Hannah Lewis | The University of Texas at Austin (original) (raw)

Articles by Hannah Lewis

Research paper thumbnail of Decasia as Audiovisual Elegy

Journal of Musicological Research, 2018

Decasia (2001), video artist Bill Morrison and composer Michael Gordon’s most critically acclaime... more Decasia (2001), video artist Bill Morrison and composer Michael Gordon’s most critically acclaimed collaboration, consists of assembled archival footage from nitrate film prints in various stages of decomposition, accompanied by an orchestral score with detuned instruments. By foregrounding its material instability, Decasia highlights the precarious nature of its own forms. Situated within larger discourses about both film and music in the digital age, the work can be viewed an elegy for a dual ontological death: of cinema and symphonic music. Analysis of the work sheds light on how artists and composers comment on new technologies through old ones.

Research paper thumbnail of Love Me Tonight (1932) and the Development of the Integrated Film Musical

Research paper thumbnail of "The Music Has Something To Say": The Musical Revisions of L'Atalante (1934)

Research paper thumbnail of "The Realm of Serious Art": Henry Hadley's Involvement in Early Sound Film

Composer-conductor Henry Kimball Hadley (1871–1937) is widely viewed as a conservative musical fi... more Composer-conductor Henry Kimball Hadley (1871–1937) is widely viewed as a conservative musical figure, one who resisted radical changes as American musical modernism began to flourish. His compositional style remained firmly rooted in late-Romantic European idioms; and although Hadley advocated for American composition through programming choices as a conductor, he mostly ignored the music of younger, adventurous composers. In one respect, however, Hadley was part of the cutting edge of musical production: that of musical dissemination through new media. This essay explores Hadley’s work conducting and composing film music during the transition from silent to synchronized sound film, specifically his involvement with Warner Bros. and their new sound synchronization technology, Vitaphone, in 1926–27. Drawing on archival evidence, I examine Hadley’s approach to film composition for the 1927 film When a Man Loves. I argue that Hadley’s high-art associations conferred legitimacy upon the new technology, and in his involvement with Vitaphone he aimed to establish sound film composition as a viable outlet for serious composers. Hadley’s example prompts us to reconsider the parameters through which we distinguish experimental and conservative musical practices, reconfiguring the definitions to include not just musical proclivities but also the contexts and modes through which they circulate.

Conference Presentations by Hannah Lewis

Research paper thumbnail of Cinematic Expectations in the Live Television Musical

Research paper thumbnail of Negotiating the Theatrical, the Cinematic, and a French National  Style in the Early Opérette Filmée

Research paper thumbnail of From Stage to Screen: The Film Musicals of Screenwriter Ernest  Lehman

Research paper thumbnail of Surrealist Sounds: French Film Music and the Cinematic Avant-Garde

Surrealist cinema flourished in France in the late 1920s, but following the widespread adoption o... more Surrealist cinema flourished in France in the late 1920s, but following the widespread adoption of synchronized sound in Europe in 1929, its future was uncertain. The anti-musical stance of many Surrealists (particularly André Breton), who believed that the abstract nature of music violated surrealism’s philosophical, literary, and aesthetic principles, made the very concept of surrealist sound film problematic. With the heightened realism of synchronized dialogue and the presence of a recorded
musical soundtrack, music’s role in the new audiovisual form threatened to destabilize the dream logic that surrealist filmmakers had established in silent cinema. But the new technology also offered an opportunity for composers and directors to renegotiate music’s role in surrealist film.

I argue that music became a crucial tool in early conceptions of surrealist audiovisual cinema, when sound film’s potential energy was at its height. I examine two of France’s first sound films—Luis Buñuel’s L’Age d’or (1930) and Jean Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un poète (1930)—both of which favored an audiovisual aesthetic relying heavily on
surrealist principles. These controversial films deliberately avoided realism, employing music as a tool for audiovisual juxtaposition, pastiche, and shock value. For Le Sang d’un poète composer Georges Auric wrote a score that Cocteau proceeded to cut
up and reorder, an experiment in “accidental synchronization” and a means of avoiding explicit musical signification. Buñuel incorporated preexisting classical works—by composers including Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner—into L’Age d’or and juxtaposed them with absurd, even offensive, images. Though their approaches to the soundtrack differed, both directors experimented with film rhythm and pacing, with
contrasting synchronism and audiovisual counterpoint, and with violating expectations of audiovisual unity. This brief but productive intersection between avant-garde cinematic and musical modernist practices at a critical juncture in France’s nascent sound film production influenced subsequent French cinematic experiments, particularly those of the Nouvelle Vague. My analysis of the music in L’Age d’or and Le Sang
d’un poète theorizes the audiovisual elements constituting surrealist sound film; it also highlights the inherently surreal characteristics of the sound film medium itself, characteristics that most mainstream filmmakers would later try their hardest to erase.

