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concertos by Beethoven, Mozart, and Schumann, and Broadway and other vernacular songs. They could also use the newly emergent generic film music: short atmospheric pieces sold as individual pieces of sheet music or in photoplay albums. For bigger budget films, studios issued cue sheets [slide: cue sheet for Hula], which suggested what piece to play for what scene, sometimes even including musical incipits (as in this example). For truly blockbuster movies, studios commissioned full scores from composers and sent the score and parts out with the reels of film. Individual movie houses could then use the parts for which they had instruments, or hire additional musicians for big epic films. But we should keep in mind that all of these were just suggestions and recommendations there was no way for a studio to ensure that a pianist in Boise was playing the official score of a New York movie, or if accompanists in Boise and Miami who did play from the studio's recommendations or music were playing the score the same way. The majority of music in the UNT silent film music collection is genre music, such as [slide ] Gaston Borch's "Agitato pathetique" (1919); or [slide] Erno Rape's "Gruesome War Theme " (1927). But the collection also holds an unusual amount of music for portraying the supernatural on film, including "Gruesome Tales" (Rapee and Axt); "In a Gloomy Forest" (Axt); "Rage: for fiendish anger, sudden outbursts of madness, etc." (Axt); "Mysterious furioso: suitable for infernal and wierd [sic] scenes, witches, etc." (Langey); "Terror, hideous monster, dark mystery" (Zamecnik); and "A Skeleton Jazz Mysterioso" (Breau). Among this subset of works are several pieces for extended scenes. These pieces all depict manifestations of a human afterlife: Walter Broy's "Ghost Scene" (1926); Bert A. Anthony's "The Ghost in the Haunted Room" (1924); and Ellsworth Stevenson's "Phantom Visions; Skeleton Dance" (1920).
This presentation contains images to accompany the presentation notes for "Music for Silent 'Spook Tales' in the University of North Texas Music Library Special Collections."
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