ABSTRACT
This chapter offers different ways to document and communicate musical scores for silent film to musicians who will play them. It considers compositional style, tonal language, and musical approaches including atonality, pastiche, and mickey-mousing. It looks at forms of improvisation including structured improvisation, motivic improvisation, and conduction. This chapter presents a variety of written notation techniques, including full score, short score, lead sheets, box notation, word scores, text instructions, and a method incorporating a cue book and theme sheets developed by the author. This chapter addresses performance issues including coaching players, coaching improvisation, and conducting musical scores for silent film.