Research paper thumbnail of "Love Me Tonight" (1932) and the Development of the Integrated Film Musical

The 1932 Paramount film "Love Me Tonight," directed by Rouben Mamoulian with music by Richard Rod... more The 1932 Paramount film "Love Me Tonight," directed by Rouben Mamoulian with music by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, is hailed for its influence on the development of the Hollywood musical genre and cited as one of the first truly integrated musicals for the screen. Mamoulian, who later directed "Oklahoma!" on Broadway (a groundbreaking show for integration on stage), claimed that in the film, “dialogue, song, and music were integrated into an organic unity,” emphasizing the seamless synthesis of the film’s elements as well as its definitive step away from the backstage musicals of the early talkies. Indeed, many of Mamoulian’s stylized techniques in "Love Me Tonight" became standard for Hollywood musicals of the next decades.

Yet, as I show in this paper, draft materials from the Mamoulian Papers at the Library of Congress complicate Mamoulian’s own version of the film’s history, indicating a general shift away from integration and towards technological experimentation with presenting music on film. I examine different versions of the script, alongside Mamoulian’s anecdotes from interviews and my own analyses of songs from the film, to explore both how "Love Me Tonight" contributed to the burgeoning concept of the integrated musical and how its innovative stylized film technique employed film technology as a narrative device. "Love Me Tonight" not only offers a window into how early attempts at blending song and story were negotiated aesthetically, but also into ways that the medium of sound film in its early years provided additional possibilities and challenges for integration.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Music Has Something to Say": The Musical Revisions of "L'Atalante" (1934)

_L’Atalante_ (1934), the second collaboration between experimental French filmmaker Jean Vigo and... more _L’Atalante_ (1934), the second collaboration between experimental French filmmaker Jean Vigo and film composer Maurice Jaubert, has become a staple in the cinephiles’ canon. But its profound influence on postwar experimental filmmakers, particularly of the French New Wave, could not have been anticipated from its disastrous initial release. As Vigo was on his deathbed, the film’s distributors, finding _L’Atalante_ narratively incoherent, attempted to make Vigo’s film more broadly accessible: they cut the film substantially and replaced parts of Jaubert’s score with the popular song _Le Chaland qui passe_, renaming the film after the hit tune. Jaubert’s music had combined lyrical instrumental underscoring and folk-like diegetic song, contributing to the film’s blend of gritty realism and dreamlike whimsy. The distributors’ haphazard changes not only affected this delicate balance, but also subtly altered an important narrative subtext of the film: its reflexive fixation on the recent arrival of synchronized sound film, expressed through its focus on musical playback technologies — phonographs, radios, and music boxes — and their ability to captivate.

_L’Atalante_’s troubled reception history points to the political and social valences of the aesthetic details of both versions. While much scholarship exists about Vigo and _L’Atalante_, the fraught history of _L’Atalante_’s musical soundtrack and the film’s comment on sound reproduction technologies has received little scholarly attention. In this paper, I analyze how the differences between the two versions reflect a general anxiety over the arrival of sound film in France, through a comparative analysis of scenes from _L’Atalante_ (which has subsequently been restored) and _Le Chaland qui passe_ (the only surviving copy of which is housed at the Belgian Cinematek). I also draw from Jaubert’s 1936 essay on composing for film, which elucidates his interpretation of film music’s function. Vigo’s fascination with mediated music and its ability to create a magical cinematic world, and the distributors’ attempt to fit the film’s music into a commercially successful Hollywood paradigm, reflects concerns about how mediated sound would affect French cinema during sound film’s early years. Through my analysis, I demonstrate how film practitioners grappled with technological changes, using music as a powerful interventional force.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Realm of Serious Art": Henry Hadley's Involvement in Early Sound Film

