den Jahren 1895 -1920, sowie eine Beschreibung der musikalischen Aufführungspraxis. Anhand von Zeitzeugenberichten in der Quelle Moving Picture World - eine der ersten Fachzeitschriften des Films - wird das Sujet von einer zeitlich nahe am Geschehen angesiedelten Position beleuchtet. Insbesondere die Kolumne "Music for the Pictures" gibt Aufschluss über die Methoden der Stummfilmbegleitung, sowie über ökonomische und politische Entwicklungen in der Filmindustrie. Die Forschungen sind, bedingt durch die Herkunft der primären Quelle, amerikazentriert. In einem theoretischen Teil werden die Funktionen von F...
Die vorliegende interdisziplinare Dissertation beschaftigt sich mit der Art und Weise wie Filme i... more Die vorliegende interdisziplinare Dissertation beschaftigt sich mit der Art und Weise wie Filme in der Stummfilmara vorgefuhrt und musikalisch begleitet wurden, um spezifische popularkulturelle Phanomene des fruhen 20. Jahrhunderts in zwei bedeutenden Produktionsstatten der Unterhaltungsindustrie zu vergleichen: Wien und New York. Im Wesentlichen konzentriert sich dieser Vergleich auf drei Schlusselbereiche: (1) lokale Kontexte der Filmvorfuhrung und deren diverse Praktiven; (2) einen Kulturtransfer, mobilisiert von kreativem Personal; und (3) den Status der Stummfilmbegleitung nach der Einfuhrung des Tonfilms. Mittels eines kulturhistorischen Ansatzes, der stark auf der Analyse des zeitgenossischen Diskurses basiert, untersuche ich die Bedingungen lokaler Kinomusiker. Gezielte Vergleiche mit der erheblich umfangreicher aufgearbeiteten Stummfilmgeschichte in New York zeigen, dass lokale politische Strukturen und Gesetzgebungen eine entscheidende Rolle fur die spezifischen Entwicklun...
Over the last few years, sound and music practices during the silent film period have received an... more Over the last few years, sound and music practices during the silent film period have received an increasing attention from the academic community, both in film studies and musicology. The emergence of interdisciplinary networks, such as “The Sounds of Early Cinema in Britain” (Brown and Davison 2013) and the “Cabiria Research Project” in Italy (Colturato 2014), have contributed to widen the frame of this field, revealing the importance of national, regional and local specificities in the construction of early cinema as an auditory experience. In the context of the thematic issue on “Music, sound and cinema”, Aniki interviewed Claus Tieber and Anna K. Windish, researchers at the University of Salzburg and editors of The Sounds of Silent Films: New Perspectives on History, Theory and Practice, the proceedings of an international conference held in 2013 at Kiel University. Tieber and Windish are, respectively, principal investigator and research assistant of the project “The Sound of ...
The Sounds of Silent Films comprises up-to-date research on silent film sound, providing a partic... more The Sounds of Silent Films comprises up-to-date research on silent film sound, providing a particular focus on historical performance practices combined with detailed theoretical case studies. The contributions by eminent scholars in the fields of musicology, film studies and media studies, as well as by curators and archivists, explore crucial notions such as the historicity of interpretations of silent film music and the diverse acoustic manifestations of film exhibition. The volume stands among the first to integrate a large number of texts that cover a variety of cultural and historical sites and their particular regional and local historical performance practices in, for example, Swedish, Polish, British, Italian, Austrian and Indian silent cinema. The contextualizations of silent film sound production are confronted with their reception in the United States and form a unique comparative perspective for the welldocumented North American literature.
Continuing the endeavors for more detailed and nationally diverse studies of "silent" f... more Continuing the endeavors for more detailed and nationally diverse studies of "silent" film sound, this article explores the deployment of the singing voice in Vienna’s movie theaters, discussing the city’s specific preconditions for cinema sound and the resulting proliferation of vocal performances in film exhibition focusing on the years 1913 to 1923.
his open access collection deals with musical moments in film as one of the most pivotal and comp... more his open access collection deals with musical moments in film as one of the most pivotal and compelling issues of current film music research. Musical moments as defined by Amy Herzog occur when a musical number inverts the normal relationship between the image track and the soundtrack in a film in such a way that what we see is determined by what we hear. As one potential approach, this definition provokes a variety of perspectives to investigate the disruptive potential of these moments and numbers as a creative device in the production of audiovisual narratives. In this sense, the book responds to a need for an anthology that introduces students as well as scholars of cinema, musicology, media studies and cultural studies more broadly, to recent discourses in film music scholarship. The volume includes contributions by early career researchers as well as by established experts in the fields of musicology, film studies, media studies, and cultural studies, promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration in film music research.
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Since the beginnings of western media culture, sound synthesis has played a major role in articulating cultural notions of the fantastic and the uncanny. As a counterpart to sound reproduction, sound synthesis operated in the interstices of the original/copy correspondence and prefigured the construction of a virtual reality through the generation of novel sounds apparently lacking any equivalent with the acoustic world. Experiments on synthetic sound crucially intersected cinema’s transition to synchronous sound in the late 1920s, thus configuring a particularly fertile scenario for the redefinition of narrative paradigms and the establishment of conventions for sound film production. Sound synthesis can thus be viewed as a structuring device of such film genres as horror and science fiction, whose codification depended on the constitution of synchronized sound film. More broadly, sound synthesis challenged the basic implications of realism based on the rendering of speech and the construction of cinematic soundscapes.
