Brief History Of Film Music

Hello ladies and gentlemen, my name is Olajide Paris a Georgia based (former soviet Georgia) American film composer. I'm writing a series of articles for Film Independent on the subject of film music with the goal of educating film makers on the art, craft and business of music for film. Below is a link to the first article which offers a very brief history of the first 100 years of film music. I hope you enjoy the article and will be watching this thread to answer any questions and jump in on the conversation should one develop around the subject.

Have a great day!

https://www.filmindependent.org/blog/know-score-brief-history-film-music/
 
Hi olajideparis,

Nice little article there. I love the subject and find it fascinating how, even in the most realistic of films, we still have a desire to have non-diegetic music. It's such a ubiquitous feature of film these days that to have a film without music would just be weird (the most recent example where they nearly did that I can think of is "Children of Men" but even then there is one scene with non-diegetic music).

I personally think it comes from music much older than film. Opera is an obvious choice (which affects us today still - how many times do we play low-pitched sounds for something bad happening? Let alone, like you mentioned, leitmotif) but it can go back even further, both in time and geography. Japanese Kabuki or Indian Bharatnatyam are both great examples of storytelling with incidental music.

Great subject, looking forward to see some more articles. :)
 
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