hans erdmann’s score for nosferatu and the idea of modular form

Journal of Film Music 6.1 (2013) 31-48 ISSN (print) 1087-7142doi:10.1558/jfm.v6i1.31 ISSN (online) 1758-860X

© Copyright the International Film Music Society, published by Equinox Publishing Ltd 2015, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX.

I n this essay we will discuss the idea of modular form as being a seminal factor in film music during its infancy, the “silent” era. To explain

and elaborate this idea we will (1) define the concept of modularity and contextualize it in its technical and industrial applications, (2) address practical issues of musical accompaniment in the cinema after World War I that stimulated modular techniques, (3) examine Erdmann’s Fantastisch-romantische Suite as a case in point, and (4) put the results of our analysis into a broader historical perspective.

The Concept of Modular Form

To start with a practical example, let us imagine a cinema music director (Kino-Kapellmeister) at work in the 1920s: he has a music library, more or less copious, consisting of opera, operetta, concert,

chamber, piano pieces, popular songs, marches, dances, national anthems, and, most importantly, photoplay music. This new genre of cinematic stock pieces emerged around 1910.1

Figure 1 is taken from the third volume (1922–23) of the Kinothek—a serial anthology for cinema musicians by the composer and Kapellmeister Giuseppe Becce. It appeared in several volumes (1919–33) and included both arrangements of pieces from the classical repertoire and original photoplay compositions. The Kinothek was so successful in Germany, distributed also in other European countries and the US, that its title—a contraction of “Kino-Bibliothek” (cinema library)—came to identify a whole genre: it was not just any music used for film accompaniment but specific film music for generic

1 See Martin Miller Marks, Music and the Silent Film (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 62-69.

Toward a Prehistory of Film Music: Hans Erdmann’s Score for Nosferatu and the Idea of Modular Form

JaNINa MüllEr aNd TOBIaS PlEBUcHHumboldt-University [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract: Photoplay music is a genre that took shape during the “silent” period of cinema when extended narra-tive films became mass entertainment. Many photoplay pieces exhibit certain structural features that we propose to conceptualize as modular form: they consist of several brief segments (often indicated by double barlines and numbers) that are easy to rearrange and flexible in themselves. Hans Erdmann’s Fantastisch-romantische Suite, derived from his original Nosferatu score, is such a set of musical modules designed to accompany various films in ad hoc arrangements—a purpose supported not only by numerous breaking points but also by their harmonic, syntactic and textural design. While modular techniques persisted in the era of sound film well after 1930, they also con-tinued certain practices of theatrical music of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as compilation and quick arrangement of stock pieces in ballet, vaudeville, pantomime, and spoken drama.

Keywords: melodrama; motion picture music; musical form; silent cinema

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32 THE JOUrNal OF FIlM MUSIc

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use. This is apparent at first glance from the titles and the style of the pieces, less obvious though from their musical form, which we will address in the following.

“Notte angosciosa” consists of no more than twenty measures grouped in four segments, which are marked by fermatas and breath marks ’. However, since these signs appear in keyboard and string parts as well, while the wind parts do not show the need for breathing at these points, the fermatas and “breath marks” just indicate breaking points, i.e., where to repeat or skip a segment if need be. In fact,

it is also possible to extend or compress each segment and even to connect it with any other one since the music largely moves through shifting diminished and augmented chords forming, as its were, free vectors of harmonic progression. In a nutshell, this is what we call modular form: a musical structure consisting of segments that are easy to rearrange and flexible in themselves.

The term “modularity” is closely associated with the design of standardized technical units that can be combined and rearranged in multiple ways like

Figure 1: “Notte angosciosa—Bange Nacht,” in: Giuseppe Becce, Kinothek (Berlin: Schlesinger, 1919–33), vol. 3A. © 1922–23 by robert lienau Musikverlag, Germany; printed with permission.

33Toward a PrehisTory of film music

© The international film music society 2015.

the elements of IKEa furniture or lego. Modular systems of typography, furniture, toys, industrial, architectural, and software design generally seek a high level of flexibility so that their components may be used in different combinations while basically remaining unchanged.2 It is much easier to update a modular product than to design a new one from scratch. Hence, modularity is a principle that works well in complex designs of machines, operating systems, curricula, or films and facilitates change in fashion-driven industries.