Composer and conductor Henry Kimball Hadley (1871-1937) is widely viewed as a conservative musica... more Composer and conductor Henry Kimball Hadley (1871-1937) is widely viewed as a conservative musical figure, a composer who resisted the radical changes taking place as musical modernism began to flourish in America. His compositional style remained firmly oriented toward late-romantic European idioms; and while Hadley advocated tirelessly for American composition through his programming choices as a conductor (beginning in 1909 and continuing into the 1930s), he most often chose to perform music of older, established American composers, rather than younger, more adventurous ones.

In one respect, however, Hadley was part of the cutting edge of musical production: that of musical dissemination through new media. In this paper, I discuss Hadley’s work conducting and composing music for film during the transition from silent film to synchronized sound film. He was deeply involved in Warner Bros.’ public introduction of their new sound synchronization technology (called Vitaphone) from 1926 to 1927. Using archival evidence from the Warner Bros. archives, including business correspondence, unpublished memoirs, and score drafts, I examine Hadley’s approach to film music composition. I argue that Hadley’s high-art associations conferred legitimacy upon the new technology, and his embrace of the new technology helped establish sound film composition as a potential viable outlet for “serious” composers. Through the example of Hadley’s involvement with new technologies, I suggest we reconsider the parameters through which we normally distinguish “experimental” and “conservative” musical practices, reconfiguring the definitions to include not just musical proclivities but also different contexts and modes through which they circulate.

Research paper thumbnail of Michael Gordon's Decaying Orchestra: "Decasia" as Audiovisual Elegy

Decasia (2001), video artist Bill Morrison and composer Michael Gordon’s most critically acclaime... more Decasia (2001), video artist Bill Morrison and composer Michael Gordon’s most critically acclaimed collaboration, consists of assembled archival footage from nitrate film prints in various stages of decomposition. The on-screen images, according to Morrison, seem to resist their own decay. Gordon’s 55-piece orchestral score accompanies these images, with detuned instruments to “make the orchestra sound like it was covered in cobwebs.”

Decasia’s non-narrative form has elicited diverse interpretations: a call for archival film preservation, a comment on the inevitability of entropy and fragility of the cinematic image, and the cycle of death and re-birth more broadly; some critics have even interpreted darker allusions to concentration camps, Hiroshima, and 9/11. Regardless, by foregrounding its profound material instability, Decasia highlights the precarious nature of its own form. In this paper, I argue that the work is an elegy for a dual ontological death: of cinema and symphonic music. Created at the turn of the millennium, on the cusp of a new technological era that transformed cinematic and musical media, Decasia urges us to watch and listen to what happens when old artistic forms die. I situate the work within a larger discourse about the changing ontology of cinema and music in the digital age, drawing on Lev Manovich’s definition of “new media” and the writings of film theorist David Rodowick and sound studies scholar Jonathan Sterne. Additionally, I suggest that Gordon’s score, by sonically representing the physical decay of cinema’s materiality, obliquely comments on the material forms of its own dissemination: the transformation from analog to digital recording technology. By showing the potential for beauty in material decay, Decasia is both mournful and hopeful. My analysis sheds light on artistic responses to changing technologies—specifically, how artists and composers comment on new technologies through old ones.

Research paper thumbnail of "A World of Dreams": The Operatic Fantasy of René Clair's "Le Million"

With the development of synchronized sound film technology in the late 1920s, cinema was irrevoca... more With the development of synchronized sound film technology in the late 1920s, cinema was irrevocably altered. Yet, while the transition from silent to sound film was swift, it was not initially systematic; film directors responded to transforming technologies in widely divergent ways, reflecting the controversy surrounding new technology, mediation, and the medium’s unique capabilities as distinguished from live theatrical forms. Within this heated aesthetic debate, music became a powerful interventional force for many directors.

