• Phantoms of the Archives: Music for the Early Cinematic Supernatural and Other Tales

    Author(s):
    Kendra Leonard (see profile)
    Date:
    2019
    Group(s):
    American Musicological Society, Film Studies
    Subject(s):
    Musicology, Motion pictures, History, Motion picture music
    Item Type:
    Presentation
    Meeting Title:
    NA
    Tag(s):
    Film history, Film music
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/kb6w-jg40
    Abstract:
    Archives are full of ghosts—the ghosts of music long-forgotten, technologies now superseded, practices that have faded away with time. This talk examines music used to accompany and signify the supernatural the silent film, as well as what can be learned by excavating the ghosts of musicians’ lives and careers now held in archives both at the University of Colorado at Boulder and elsewhere. Learn about the sounds of the séance, how mediums and cinema musicians were uniquely trained and positioned for their jobs, and about the music used in spirit films—the forerunners of movies like Beetlejuice, Ghost, and and other films with friendly phantoms, and about the lives of individual women who helped create the sound of the cinema through their musical educations and personal tastes in music.
    Notes:
    Script of talk given at the American Music Research Center, University of Colorado-Boulder, 2019 March 18.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    5 years ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

    Downloads

    Item Name: pdf leonard_amrc_phantoms_2019.pdf
      Download View in browser
    Activity: Downloads: 115

    Back to Deposits