We can use this concept for an examination of modular form in silent film music though we must take into account the specific nature of music as a temporal and performing art. Material modules, such as shelf boards or lego blocks, have a fixed shape and design from the outset. Musical modules, on the other hand, do not have to be replaced if they do not fit but can be varied with regard to their instrumentation, dynamics, tempo, length, and, to some extent, even their character and dramatic function. due to their practical and economic benefits, the principles of modularity readily lend themselves to the practice of silent film accompaniment. In fact, we have tried and tested how they can be applied with success in semi-improvised silent film music still today.3

all photoplay pieces, modular or not, are highly suggestive of certain character types, events, emotions, or moods that frequently recur in silent films and their musical accompaniment of villain, pastoral, love, misterioso scenes, etc. during the first three decades of film history such labels turned into more or less common concepts or “topoi” of a musico-dramatic language.4 While modular form does not necessarily presuppose these topoi, it provides an excellent framework to organize them along the lines of screenplay dramaturgy, for modularity and the topical order of early cinema music libraries are based on compatible principles. The catalogs establish a system to gain semantic control over musical stock material while modularity facilitates its quick and flexible combination along a plot line.

2 cf. James Saunders, “Modular Music,” Perspectives of New Music 46, no. 1 (2008): 152-93.3 We participated in performances of Murnau’s Nosferatu at the Berlin Babylon theatre in 2010 accompanied by piano, soprano solo, and a choir using musical cue cards. In 1936, Kurt london vividly remembered how, “in the melting-pot of compilation, […] even the rhythm, tempo, key, form, instrumentation, and actually the melody of a piece of music had to be remodelled.” Kurt london, Film Music: A Summary of the Characteristic Features of its History, Aesthetics, Technique; and Possible Developments (london: Faber & Faber, 1936), 54.4 Tobias Plebuch, “Mysteriosos demystified: Topical Strategies within and beyond the Silent cinema,” The Journal of Film Music 5, nos. 1–2 (2012): 77-92.

at the end of the silent period some printed catalogs of film music did not just index pieces but broke down entire scores of overtures, symphonies, etc. into segments by topoi.5 This rather generous approach to canonized masterworks only reflects what cinema musicians did anyway in the scores and card catalogs of their libraries. In other words, there was a tendency in the late 1920s to “modularize” any new and repertoire piece, to register the musical material systematically and to store it in a well-assorted depot. In a way, this recycling method resembles not just the work of a mover who dismantles a shelf and rebuilds it at another place but rather the work of a typographer who composes a master from standard elements, takes reproductions, disassembles the master and shelves its elements for later use.

Giuseppe Becce, Hans Erdmann, and ludwig Brav, the authors of the Allgemeine Handbuch der Filmmusik (1927), explicitly called for an “industrial method” of film music:

If you want to achieve artistic success within the film industry, there seems to be no other way than, shall we say, an industrial method, if based on artistic intuition—a methodology that would allow the musician to find his place in the artistic working place of film production and calculate possibilities, effects, and thus success with increasing certainty. That’s what really matters.6

The authors do not explicitly refer to what we call modular form but rather to certain procedures—in particular to the division of labor—practiced in the film industry of the late 1920s, including the theaters. However, in this working environment, modular photoplay music does offer great advantages over the Frankensteinian habit of cinema musicians to chop and reassemble bits and pieces from classical compositions and then revitalize them in live accompaniment. With their breaking points and highly flexible segments, most photoplay pieces are designed to be dismembered and rearranged ad hoc

