Category: Research Results

In a well-known interview with Lotte Eisner titled Musikalische Illustration oder Filmmusik?, Kurt Weill declared his personal program of emancipation of film music from the age-old principle of ‘illustration’, that is, the subordinate role of the musical component to dramatic action. The accompanying music – he claimed – should not simply illustrate the events that take place onstage, but should have a “purely musical shaping”, a formal and structural integrity of its own.

After this reflection, he strongly criticized Edmund Meisel’s principle of Lautbarmachung: this idea of ‘acoustic manifestation of reality’, which had informed Meisel’s score for Potemkin (1926), would have never been able to provide “a solution to the problem of film music”. On the contrary, according to Weill this long-awaited solution was to be achieved through an “objective, almost concertante film music”. In film, just like in drama, music should be an independent component that stands in a dialectical relationship with the staged events, instead of sedulously illustrating them. Through this ‘concertante’ quality, music can become an essential part of the ‘epic attitude’ of the artwork. Through the tension that it establishes with the action or the visual sphere—for instance by providing an antiphrastic counterpoint to it, or by interrupting its flow—music unmasks the illusion of realism of the narrative fiction. ‘Concertante music’ prevents spectators from passively identifying with fiction, instead pushing them to actively search for nuances of meaning that hide behind outer behaviors.

The principle of ‘concertante music’ was widely applied not only in Weill’s musical theater, from the music for Dreigroschenoper to the opera buffa Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, but also in many scores for cinema of the early 1930s-Germany by art-music composers and film-music specialists such as Paul Dessau, Hanns Eisler, Walter Gronostay and Weill himself. A thorough analysis of audiovisual montage casts light on a variety of dramaturgic choices, from dramaturgical counterpoint to horizontal collage, all of which share two basic features: the preservation of some degree of formal coherence for the musical component and the tendency to treat music and sound like any other montage material.

Overcoming any slavish illustration of the narrated events in favor of a type of music that is able to establish a dialectical tension with the stage events, and constitutes an autonomous text with its own formal coherence and semantic density, is the most important legacy cinema received from Weill’s principle of ‘concertante music’.

Francesco Finocchiaro, Kurt Weill and the Principle of ‘Concertante Music’, in The Works of Kurt Weill: Transformations and Reconfigurations in 20th-Century Music, edited by Naomi Graber and Marida Rizzuti, Turnhout, Brepols, 2023, pp. 21–36.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The notion of ‘musical source’ gives rise to considerable problems in the study of silent film music. On a purely historical level, it should be remembered that most of the music for silent films no longer exists. On the other hand, a vast repertoire of mood music from the silent era has come down to us as an example of specialised publishing in the field of film music. Collections such as Kinothek, Motion Picture Moods, Filmharmonie and many others consisted of original pieces that were not associated with a specific film, but were designed to fit into standard narrative situations or to provide a common emotional aura.

The practice of reusing and re-functionalising these pieces of music, constantly oscillating between composition and compilation, raises ontological problems concerning the multiple definition of the musical work, its author and its performance. The score of a piece of mood music is not, in fact, the source of an opus in the strict sense of the term. It is not an aesthetically grounded entity, but rather an operational instruction at the service of a subsequent creative act: the one that will shape the musical accompaniment of a particular film screening in the cinema.

The ubiquity of mood music is not the exception, but the rule. Identifying and cataloguing a piece of mood music is therefore not in itself a useful scholarly knowledge unless it is complemented by knowledge of its adaptive uses. These, however, are not to be found in the primary source, but must be reconstructed by consulting secondary sources of various kinds, from film scenarios to journalistic reviews, which only in their constellation give an account of the cinematic show as a whole.

Francesco Finocchiaro, Ontological Problems of Silent Film Music between Compilation and Composition, IAML Annual Meeting, University of Cambridge, 31 July – 4 August 2023.

