silentmoviefan

Silent movies were never really silent - they were almost always shown with musical accompaniment, performed live at each showing by either a pianist, a organist, or an orchestra varying in size from a few musicians to over 30 players.

Most films did not have "official" scores, in most cases the music was prepared at each theatre by the organist or music director.  To assist in creating the musical scores for all of these films the music industry published thousands of generic  "themes" that were designed to be used for film accompaniment. Using a cue sheet which broke the film down into scenes listing a visual cue, length of scene and a suggested piece of music it was possible to create a score quickly out of a library of these themes.

I will be uploading some of my favorite photoplay music (using the large orchestra version when possible) and also examples of how and where I used them in some of the films I have scored over the last 30 years. 

Enjoy!