In this paper, I discuss French director René Clair’s work in relation to the debate on sound film. Clair’s ambivalence about the coming of sound is reflected in his films from 1930 and 1931, all of which incorporate music in unusual and provocative ways. I focus on "Le Million" (1931), as a way of examining Clair’s unique solutions to new problems during this period of technological transition. Through an analysis of archival and primary source materials, I discuss the working relationship between Clair and the composers for the film: Armand Bernard, Georges Van Parys, and Philippe Parès. Additionally, I closely analyze Clair’s writings from the period, alongside scenes from "Le Million," to demonstrate how Clair put his philosophies into practice, paying particular attention to the film’s complex relationship to live musical-theatrical forms. "Le Million" engages with sung theater in both its form and its narrative content: in addition to being a “filmed operetta” (operette filmée), the film’s climax occurs in an opera house, onstage
during a performance. Clair brings opera and sound film closer together, forcing them to confront each other in their similarities and their differences. Through a historical and theoretical discussion of Le Million, I demonstrate how Clair’s films from this period challenge some of our long-held assumptions about the role of music in cinema, providing an alternative model for film’s sound-image relationship.

Research paper thumbnail of New Possibilities for Sound: Speech and Song in the First Vitaphone Feature Films (1926-7)

Al Jolson’s sung and spoken performance in The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature film with sy... more Al Jolson’s sung and spoken performance in The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature film with synchronized dialogue, is popularly regarded as a watershed moment in film history; indeed, it only took a few years for the film industry to transition completely from silent films to “talkies.” While scholars such as Crafton (1999) and Altman (2004) have corrected the oft-repeated claim that The Jazz Singer was the first sound film, most have ignored the feature films Warner Bros. released in the year and a half leading up to The Jazz Singer, beginning with the introduction of Vitaphone (their sound-on-disc synchronization technology) to the public in 1926. During this period of experimentation, Warner Bros. introduced numerous kinds of sounds, including pre-recorded synchronized musical scores, sound effects created by musical instruments, and even some speech, onto the mechanically synchronized soundtracks of their feature films. In this paper, I discuss the various treatments of the voice in these hybrid and transitional films, beginning with Don Juan (1926)—a silent film retrofitted with a synchronized musical score—and culminating with the sung diegetic performance in The Jazz Singer. The films introduce a range of approaches to depicting song and speech, both visually and aurally, reflecting the heterogeneity of possibilities that existed for the new medium during this emergent stage. By examining the musical and vocal utterances in these films, we can better understand the context from which The Jazz Singer developed, as well as other possibilities for sound film that were never fully realized.

Research paper thumbnail of "A World of Dreams": The Musical Fantasy of René Clair's Early Sound Cinema

With the development of synchronized sound film technology in the late 1920s, cinema was irrevoca... more With the development of synchronized sound film technology in the late 1920s, cinema was irrevocably altered. Yet, while the transition from silent to sound film was swift, it was not initially systematic; film directors responded to transforming technologies in widely divergent ways, reflecting the controversy surrounding new technology, mediation, and the medium’s unique capabilities as distinguished from live theatrical forms. Within this heated aesthetic debate, music became a powerful interventional force for many directors. In this paper, I discuss French director René Clair’s work in relation to the debate on sound film. Clair was outspoken in his initial opposition toward the new technology, and his ambivalence about the coming of sound is reflected in three films from 1930 and 1931—Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million, and À nous la liberté—all of which incorporate music in unusual and provocative ways. I focus on his second film of the three, Le Million, as a way of examining Clair’s unique solutions to new problems during this period of technological transition. Through an analysis of previously unexamined archival and primary source materials, I discuss the context of the film’s development, and the working relationship between Clair and the composers of the soundtrack: Armand Bernard, Georges Van Parys, and Philippe Parès. Additionally, I closely analyze Clair’s writings from the period, alongside scenes from Le Million, to demonstrate the methods that Clair used to put his philosophies into practice, paying particular attention to the film’s complex relationship to live musical-theatrical forms. Through a historical and theoretical discussion of Le Million, I demonstrate how Clair’s films from this period, rather than being historical anomalies, challenge some of our long-held assumptions about the role of music in cinema, providing an alternative model for our understanding of the sound-image relationship in film.