At the end of the 1920s, the German film giant Universum Film A.-G. (Ufa) established an industrial alliance with the Italian Istituto Nazionale Luce: signed in 1928, the agreement provided for the exchange of footages for the respective newsreels, within the framework of a consolidation of political-propaganda action in both the countries. The ‘pact of steel’ between Luce and Ufa was reaffirmed in 1933. In that year, Third Reich propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels went to Rome, where he met Luigi Freddi, then responsible for the propaganda of the Fascist regime, and explained to him the functioning of the Reichsfilmkammer. Goebbels’ criteria for the political reorganization of German cinematography were taken as a model by the Fascist intellectuals, so much so to be enthusiastically commented in the regime’s cultural journals.

The first result of the Luce-Ufa collaboration was the documentary Lo stormo atlantico (1931), dedicated to the transoceanic flight by a team of seaplanes headed by Italo Balbo. Shot by camera operator Mario Craveri, the film was sent to Germany to be synchronized with the Tobis-Klangfilm system. The soundtrack, upon which we well dwell for the purpose of this paper, was therefore edited independently in the Ufa studios.

The pact of steel between Fascist and Nazi cinematic industries consolidated at the outbreak of the World War II. There were two main areas of collaboration: (1) the co-production of documentary films on the progress of the war, between 1940 and 1941, and (2) the establishment of a newsreel, La Settimana Europea, the Italian translation of the Deutsche Wochenschau, during the Republic of Salò.

The Other ‘Pact of Steel’: The Luce-Ufa Cinematic Axis
Free paper at the International Conference “Music and Conflict: Politics and Escapism of Wartime Culture”.
Institute of Austrian and German Music Research
University of Surrey, 19-20 May 2023

Book presentation at ‘L. Campiani’ Conservatory Mantua, with the participation of Rossella Spinosa and Federico Mantovani, February 20, 2023.

Francesco Finocchiaro, Dietro un velo di organza, Turin, Accademia University Press, 2020

Sin dall’era del muto la critica cinematografica pose a tema il connubio fra musica e cinema. Compositori, musicologi, filosofi, teorici del cinema contribuirono a una vivace discussione intorno alle caratteristiche e alla funzione della componente musicale nelle proiezioni cinematografiche, con un ampio spettro di argomentazioni e punti di vista. In articoli, saggi, recensioni si sollevarono innumerevoli questioni di natura estetica, teoretica e compositiva: che differenza c’è fra musica cinematografica e musica d’arte? Una musica per film deve essere necessariamente una composizione originale o può includere musiche preesistenti a mo’ di compilazione? Come deve essere fatto da un punto di vista morfologico un brano di musica per film? Quali problemi possono derivare dall’uso di musiche che siano già note agli ascoltatori? Non mancarono riflessioni sulle relazioni estetiche fra l’arte musicale e il medium cinematografico in quanto tale, sulla loro convergenza o separazione, e persino sulle loro “affinità elettive”.

Il libro si pone l’obiettivo di indagare il problema estetico della musica per film nell’era del muto sulla scorta delle fonti giornalistiche coeve. Gli scritti giornalistici possiedono un enorme potenziale conoscitivo come fonti estetiche e storiche, a un tempo. Il giornalismo cinematografico si rivela un medium teorico-estetico per la pratica della musica per film nell’era del muto: il luogo in cui convergono le prime riflessioni teoriche sulla composizione cinematografica, si discutono urgenti questioni drammaturgiche e un’esperienza inerentemente estetica della musica riceve una raffinata elaborazione concettuale.

Francesco Finocchiaro, Dietro un velo di organza. Il pensiero sulla musica cinematografica nell’era del muto, Torino, Accademia University Press, 2020 (Biblioteca di Athena Musica, 2)

The notion of “film restoration” raises considerable problems for research into silent film music. Handwritten scores with the orchestration intended by their authors are rare; in cases where piano scores have been preserved, these were often produced in a different context and for a completely different purpose. In contrast, a large repertoire of mood music pieces has come down to us from the silent film era, which according to their nature, however, could either precede a “musical illustration” or descend from it a posteriori.