5 In 1927 the Allgemeine Handbuch der Filmmusik labels and lists 3,050 compositions and parts thereof in a complex system of nested topical categories with suggestions of possible leaps, repeats, and alterations. ludwig Brav labeled sections of 268 orchestral scores for cinematic accompaniment in 1928. Erdmann’s Suite, too, provides keywords which break down the semantic content of its movements (cf. Fig. 3).6 “Wenn man aber wirklich auf unserem Gebiet zu künstlerischen Erfolgen kommen will, dann scheint es dieser industriellen Filmkunst gegenüber keinen anderen Weg zu geben, als den einer, sagen wir schon, ebenso ‘industriellen’, wenn auch auf künstlerische Intuition gestellten, Methodik, einer Methode, die es dem Musiker ermöglicht, im künstlerischen Werkkreise des Film einen Standpunkt zu finden, von dem aus er mit immer zunehmender Sicherheit Möglichkeiten, Wirkungen und also Erfolge berechnen kann: darauf in der Tat kommt es an.” Giuseppe Becce, Hans Erdmann, and ludwig Brav, Allgemeines Handbuch der Filmmusik (Berlin-lichterfelde: Schlesinger, 1927), vol. 1, 38.



and with artistic judgment by the local Kapellmeister or organist. He could easily adjust the length of “Notte angosciosa” to a similar scene of virtually any duration and fit (select, repeat, omit, stretch, etc.) its segments to the action on screen.

Fruitful Problems: the Genesis of Photoplay Music

The challenges that stimulated and even required this novel form were aesthetic considerations as well as technical and practical problems of making music in the silent cinema. as Kurt london wrote in 1936:

The musical form of these Kinotheks was very elementary. Since it had to be recognized that their use was confined to short episodes, the music had to be quite simple in form, so that a division into its musical components could be made without loss of its original characteristics.7

To be sure, every musical form in a strict sense (the fugue being a technique or procedure rather than a form) consists of parts. However, while the parts of a sonata or rondo are not “material” to be altered and rearranged, the segments of modular form are crafted exactly for this purpose “without loss of [their] original characteristics.” It cannot be stressed enough that, in the cinema of the 1920s, form is constituted by both the (silent) drama and the music in conjunction, all the more so as music largely substitutes for dialogue and sound.

Modular form is particularly well suited to accompany (hide or stress) editing techniques, such as hard and soft cuts, superimpositions, alternations of close-up and long shots, and technical manipulations of images used for parallel action, flashbacks, dream scenes, imagination, etc., which substantially contribute to modern cinematic storytelling, especially the work of Eisenstein, Griffith, and Murnau, not to mention surrealist and experimental films. By the 1920s, these stylistic and technical devices entered the mainstream of popular screen melodrama, animated shorts, and even newsreels. They mark essential differences between screen and stage drama and they call for a highly flexible music as theorized by Erdmann and london. We may even claim that (working with) modular photoplay music reflects, to some degree, the advanced editing techniques of silent film after World War I.

7 london, Film Music, 57.

Besides the narrative discontinuities and visual manipulations of film which continued in the sound era, a particularly difficult problem that faced cinema musicians in the silent period was the extreme pressure of time. Quite commonly they had two or three days to come up with the music for a new film. The accounts from both the US and Germany are remarkably similar in this respect.8 Only the big metropolitan movie palaces allowed more time to prepare the musical accompaniment for an important premiere. due to the growing output of the film industry, some theaters even changed their program every day so that a musician could do nothing but improvise on the spot. Within a time frame of two or three days, however, it is much easier to prepare music that fits the film, provided you can rely on a large stock of pieces that quickly evoke meanings, moods and emotions and have breaking points, i.e. photoplay pieces in modular form.

To better understand the practical challenges of silent film music, let us take a closer look at some sources. In 1979, Werner Schmidt-Boelcke, the former music director of the Berlin capitol Theater, recollected the routines of preparing and performing music for silent films in the 1920s, which come close to what Becce, Erdmann, and Brav envisioned as an “industrial method” of film music in 1927: a large team of technicians, music librarians, arrangers, and performers worked under the Kapellmeister on a tight schedule at an assembly line, as it were, so that the production flow would be fast, efficient, and reliable. The reels of a new film would arrive two or three days before its premiere. The Kapellmeister screened it the same night after the last show, around 11 pm in the theater, and took notes about the general character of the whole film and individual scenes with regard to the stylistic unity of the musical accompaniment. The next morning he went to his office fully equipped with a screen, a projector, a piano, music scores, and a catalog. His office library and a separate archive with corresponding parts included some 4,000 titles of photoplay music, classical repertoire pieces from Bach to Stravinsky, and a large body of popular music. Every score was labeled with a specific “mood” and registered in one or more catalogs.9

