This book examines the aesthetic problem of film music in the silent era through contemporary
journalistic sources. Journalistic writings have enormous potential as both historical and aesthetic
sources. Journalistic criticism proves to be a theoretical and aesthetic medium for the practice of film
music in the silent film era: as a place where the first theoretical considerations of film composition
converge, urgent dramaturgical questions are discussed and an inherently aesthetic musical
experience is intellectually elaborated.
Since the silent film era, film journalism has been concerned with the encounter between film and
music. Film musicians, composers, musicologists, writers, philosophers and film theorists took part in
an intensive discussion with a wide range of arguments and points of view. In articles, essays and film
reviews, they addressed aesthetic, theoretical and compositional questions about film music: What
distinguishes film music from art music? Does film music have to be an original composition or can it
be composed from existing pieces of music? How should a piece of film music be structured
morphologically? Which forms should be preferred? What problems can arise from using music that
is already familiar to the audience? There was no shortage of reflections on the aesthetic relationship
between art music and the medium of film as such, on their convergence or separation, even on their
elective affinity.