Afterword

Film music scholarship has a long and intriguing history. During the silent period, there were various writings, including both guides for musicians, such as Ernö Rapée’s Encyclopedia of Music for Pictures, as well as critical writings. ¹ At the advent of sound-on-film, there was a small blossoming of writing, most famously (at least in English) books by Kurt London (Film Music, 1936; a historical analysis and predictions for future developments) and Leonid Sabaneev (Music for the Films, 1935; addressed towards practicing composers and musicians). ² But after those early years, there is much less critical and theoretical interest in film music: in fact, there are hardly any academic offerings, except for Zofia Lissa’s Music and Film: Study on the Borderline of Ontology, Aesthetics and Psychology of Film Music (in Polish, 1937 and may have been translated into German) and Ästhetik der Filmmusik (1964 in Polish, translated into German in 1965). ³ As other authors in this volume have pointed out, there were resources for composers, arrangers and musicians such as George Antheil’s columns in Modern Music and periodicals (Film Music Notes and Film Music Notebook). ⁴ Among longer works for composers, Theodor Adorno and Hans Eisler’s Composing for the Films (1947) and Roy Prendergast’s Film Music: A Neglected Art (1977) come closer to the kinds of thought and analysis that are useful for academic approaches. ⁵ But no sustained, sophisticated academic conversation developed until relatively recently.