ABSTRACT
THE ACADEMY OF MOTION PICTURE ARTS and Sciences added the originally composed film score as an award category in 1934. (Steiner won his first Oscar the next year for The Informer.) By the mid-thirties musical accompaniment which depended on original composition and incorporated the selective nondiegetic use of music became the dominant practice, replacing older traditions (Chaplin’s use of continuous music in his early sound films, for instance) and alternative practices (Warner Brothers’ cycle of social realism films which omitted music entirely). What would become known as the classical model was almost immediately absorbed into Hollywood practice, its production both reflecting and reinforcing the structure of the studio system.