Musical documents of such varied nature, which could represent completely different moments in the compositional process, raise notable problems of interpretation when they are assumed as the starting point for a “film-music restoration”. In contrast to an alleged authenticity, emphatically proclaimed for mostly commercial reasons, it will be noted that even the most historically accurate procedures of film-music reconstruction often require arbitrary interventions in the musical documents, which imply different assumptions regarding the ontological status of the score and the film, as well as their respective authorships.

It is surprising to find a similar level of arbitrariness even in the most celebrated exemplar of a film-music restoration of the last years: Frank Strobel’s reconstruction of Huppertz’ score for the film Metropolis. Despite all declared claims for philological completeness and historical truthfulness, the reconstruction of this silent film score proves rather to be a process of translation and adaptation. The final result of such a procedure is not only historically new and indirectly derivable from the state of the sources, but also completely rooted in the aesthetic expectations of the present era.

Francesco Finocchiaro, Aporias of Film Restoration: The Musical Documents of the Silent Era between Film Philology and Market Strategies, «Acta Musicologica», XCII/2, 2020, pp. 180-199.

Between the 1910s and 20s, countless film adaptations of operas originated as a consequence of the medial competition between cinema and the bourgeois cultural institution par excellence: opera. Film adaptations aspired to lend artistic and cultural dignity to the new medium of cinema and, at the same time, actualized operatic subjects, adapting them to the cinema’s sense of naturalism and immediacy.

The processes of adaptation carried out by filmmakers could take on a variety of characteristics, as a result not only of the varying practical needs of a particular adaptation, but also of different aesthetic paradigms of cinema, that is, the different ways of conceiving its semiotic modes of discourse and the hierarchical configuration of the artistic languages embedded in it.

This article compares the adaptational strategies in four films––Cecil DeMille’s Carmen (1915), Albert Capellani’s La vie de Bohème (1916), Jacques Feyder’s Carmen (1926), and Richard Strauss & Robert Wiene’s Rosenkavalier (1926)––that represent just as many different modes of engagement with their operatic originals. These instances are interpreted as different solutions to the very same aesthetic problem: i.e., how to translate operatic dramaturgy into a cinematic means of expression.

Francesco Finocchiaro, Operatic Works in Silent Cinema: Toward a Translational Theory of Film Adaptations, «Music and the Moving Image», XIII/3, 2020, pp. 49-71

Cos’è la musica per film? Qual è il suo statuto estetico? È possibile delinearne i confini e qualificarla come uno specifico genere musicale? Quali sono le sue funzioni drammaturgiche e quali le tipologie formali?

Domande di questo genere hanno accompagnato il cinema sin dai suoi albori, in modo particolare dalla metà degli anni Dieci del Novecento, allorché il nuovo medium cinematografico elaborò un linguaggio espressivo complesso, con leggi e convenzioni estetiche proprie. In quel contesto, l’esigenza di affrancare l’accompagnamento musicale dalle condizioni di casualità e precarietà dei primordi si fece sentire con sempre maggiore insistenza: il cosiddetto “film d’arte”, con i suoi adattamenti di capolavori della letteratura e del teatro e le ricostruzioni di importanti eventi storici, richiedeva una musica che fosse all’altezza del proprio ruolo.

Francesco Finocchiaro, Hans Erdmann e il dibattito sulla musica per il cinema muto nel giornalismo cinematografico di lingua tedesca, “Poli-femo”, 2019, nn. 17-18, Special Issue Ton sur ton, Lo stile della saggistica critica sulle arti I, pp. 111–128

In Italy, the rise of fascism in 1922 marked the beginning of a massive operation aimed at standardizing, under the banner of ideology, every aspect of political and social life, including artistic and cultural events. The program of indoctrination of the masses and construction of consensus put in place by the fascist regime relied mainly on the widespread use of a mass-culture industry. First between the 20s and 30s, then more heavily in the late-30s and 40s, fascist ideology tried to infiltrate the whole spectrum of cultural production, starting with its (only apparently) more harmless mass-media manifestations, especially radio and cinema.

