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Silent film, live music and contemporary composition

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posted on 2023-06-09, 02:43 authored by Ed HughesEd Hughes
Silent film and live music together force you to think differently about both phenomena. The visible distinction between screen and music aligns more with certain qualities of opera than with film music practices found in synchronised sound cinema. In this chapter, I outline my previous compositions for live performance with silent films by Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein and contemporary British visual artist Sophy Rickett, amongst others, and conclude with a case study of a recent collaborative project, Night Music (2015) in which musical layers periodically connect to a beat or accent in the screen visuals in an echo of Eisenstein's theory of audiovisual counterpoint. Finally, I argue that silent film with live music can permit a form of working-through of complex historical images.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan UK

Page range

175-191

Pages

225.0

Book title

Today's sounds for yesterday's films

ISBN

9781137466358

Series

Palgrave studies in audio-visual culture

Department affiliated with

  • Music Publications

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

K J Donnelly, Ann-Kristin Wallengren

Legacy Posted Date

2016-09-05

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    University of Sussex (Publications)

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