Research paper thumbnail of A Search for Musical Identity: John Zorn and the Postcolonial Condition

Books by Hannah Lewis

Research paper thumbnail of French Musical Culture and the Coming of Sound Cinema

Research paper thumbnail of Decasia as Audiovisual Elegy

Journal of Musicological Research, 2018

Decasia (2001), video artist Bill Morrison and composer Michael Gordon’s most critically acclaime... more Decasia (2001), video artist Bill Morrison and composer Michael Gordon’s most critically acclaimed collaboration, consists of assembled archival footage from nitrate film prints in various stages of decomposition, accompanied by an orchestral score with detuned instruments. By foregrounding its material instability, Decasia highlights the precarious nature of its own forms. Situated within larger discourses about both film and music in the digital age, the work can be viewed an elegy for a dual ontological death: of cinema and symphonic music. Analysis of the work sheds light on how artists and composers comment on new technologies through old ones.

Research paper thumbnail of Love Me Tonight (1932) and the Development of the Integrated Film Musical

Research paper thumbnail of "The Music Has Something To Say": The Musical Revisions of L'Atalante (1934)

Research paper thumbnail of "The Realm of Serious Art": Henry Hadley's Involvement in Early Sound Film

Composer-conductor Henry Kimball Hadley (1871–1937) is widely viewed as a conservative musical fi... more Composer-conductor Henry Kimball Hadley (1871–1937) is widely viewed as a conservative musical figure, one who resisted radical changes as American musical modernism began to flourish. His compositional style remained firmly rooted in late-Romantic European idioms; and although Hadley advocated for American composition through programming choices as a conductor, he mostly ignored the music of younger, adventurous composers. In one respect, however, Hadley was part of the cutting edge of musical production: that of musical dissemination through new media. This essay explores Hadley’s work conducting and composing film music during the transition from silent to synchronized sound film, specifically his involvement with Warner Bros. and their new sound synchronization technology, Vitaphone, in 1926–27. Drawing on archival evidence, I examine Hadley’s approach to film composition for the 1927 film When a Man Loves. I argue that Hadley’s high-art associations conferred legitimacy upon the new technology, and in his involvement with Vitaphone he aimed to establish sound film composition as a viable outlet for serious composers. Hadley’s example prompts us to reconsider the parameters through which we distinguish experimental and conservative musical practices, reconfiguring the definitions to include not just musical proclivities but also the contexts and modes through which they circulate.

Research paper thumbnail of Cinematic Expectations in the Live Television Musical

Research paper thumbnail of Negotiating the Theatrical, the Cinematic, and a French National  Style in the Early Opérette Filmée

Research paper thumbnail of From Stage to Screen: The Film Musicals of Screenwriter Ernest  Lehman

Research paper thumbnail of Surrealist Sounds: French Film Music and the Cinematic Avant-Garde

Surrealist cinema flourished in France in the late 1920s, but following the widespread adoption o... more Surrealist cinema flourished in France in the late 1920s, but following the widespread adoption of synchronized sound in Europe in 1929, its future was uncertain. The anti-musical stance of many Surrealists (particularly André Breton), who believed that the abstract nature of music violated surrealism’s philosophical, literary, and aesthetic principles, made the very concept of surrealist sound film problematic. With the heightened realism of synchronized dialogue and the presence of a recorded
musical soundtrack, music’s role in the new audiovisual form threatened to destabilize the dream logic that surrealist filmmakers had established in silent cinema. But the new technology also offered an opportunity for composers and directors to renegotiate music’s role in surrealist film.

I argue that music became a crucial tool in early conceptions of surrealist audiovisual cinema, when sound film’s potential energy was at its height. I examine two of France’s first sound films—Luis Buñuel’s L’Age d’or (1930) and Jean Cocteau’s Le Sang d’un poète (1930)—both of which favored an audiovisual aesthetic relying heavily on
surrealist principles. These controversial films deliberately avoided realism, employing music as a tool for audiovisual juxtaposition, pastiche, and shock value. For Le Sang d’un poète composer Georges Auric wrote a score that Cocteau proceeded to cut
up and reorder, an experiment in “accidental synchronization” and a means of avoiding explicit musical signification. Buñuel incorporated preexisting classical works—by composers including Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner—into L’Age d’or and juxtaposed them with absurd, even offensive, images. Though their approaches to the soundtrack differed, both directors experimented with film rhythm and pacing, with
contrasting synchronism and audiovisual counterpoint, and with violating expectations of audiovisual unity. This brief but productive intersection between avant-garde cinematic and musical modernist practices at a critical juncture in France’s nascent sound film production influenced subsequent French cinematic experiments, particularly those of the Nouvelle Vague. My analysis of the music in L’Age d’or and Le Sang
d’un poète theorizes the audiovisual elements constituting surrealist sound film; it also highlights the inherently surreal characteristics of the sound film medium itself, characteristics that most mainstream filmmakers would later try their hardest to erase.