The intellectuals of the fascist regime fully understood the persuasive and manipulative power inherent to the new media: they recognized above all the political-cultural function of cinema, which gradually became the medium par excellence for influencing collective behavior. The prevailing, in the fascist cultural policy, of Giuseppe Bottai’s position, who favored a non-invasive use of propaganda, determined the preference for films in a light comic style that were able to deal with international models, primarily Hollywood. Italian fiction movies of the 20s and 30s––particularly the comic-sentimental genre known as “white telephones”––were essentially products of escapism, intended to be passively received. Not requiring any particular cultural or intellectual background, they reached people of all social classes. Such routine cinematic products were accepted as a given: as entertainment products rated for consumption, they favored abandonment, passive vision, uncritical reception. The words “Do not speak about politics, here” (Qui non si parla di politica), affixed to the walls of public venues, were a fake truce offer aimed at circumventing the spectator’s critical defenses.

Francesco Finocchiaro, Musica e cinema nel ventennio fascista, “Quaderni del CSCI”, 15, 2019,  Special Issue All’ascolto del cinema italiano: musiche, voci, rumori, edited by R. Calabretto, M. Cosci, and E. Mosconi, pp. 24–30 (read it here).

Arnold Schönberg’s early works have long been at the centre of renewed musicological interest. This growing interest is closely linked to a new historiographical trend within Schönbergforschung, which has worked to free itself from the cumbersome authority of the composer and to abandon earlier apologetic positions. In this process of emancipation, a decisive step has been the decision to question Schönberg’s authorial image, starting with a critical reconsideration of his artistic evolution. An important contribution to the definition of this new historiographical framework comes from an examination of the early works by the Viennese composer, particularly from the period prior to Verklärte Nacht op. 4 (1899).
The work of the young Schönberg is enveloped in what Max Reger called the “Brahmsian fog”, apparent in Schönberg’s preference for dances, Lieder with piano and other chamber music, as well as his obsessive application of developing variations, eg. in the Quartet in D major (1897). Once he had reached a saturation point in his commitment to Brahmsian techniques, he turned to a style of composing that Schönberg himself would have defined as “more progressive”. Two unfinished symphonic poems composed between the spring and summer of 1898, Frühlings Tod and Toter Winkel, with texts by Nikolaus Lenau and Gustav Falke, respectively, provide evidence of a new poetics: they represent the first attempt by Schönberg to establish, both on formal and thematic levels, a connection with the artistic and literary avant-gardes of his time.

Francesco Finocchiaro, Il poema sinfonico nell’opera giovanile di Arnold Schönberg, “Gli spazi della musica”, vol. 8 (2019), Glosse sull’Espressionismo, pp. 12–32 (Read the full article here).

Talking about the role of the voice in cinema means questioning what, despite appearances, can be said to be one of the cinematic text’s most complex and problematic components. Today’s consumer of the film industry’s products, addicted to the modern code of audiovisual texts, can hardly imagine the alienating effect of a type of show that, in its early form, was instead completely devoid of the voice and almost total renounced to the verbal medium, except for small intertitles.

As Rudolf Arnheim wrote in his Film as Art (1957), the silent cinema, with its exaggerated facial mimicry and gestures, had nonetheless coined a universal language, one that was immediately understandable in all parts of the world, regardless of linguistic barriers: a gestural language, impossible to replace with words.

The art of silent cinema had introduced a new existential paradigm: Der sichtbare Mensch (The visible man), as in the title of Balázs’s book of 1924. This man could be neither listened to nor read since he was forced to express himself through a visual language. Now, by putting verbal language and words at the center of the film medium, sound cinema determined the rise of a new medial language.

Francesco Finocchiaro, Il cinema parlante. Spunti per una drammaturgia della voce da Fritz Lang a Terrence Malick. In La voce mediatizzata, edited by Marida Rizzuti and Stefano Lombardi Vallauri. Milan: Mimesis, 2019, pp. 69–92 (read it here).