ABSTRACT
This chapter examines music in Irish picture houses in the 1910s, paying attention to the role of women and foreign-born musicians working in Dublin. Ireland’s first dedicated picture houses opened in Dublin and Belfast in the late 1900s, but a boom in picture house building from 1911 saw cinema develop from a seemingly passing entertainment novelty to the country’s dominant entertainment form in the 1920s. The very few picture houses that existed before 1910 employed small orchestras. The most detailed information on Dublin cinema music and musicians comes from the late 1910s, particularly following the launch of the Limelight in January 1917. By the end of the 1910s, a cinema musician might perform one or more of several roles. Schofield was playing solos, including some of the repertoire of 40 cello solos he had composed himself, while Fagan was leading an orchestra that was ‘playing to pictures, embraces something more than musical accomplishments.
