ABSTRACT
One way film music historians have dealt with the paucity of sources and, for a long while, inadequate research into what has survived is to invent a narrative for early film music. The historical overview of silent film sound that follows is, of necessity, heavily indebted to Rick Altman, but is supplemented with references to published work on other cinematic cultures and observation of silent films on DVD. Most early cinema historians date the transition from the cinema of attractions to narrative cinema to around ‘1910 or even later’. At some point in the early history of cinema, audiences entered a building prepared to be immersed in an audiovisual event that was focused on the screen and the sounds coming from the pit and elsewhere. Throughout early period in cinema history, sheet music sold in vast quantities, usually to people whose homes were equipped with pianos.
