Musical Modernism and German Cinema: 1913-1933

This research aims at documenting the connection between musical modernism and German cinema, during the twenty-year period which encompasses the Autorenfilm movement (1913-14) and the rise of National Socialism (1933). It will consist mainly in the analytical study of a corpus which comprises modernist musical compositions pertaining to the examined time frame. Furthermore, an integral part of the research will consist in the close examination of scripts, interviews, letters and every other kind of document useful for outlining a historical profile of the connections that modernist composers from Austro-German area have been establishing with film music and, most generally, with cinema as an autonomous aesthetical phenomenon, from the Silent Era to Pre-Nazi- period talking pictures. The research will be hosted and supported by the Institut für Musikwissenschaft of the Universität Wien; the great part of the work will be developed in the Musiksammlung of Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. The preliminary results will be presented during the Festival "Il Cinema ritrovato", Bologna, and within the the annual conference "Music and the Moving Image", New York University, Steinhardt. The research results will lead to two distinct scientific publications: 1. A monograph in German language documenting the relation between musical modernism and German cinema, from the Autorenfilm period to the rise of Nazism. It will include the analysis of original compositions and cinema works, as well as the close examination of scripts, interviews, letters and every other kind of document useful for outlining a historical profile of the connections that modernist composers from Austro-German area have been establishing with film music and, most generally, with cinema as an autonomous aesthetical phenomenon. 2. Census and digital acquisition beginning of the "Vindobona" Collection paper-scores stored in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Musiksammlung. The digital collection will be hosted into the Bildarchiv Austria section (Bildplattform der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek: http://www.bildarchivaustria.at/) and it will be consultable in electronic format, through open access mode.

Investigating the relationship between musical modernism and cinema requires unorthodox historiographical and analytical methods: it is not one of the most well-travelled paths, but a way that has, until now, been relatively unexplored. Given some simplistic assertions surrounding the subject - <> (L. Prox), or <> (H. Emons) - one will be surprised to find that the members of musical modernism did have a relationship to cinema. This was an undoubtedly complex and contradictory relationship, in which cinema often played the role of an aesthetic reference rather than a factual reality. Nonetheless, we do have clear evidence of this relationship. This research project examined a vast range of connections between musical modernism and German cinema from the Autorenfilm movement (1913-14) through the dawn of the recorded sound film (1932-33). We analyzed a corpus of original compositions, films, and aesthetic writings. This multi-faceted approach allowed us to document how modernist composers from the Austro-German area (from Alban Berg to Paul Hindemtih, and from Kurt Weill to Hanns Eisler etc.) approached film music composition and, more generally, engaged with cinema as an aesthetic phenomenon. The not at all casual encounter of cinema and musical modernism can be properly framed as part of a broader phenomenon of 'media competition'. This term refers to a conflict between the new media - above all cinema and radio - and the traditional arts that took place on several levels: institutional, socio-cultural, and even compositional. The first three decades of the 20th century saw a fruitful exchange between the old and the new arts: a huge number of filmic adaptations of literary works, plays, and operatic works were produced. New art forms were created based on a combination of various media, such as theatre works that incorporated film projections or gramophone inserts. It is precisely within this framework of mutual medial interferences and radical aesthetic oppositions that the encounter between the composers of the musical avant-garde and cinema occurred. The encounter with cinematography was one of the ways in which the avant-garde's self-reflection upon musical language, musical forms, and the theory of artistic creation developed. The music-aesthetic debate on cinema and other new media should be understood as a debate along the lines of experimentation with musical modernism. That is to say that the cinematic paradigm is nothing less than one of the primary vectors of modernism's revolution.