Research paper thumbnail of "Love Me Tonight" (1932) and the Development of the Integrated Film Musical

The 1932 Paramount film "Love Me Tonight," directed by Rouben Mamoulian with music by Richard Rod... more The 1932 Paramount film "Love Me Tonight," directed by Rouben Mamoulian with music by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, is hailed for its influence on the development of the Hollywood musical genre and cited as one of the first truly integrated musicals for the screen. Mamoulian, who later directed "Oklahoma!" on Broadway (a groundbreaking show for integration on stage), claimed that in the film, “dialogue, song, and music were integrated into an organic unity,” emphasizing the seamless synthesis of the film’s elements as well as its definitive step away from the backstage musicals of the early talkies. Indeed, many of Mamoulian’s stylized techniques in "Love Me Tonight" became standard for Hollywood musicals of the next decades.

Yet, as I show in this paper, draft materials from the Mamoulian Papers at the Library of Congress complicate Mamoulian’s own version of the film’s history, indicating a general shift away from integration and towards technological experimentation with presenting music on film. I examine different versions of the script, alongside Mamoulian’s anecdotes from interviews and my own analyses of songs from the film, to explore both how "Love Me Tonight" contributed to the burgeoning concept of the integrated musical and how its innovative stylized film technique employed film technology as a narrative device. "Love Me Tonight" not only offers a window into how early attempts at blending song and story were negotiated aesthetically, but also into ways that the medium of sound film in its early years provided additional possibilities and challenges for integration.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Music Has Something to Say": The Musical Revisions of "L'Atalante" (1934)

_L’Atalante_ (1934), the second collaboration between experimental French filmmaker Jean Vigo and... more _L’Atalante_ (1934), the second collaboration between experimental French filmmaker Jean Vigo and film composer Maurice Jaubert, has become a staple in the cinephiles’ canon. But its profound influence on postwar experimental filmmakers, particularly of the French New Wave, could not have been anticipated from its disastrous initial release. As Vigo was on his deathbed, the film’s distributors, finding _L’Atalante_ narratively incoherent, attempted to make Vigo’s film more broadly accessible: they cut the film substantially and replaced parts of Jaubert’s score with the popular song _Le Chaland qui passe_, renaming the film after the hit tune. Jaubert’s music had combined lyrical instrumental underscoring and folk-like diegetic song, contributing to the film’s blend of gritty realism and dreamlike whimsy. The distributors’ haphazard changes not only affected this delicate balance, but also subtly altered an important narrative subtext of the film: its reflexive fixation on the recent arrival of synchronized sound film, expressed through its focus on musical playback technologies — phonographs, radios, and music boxes — and their ability to captivate.

_L’Atalante_’s troubled reception history points to the political and social valences of the aesthetic details of both versions. While much scholarship exists about Vigo and _L’Atalante_, the fraught history of _L’Atalante_’s musical soundtrack and the film’s comment on sound reproduction technologies has received little scholarly attention. In this paper, I analyze how the differences between the two versions reflect a general anxiety over the arrival of sound film in France, through a comparative analysis of scenes from _L’Atalante_ (which has subsequently been restored) and _Le Chaland qui passe_ (the only surviving copy of which is housed at the Belgian Cinematek). I also draw from Jaubert’s 1936 essay on composing for film, which elucidates his interpretation of film music’s function. Vigo’s fascination with mediated music and its ability to create a magical cinematic world, and the distributors’ attempt to fit the film’s music into a commercially successful Hollywood paradigm, reflects concerns about how mediated sound would affect French cinema during sound film’s early years. Through my analysis, I demonstrate how film practitioners grappled with technological changes, using music as a powerful interventional force.

