Film Music as a Problem in German Print Journalism (1907-1930)

The journalistic discourse on film music in the years 19071930 forms the core of the proposed research project. It represents historical evidence of a debate which deals with aesthetic, theoretical, and compositional issues of music in cinema. Prominent composers, musicologists, film theorists, and philosophers contributed to a vast discussion on the problematic identity of film music, which was addressed in parallel in German-language film periodicals as well as in musicological journals. The research project will provide an aesthetic investigation of the problem of film music during the silent era in light of contemporary film music criticism. This source-based historical aesthetics of silent film music has clearly defined purposes, such as: a) charting the historical transformation of the debate on film music from the era of the so-called compilation technique to the establishment of recorded sound; b) reconstructing the various editorial politics regarding the journalistic debate and its publishing institutions; c) outlining the wide spread of ideas and categories frequently derived from other areas of knowledge and clarifying the circumstances of their use in the field of film music; d) shedding light upon the influence of musical categories on film aesthetics. The research team will examine a representative selection of articles, essays and reviews published in a select set of German-language music and cinema periodicals from around 1907 to the early 1930s. Scrutinizing the journals and examining their respective contributions will lead to a corpus of sources that will be incorporated into a web-based research infrastructure. The collection of critical sources in an open access repository will constitute the first step towards a comprehensive scholarly exploration of these documents from an aesthetic point of view. The investigation of the problem of film music in the silent era will lead to a monographic treatise, for which the digital research infrastructure will constitute the documentary section of this aesthetic investigation. Film music criticism will thus provide the foundation for a new approach to the aesthetics and history of film music in the silent period. Our investigation of film music criticism will restore an indispensable historical dimension of the aesthetic horizon. This cultural-historically informed approach will provide a reassessment of the aesthetics of film music through the lens of historical sources that have thus far remained at the margins of musicological studies. The innovative potential of journalistic discourse as both an aesthetic and historical source is enormous. It represents an intense circulation of ideas and issues that were central to the broader historical debate about the nature of cinema. Furthermore, film music criticism can be considered an intrinsically aesthetic discourse insofar as it conveys in a journalistic format valuable eye- and ear-witness accounts of cinematic music, much of which is, for a variety of reasons, lost.

Throughout the 1920s, German-language print journalism addressed fundamental questions about the encounter between music and cinema.Prominent composers, musicologists, film theorists, and philosophers contributed to this broad discussion on the proper role and design of film music, encompassing a wide range of arguments and perspectives. In articles, essays, and film reviews they confronted aesthetic, theoretical, as well as compositional issues in film music. At that time, this lively debate took place in cinematic trade journals (such as _Der Kinematograph_, _Film-Kurier_, _Reichsfilmblatt_) as well as musicological journals (_Musikblätter des Anbruch_, _Melos_, _Der Auftakt_) and titles such as "The Problem of Film Music" (_Der Kinematograph_, XVII, Heft 847), "Musical Problems of Cinema" or "The Solution to the Film Music Problem" (_Reichsfilmblatt_, 1929 n. 14) became usual in this discussion. A new solution to the problem of film music appeared every other day, so in truth: never. The introduction of recorded sound in 1927 led to the dissolution of this debate in German-language film criticism. This body of journalistic sources was at the heart of the research project _Film Music as Problem in German Print Journalism (1907-1930)_, carried out at the University of Vienna's Department of Musicology from 2016 to 2019. The core of the project was the critical-aesthetic discourse on the musical component of cinema during the silent era: in short, the project aimed at investigating the aesthetic problem of film music on the basis of contemporary film journalism. The research team examined a representative selection of articles, essays, and reviews published in German-language music and cinema periodicals from around 1907 to the early 1930s. A selected corpus of sources has been incorporated into a digital open-access database hosted on the server of the University of Vienna, the FMJ Archive (http://musikwissenschaft.univie.ac.at/fmjarchive). Conceived as the documentary part of a broader aesthetic investigation into silent film music, the FMJ Archive has been realized in collaboration with the Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin and Phaidra (the digital repository of the University of Vienna's Library). The comprehensive scholarly exploration of the journalistic sources led to a number of conference papers, book chapters, and journal articles, as well as a monographic treatise in two languages on the "historical aesthetics" of silent film music. The Italian edition (_Dietro un velo di organza. Il pensiero sulla musica cinematografica nell'era del muto_. Turin: Accademia University Press, 2020) appeared in November 2020. A German edition with a selected anthology of journalistic writings is expected in 2021 by Edition Text + Kritik, Munich.