Résumé
Synthèse sonore, représentation et narration à l’époque de la transition vers le cinéma sonore (1926-1935)
Depuis les débuts de la culture médiatique occidentale, la synthèse sonore a largement contribué à façonner notre conception culturelle du fantastique et de l’étrange. Contrepartie de la reproduction sonore, la synthèse sonore venait brouiller la distinction entre copie et original tout en préfigurant la réalité virtuelle grâce à sa capacité de créer des sons inédits, sans équivalent dans le monde acoustique. À la fin des années 1920, la recherche sur le son synthétique entre dans une période cruciale, alors que s’opère la transition du cinéma vers le son synchrone et que le contexte s’avère particulièrement propice à une redéfinition des paradigmes narratifs en place et à l’élaboration de standards pour la production de films sonores. La synthèse sonore apparaît dès lors comme un principe structurant au sein de genres tels que l’horreur et la science-fiction, dont la codification reposait largement sur l’usage d’une trame sonore synchronisée. Plus largement, la synthèse sonore questionne les implications fondamentales d’un réalisme qui serait fondé sur la transmission de la parole et la construction de paysages sonores.
Being shown in one of Vienna's most prestigious concert halls, the performance was undoubtedly staged as a social event and, after a successful tour through Scandinavia and other European countries, the film was warmly welcomed by the war-weary Viennese public. While Eber's score is clearly an original composition (likely due to copyright considerations), it nonetheless furnishes the peace-promoting images of the film with local musical traits, thus creating a testimony for music as an agent that can shape and confirm national identity.
film period have received an increasing attention from the academic
community, both in film studies and musicology. The emergence of
interdisciplinary networks, such as “The Sounds of Early Cinema in
Britain” (Brown and Davison 2013) and the “Cabiria Research
Project” in Italy (Colturato 2014), have contributed to widen the
frame of this field, revealing the importance of national, regional and
local specificities in the construction of early cinema as an auditory
experience. In the context of the thematic issue on “Music, sound
and cinema”, Aniki interviewed Claus Tieber and Anna K. Windisch.
Since the beginnings of western media culture, sound synthesis has played a major role in articulating cultural notions of the fantastic and the uncanny. As a counterpart to sound reproduction, sound synthesis operated in the interstices of the original/copy correspondence and prefigured the construction of a virtual reality through the generation of novel sounds apparently lacking any equivalent with the acoustic world. Experiments on synthetic sound crucially intersected cinema’s transition to synchronous sound in the late 1920s, thus configuring a particularly fertile scenario for the redefinition of narrative paradigms and the establishment of conventions for sound film production. Sound synthesis can thus be viewed as a structuring device of such film genres as horror and science fiction, whose codification depended on the constitution of synchronized sound film. More broadly, sound synthesis challenged the basic implications of realism based on the rendering of speech and the construction of cinematic soundscapes.
Résumé
Synthèse sonore, représentation et narration à l’époque de la transition vers le cinéma sonore (1926-1935)
Depuis les débuts de la culture médiatique occidentale, la synthèse sonore a largement contribué à façonner notre conception culturelle du fantastique et de l’étrange. Contrepartie de la reproduction sonore, la synthèse sonore venait brouiller la distinction entre copie et original tout en préfigurant la réalité virtuelle grâce à sa capacité de créer des sons inédits, sans équivalent dans le monde acoustique. À la fin des années 1920, la recherche sur le son synthétique entre dans une période cruciale, alors que s’opère la transition du cinéma vers le son synchrone et que le contexte s’avère particulièrement propice à une redéfinition des paradigmes narratifs en place et à l’élaboration de standards pour la production de films sonores. La synthèse sonore apparaît dès lors comme un principe structurant au sein de genres tels que l’horreur et la science-fiction, dont la codification reposait largement sur l’usage d’une trame sonore synchronisée. Plus largement, la synthèse sonore questionne les implications fondamentales d’un réalisme qui serait fondé sur la transmission de la parole et la construction de paysages sonores.
Being shown in one of Vienna's most prestigious concert halls, the performance was undoubtedly staged as a social event and, after a successful tour through Scandinavia and other European countries, the film was warmly welcomed by the war-weary Viennese public. While Eber's score is clearly an original composition (likely due to copyright considerations), it nonetheless furnishes the peace-promoting images of the film with local musical traits, thus creating a testimony for music as an agent that can shape and confirm national identity.
film period have received an increasing attention from the academic
community, both in film studies and musicology. The emergence of
interdisciplinary networks, such as “The Sounds of Early Cinema in
Britain” (Brown and Davison 2013) and the “Cabiria Research
Project” in Italy (Colturato 2014), have contributed to widen the
frame of this field, revealing the importance of national, regional and
local specificities in the construction of early cinema as an auditory
experience. In the context of the thematic issue on “Music, sound
and cinema”, Aniki interviewed Claus Tieber and Anna K. Windisch.