8 cf. Gillian B. anderson, Music for Silent Films, 1894–1929: A Guide (Washington: library of congress, 1988), xviii; Ulrich Eberhard Siebert, Filmmusik in Theorie und Praxis. Eine Untersuchung der 20er und frühen 30er Jahre anhand des Werkes von Hans Erdmann (Frankfurt am Main: lang, 1990), 155; and Werner Schmidt-Boelcke, “Ein Kinoorchester-dirgent erinnert sich: Gero Gandert im Gespräch mit Werner Schmidt-Boelcke,” Stummfilmmusik gestern und heute (Berlin: deutsche Kinemathek, 1979), 35-50.9 regarding catalogs and the preparation of the musical accompaniment, see also George W. Beynon, Musical Presentation of Motion Pictures (New York/Boston: Schirmer, 1921); Ernö rapée, Encyclopaedia of Music for Pictures (New York: Belwin, 1925); Becce et al., Allgemeines Handbuch der Filmmusik.



Schmidt-Boelcke’s capitol Theater staff included a projectionist, an orchestrator, a music librarian, and several copyists. after screening the first scene, the projectionist rewound the reel and the director selected a matching score from the shelf. The scene was screened again with piano accompaniment. If it did not fit, these steps were repeated with other pieces until the result was satisfactory. Sometimes, when he needed new music (a recent hit or a suggestion from a cue sheet), the music director called the acquisitions manager of the studio library who would provide the required piece from Berlin music dealers within a couple of hours. Of course, most pieces had to be marked up with cuts, leaps, and loops. (as we have seen, contemporary photoplay music already indicated such breaking points in the scores.) The music director sketched transitions and, since the music was usually performed in its original key, modulations at the piano and handed them over to the orchestrator. Next to him, the copyists would extract the parts. Meanwhile, the librarian had gathered folios of printed parts, which had to be marked up as well.

It does not come as a surprise that members of some Berlin cinema orchestras earned higher salaries than those of the Berlin Philharmonic because, under these conditions, film accompaniment was a difficult task that required extraordinarily versatile, experienced, and attentive musicians. In the Berlin Metropol cinema, the conductor operated an electric switchboard attached to his music stand with 20 buttons and a pedal. Some of the lights signaled the projectionist to start, stop, slow down, or speed up during the show or to rewind and repeat during rehearsals.10 For the same purposes, conductor and projectionist communicated by telephone in some theaters. Since rehearsals were rare, the musicians usually played from sight with their eyes glued to the score, or rather, a folio of 40 to 80 pieces, numbered and marked up with cuts and repeats. a red light bulb on each music stand in the orchestra simply indicated “watch out now!” e.g. to perform a sudden closure if a cue was too long and the music about to go out of sync. “When the light went on, the musicians watched like hawks. It is unbelievable how the orchestra reacted in order to compose [on the fly] a full cadence in the middle of a phrase, and everybody joined in.”11 likewise, Ernö rapée, the music director of what was then the world’s largest orchestra of 110 musicians at

10 When richard Strauss conducted the premiere of the Rosenkavalier film in dresden in 1926, the projection of the film had to be adjusted to the music; see the review in Licht-Bild-Bühne 19, no. 8 (January, 11, 1926). 11 Schmidt-Boelcke, “Ein Kinoorchester-dirgent erinnert sich,” 47.

the roxy Theatre in New York, mentions improvised closures in the live accompaniment of a film.12

Taking a chronological step back, consider an early photoplay composition by John Stepan Zamecnik from 1913. His “Storm Scene” (Fig. 2) sounds like bad music and, in fact, it is bad music according to almost any standard, even for an introductory composition workshop for undergraduate students. However, it is good insofar as it serves its purpose in the silent cinema.