Research paper thumbnail of "The Realm of Serious Art": Henry Hadley's Involvement in Early Sound Film

Composer and conductor Henry Kimball Hadley (1871-1937) is widely viewed as a conservative musica... more Composer and conductor Henry Kimball Hadley (1871-1937) is widely viewed as a conservative musical figure, a composer who resisted the radical changes taking place as musical modernism began to flourish in America. His compositional style remained firmly oriented toward late-romantic European idioms; and while Hadley advocated tirelessly for American composition through his programming choices as a conductor (beginning in 1909 and continuing into the 1930s), he most often chose to perform music of older, established American composers, rather than younger, more adventurous ones.

In one respect, however, Hadley was part of the cutting edge of musical production: that of musical dissemination through new media. In this paper, I discuss Hadley’s work conducting and composing music for film during the transition from silent film to synchronized sound film. He was deeply involved in Warner Bros.’ public introduction of their new sound synchronization technology (called Vitaphone) from 1926 to 1927. Using archival evidence from the Warner Bros. archives, including business correspondence, unpublished memoirs, and score drafts, I examine Hadley’s approach to film music composition. I argue that Hadley’s high-art associations conferred legitimacy upon the new technology, and his embrace of the new technology helped establish sound film composition as a potential viable outlet for “serious” composers. Through the example of Hadley’s involvement with new technologies, I suggest we reconsider the parameters through which we normally distinguish “experimental” and “conservative” musical practices, reconfiguring the definitions to include not just musical proclivities but also different contexts and modes through which they circulate.

Research paper thumbnail of Michael Gordon's Decaying Orchestra: "Decasia" as Audiovisual Elegy

Decasia (2001), video artist Bill Morrison and composer Michael Gordon’s most critically acclaime... more Decasia (2001), video artist Bill Morrison and composer Michael Gordon’s most critically acclaimed collaboration, consists of assembled archival footage from nitrate film prints in various stages of decomposition. The on-screen images, according to Morrison, seem to resist their own decay. Gordon’s 55-piece orchestral score accompanies these images, with detuned instruments to “make the orchestra sound like it was covered in cobwebs.”

Decasia’s non-narrative form has elicited diverse interpretations: a call for archival film preservation, a comment on the inevitability of entropy and fragility of the cinematic image, and the cycle of death and re-birth more broadly; some critics have even interpreted darker allusions to concentration camps, Hiroshima, and 9/11. Regardless, by foregrounding its profound material instability, Decasia highlights the precarious nature of its own form. In this paper, I argue that the work is an elegy for a dual ontological death: of cinema and symphonic music. Created at the turn of the millennium, on the cusp of a new technological era that transformed cinematic and musical media, Decasia urges us to watch and listen to what happens when old artistic forms die. I situate the work within a larger discourse about the changing ontology of cinema and music in the digital age, drawing on Lev Manovich’s definition of “new media” and the writings of film theorist David Rodowick and sound studies scholar Jonathan Sterne. Additionally, I suggest that Gordon’s score, by sonically representing the physical decay of cinema’s materiality, obliquely comments on the material forms of its own dissemination: the transformation from analog to digital recording technology. By showing the potential for beauty in material decay, Decasia is both mournful and hopeful. My analysis sheds light on artistic responses to changing technologies—specifically, how artists and composers comment on new technologies through old ones.

Research paper thumbnail of "A World of Dreams": The Operatic Fantasy of René Clair's "Le Million"

With the development of synchronized sound film technology in the late 1920s, cinema was irrevoca... more With the development of synchronized sound film technology in the late 1920s, cinema was irrevocably altered. Yet, while the transition from silent to sound film was swift, it was not initially systematic; film directors responded to transforming technologies in widely divergent ways, reflecting the controversy surrounding new technology, mediation, and the medium’s unique capabilities as distinguished from live theatrical forms. Within this heated aesthetic debate, music became a powerful interventional force for many directors.

