Music and Film

Of course, it was also helpful if the musical emotions fit the film’s narrative. Accordingly, silent films were soon released with musical cue sheets. These earliest “soundtracks” drew freely from a standard repertory of melodies that audiences were sure to recognize. Sometimes the score was written out, but usually it was improvised on organ or piano. The first major American movie to be fitted with a full orchestral score was director D. W. Griffith’s racially incendiary saga The Birth of a Nation (1916). Much of the music, composed by Joseph Carl Breil (1870-1926), was original.