Music for Silent "Spook Tales" in the University of North Texas Music Library Special Collections Page: 2

                                
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).