like Becce’s “Notte angosciosa,” there are segments (breaking points) in Zamecnik’s “Storm Scene,” here marked by double barlines and repeats instead of fermatas and “breath marks.” On the other hand, its brevity and uniform character stand in the tradition of musical set-pieces (“melos”) for the accompaniment of melodramas at the brink between stage and screen.13

Hans erdmann’s Fantastisch-romantische Suite

By comparison, Hans Erdmann’s original score for Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu brought forth a more complex instance of photoplay music. In 1926, four years after the film’s premiere, Erdmann and Giuseppe Becce revised and published this music under the title of Fantastisch-romantische Suite for general use in silent cinema accompaniment. Becce emphasized that they did not simply intend to issue yet another photoplay anthology but a set of scores that were carefully designed for flexible arrangements:

Years ago, Hans Erdmann wrote well-received music for the fantasy picture “Nosferatu” (directed by Murnau), which then shared the misfortune of this film to be forgotten […]. I personally contributed to the present form and design as “Fantastic-romantic Suite, part I and II” […]. The aim hereby was to unite the practice of the composer, his theoretical system, and my own experiences.14

12 “If you train your orchestra sufficiently and arrange for some kind of a signal for your men, you will not have to go more than 8 or 10 bars in most compositions before you can come to a tonic close.” rapée, Encyclopaedia of Music for Pictures, 14.13 See alfred E. cooper and david Mayer, Four Bars of “Agit”: Incidental Music for Victorian and Edwardian Melodrama (london: Samuel French, 1983).14 “Hans Erdmann hat vor Jahren zu dem phantastischen Film ‘Nosferatu’ (regie Murnau) eine günstig aufgenommene Musik geschrieben, die dann das Mißgeschick dieses Films teilte, vergessen zu werden. […]. an Form und Fassung ihrer nunmehr vorliegenden Gestalt ‘Fantastisch-romantische Suite, I. und II. Teil’ habe ich mitgearbeitet; […]. die Praxis des Komponisten, seine theoretische Systematik und meine eigenen Erfahrungen zu vereinen, darauf kam es an.” Giuseppe Becce, preface to the Fantastisch-romantische Suite, quoted in Siebert, Filmmusik in Theorie und Praxis, 133.



Figure 2: J.S. Zamecnik: “Storm Scene,” in Sam Fox Moving Picture Music, vol. 1 (Cleve-land: Sam Fox, 1913)



Part iI.a. “Idyllic”: Sleepy Village – Morning Mood – Grazing Flocks – cheerful Plays

I.B. “lyrical”: longing – Submission – Past Sorrows – Hope

I.c. “Spooky”: Eerie Nights – Goblins – Thunderclouds – Paranoia

I.d. “Stormy”: Wild Hunt – desperate Flight – Firestorm – dismay

I.E. “annihilated”: Plague – Funeral Procession – Inescapable Fate

Part iiII.a. “Happy departure”: Journey and adventure

II.B. “Weird”: In the Haunted castle – Eerie Surroundings

II.c. “Grotesque”: Headless rush – Panic – confusion

II.d. “Unleashed”: Storms – Wave crests

II.E. “Perturbed”: Spooky – Ghastly Visions – Feverish delirium

Figure 3: Table of Contents in Hans erd-mann, Fantastisch-romantische Suite (Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1926)

Becce and Erdmann arranged the Suite in two parts each with five instrumental movements (see Fig. 3). Together they form a little catalog of musico-dramatic topoi ranging from pastoral, folk dance, and hunt to funeral march, misterioso, storm scenes, ghosts, and goblins evocative of the nocturnal and supernatural images of dark romanticism. Every piece is defined in character and offers a range of possible thematic associations. Generally with regard to musical form we can distinguish movements of the Suite:

I. that form loose sets of melodic ideas of a similar character. These pieces exhibit a paratactic structure, best exemplified by I.B. “lyrical,” with a few varied phrases, softly floating in parallel thirds and sixths which are stated in different yet related keys. The formal principle is sequential variation.

II. Other movements show increasing or decreasing dramatic suspense as, for instance, I.E. “annihilated” and II.d. “Unleashed.” These are based on ostinato motifs and extended passages with shifting dynamics, texture, and harmony. The formal principle is development.