In this paper, I discuss French director René Clair’s work in relation to the debate on sound film. Clair’s ambivalence about the coming of sound is reflected in his films from 1930 and 1931, all of which incorporate music in unusual and provocative ways. I focus on "Le Million" (1931), as a way of examining Clair’s unique solutions to new problems during this period of technological transition. Through an analysis of archival and primary source materials, I discuss the working relationship between Clair and the composers for the film: Armand Bernard, Georges Van Parys, and Philippe Parès. Additionally, I closely analyze Clair’s writings from the period, alongside scenes from "Le Million," to demonstrate how Clair put his philosophies into practice, paying particular attention to the film’s complex relationship to live musical-theatrical forms. "Le Million" engages with sung theater in both its form and its narrative content: in addition to being a “filmed operetta” (operette filmée), the film’s climax occurs in an opera house, onstage
during a performance. Clair brings opera and sound film closer together, forcing them to confront each other in their similarities and their differences. Through a historical and theoretical discussion of Le Million, I demonstrate how Clair’s films from this period challenge some of our long-held assumptions about the role of music in cinema, providing an alternative model for film’s sound-image relationship.

Research paper thumbnail of New Possibilities for Sound: Speech and Song in the First Vitaphone Feature Films (1926-7)

Al Jolson’s sung and spoken performance in The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature film with sy... more Al Jolson’s sung and spoken performance in The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature film with synchronized dialogue, is popularly regarded as a watershed moment in film history; indeed, it only took a few years for the film industry to transition completely from silent films to “talkies.” While scholars such as Crafton (1999) and Altman (2004) have corrected the oft-repeated claim that The Jazz Singer was the first sound film, most have ignored the feature films Warner Bros. released in the year and a half leading up to The Jazz Singer, beginning with the introduction of Vitaphone (their sound-on-disc synchronization technology) to the public in 1926. During this period of experimentation, Warner Bros. introduced numerous kinds of sounds, including pre-recorded synchronized musical scores, sound effects created by musical instruments, and even some speech, onto the mechanically synchronized soundtracks of their feature films. In this paper, I discuss the various treatments of the voice in these hybrid and transitional films, beginning with Don Juan (1926)—a silent film retrofitted with a synchronized musical score—and culminating with the sung diegetic performance in The Jazz Singer. The films introduce a range of approaches to depicting song and speech, both visually and aurally, reflecting the heterogeneity of possibilities that existed for the new medium during this emergent stage. By examining the musical and vocal utterances in these films, we can better understand the context from which The Jazz Singer developed, as well as other possibilities for sound film that were never fully realized.

Research paper thumbnail of "A World of Dreams": The Musical Fantasy of René Clair's Early Sound Cinema

With the development of synchronized sound film technology in the late 1920s, cinema was irrevoca... more With the development of synchronized sound film technology in the late 1920s, cinema was irrevocably altered. Yet, while the transition from silent to sound film was swift, it was not initially systematic; film directors responded to transforming technologies in widely divergent ways, reflecting the controversy surrounding new technology, mediation, and the medium’s unique capabilities as distinguished from live theatrical forms. Within this heated aesthetic debate, music became a powerful interventional force for many directors. In this paper, I discuss French director René Clair’s work in relation to the debate on sound film. Clair was outspoken in his initial opposition toward the new technology, and his ambivalence about the coming of sound is reflected in three films from 1930 and 1931—Sous les toits de Paris, Le Million, and À nous la liberté—all of which incorporate music in unusual and provocative ways. I focus on his second film of the three, Le Million, as a way of examining Clair’s unique solutions to new problems during this period of technological transition. Through an analysis of previously unexamined archival and primary source materials, I discuss the context of the film’s development, and the working relationship between Clair and the composers of the soundtrack: Armand Bernard, Georges Van Parys, and Philippe Parès. Additionally, I closely analyze Clair’s writings from the period, alongside scenes from Le Million, to demonstrate the methods that Clair used to put his philosophies into practice, paying particular attention to the film’s complex relationship to live musical-theatrical forms. Through a historical and theoretical discussion of Le Million, I demonstrate how Clair’s films from this period, rather than being historical anomalies, challenge some of our long-held assumptions about the role of music in cinema, providing an alternative model for our understanding of the sound-image relationship in film.

Research paper thumbnail of A Search for Musical Identity: John Zorn and the Postcolonial Condition