Its very inanimate dullness lulls us into a purposeful state of imaginative “distraction” as we sit alone in the dark.Īrt thrives on the embracing of such built-in oppositions and it is worth considering that the 1920s is an especially fecund decade with respect to the large number of innovative and compelling films it produced, in part, because the decade represented the apex of a unique confluence of dream-inducing, mechanical shadowplay and real theatrical presence–a confluence which the advent of the sound film would destroy in a way that could never be recaptured on so wide a scale.įrom a strictly musical point of view, the trend towards a complex and sensitive approach to film accompaniment was, not surprisingly, a gradual, evolutionary process. Theater is about attentive wakefulness - while the peculiarly soporific power of film lies in the fact that the motion picture projector is a mechanical and therefore always perfect interpreter. The rush of applause as a symphony comes to a close or the last curtain comes down, is in some ways a needed release of this very tension, as if to say that performers and audience have made it through yet another ever precarious experience without a mishap. This meant that film viewing was a distinctly uneasy marriage between the “live” and the “mechanical,” between the theatrical and the strictly cinematic experience for, wherever theatrical presence is concerned there is a glorious, built-in tension between performer and audience, each being aware of the other, that the cinema can never hope to achieve.
Written for the concert Der Rosenkavalier: The Silent Film performed on at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.įor the first thirty or so years of the cinema’s existence as a medium, virtually all films were accompanied by musicians.
Between Theater and Cinema: Silent Film Accompaniment in the 1920s
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