III. Yet other movements involve changes of scenery or perspective, e.g., II.a. and II.B., which the Handbuch recommends for parallel action.15 II.a. “Happy departure” differs from other pieces in its montage-like form which interpolates the opening segment from I.c. “Spooky” and a short segment from I.B. “lyrical.” While there is a transitional passage between the “misterioso” portion of the beginning and the hunt music in F major at (2), possibly accompanying a change of scenery, quotes from I.B. “lyrical” are simply inserted into II.a. in the contrasting keys of E major at (7), G major (8), and a¨ major (13). The formal principle of such movements is change, contrast, or diversity.

The segments of each movement of the Suite are numbered and separated by double barlines, comparable to Becce’s “Notte angosciosa” and Zamecnik’s “Storm Scene,” although Erdmann’s movements are much longer. Note also the functional change of notation in modular photoplay pieces: breath marks, fermatas, repeat signs, double barlines, and rehearsal numbers indicate potential breaking points, closures or jump marks for rearranged performances.

One of Erdmann’s major points in criticizing both traditional music adapted to the screen and newly composed photoplay music was their design of ternary a–B–a forms that are foreign to the trajectories of cinematic editing and drama. Kurt london picked up this point in his monograph on film music.16 To circumvent this obstacle, Erdmann’s Suite was to function not like a sequence of definite cues but rather like a musical kit to build ever-new combinations tailored to different film scenes of similar character. Two years after its publication he addressed this issue in an open letter to the journal Film–Ton–Kunst:

If we want to believe at all in the artistic future of illustration in film music, a piece of film-music illustration will cease to be a musical work to be played through from beginning to end […]. My suite is, to my knowledge, the first deliberate attempt to facilitate individual formal design. None of the 10 pieces is meant to be used in its present form, which sometimes is possible but not the rule. We are facing a new task, then, namely that such music, in order to be useful, needs to be arranged in advance.17

15 Becce et al., Allgemeines Handbuch der Filmmusik, vol. 2, 42.16 london, Film Music, and Siebert, Filmmusik in Theorie und Praxis, 122.17 “Wenn wir überhaupt an eine künstlerische Zukunft der illustrativen Technik bei der Filmmusik glauben wollen, so wird ein film-musikalisches Illustrationsstück immer mehr aufhören, eine Musikpiece zu sein, die



The ten movements of the Suite each have between five and 22 segments, and 127 segments altogether. In order to “illustrate” not just Nosferatu but any fantastic-romantic film drama, the modular pieces and their segments provide considerable variety, lest the accompaniment become boring. Of course, the instrumentation could be changed depending on the local ensemble and the character of the scene. The former was common practice in cinema music;18 the latter is recommended with detailed suggestions by the Handbuch. Moreover, variety in the Suite is achieved on a semantic level (musical characters or topoi) and on a structural level. although the segments are brief, some consisting of a single measure, they are not formless. all of them are suitable for building larger structures and supporting the dramaturgical architecture of extended scenes, like a medieval cathedral built from standard segments of arcs, columns, walls, and gargoyles. On a

man ganz einfach von anfang bis zu Ende durchspielen kann; […]. Meine Suite ist, soweit mir bekannt wurde, der erste bewusste Vorstoß auf dem Wege der individuellen Formgestaltung. Keines der 10 Stücke, […], ist so gedacht, daß es nun auch stets in der vorliegenden Form gebraucht werden soll: es ist das zwar gegebenenfalls möglich, aber keineswegs die regel. da stehen wir also vor einer neuen Forderung, nämlich der, daß solche Musik gewissermaßen der ‘vorherigen Zurichtung’ bedarf, um brauchbar zu werden.” Hans Erdmann, “Problematische Praxis: Ein offener Brief,” Film–Ton–Kunst 8, no. 4 (1928): 67.18 ludwig Brav, Thematischer Führer durch Klassische und moderne Orchestermusik zum besonderen Gebrauch für die musikalische “Film-Illustration” (Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1928), supplement.

small-scale level of form we may distinguish features of flexibility regarding:

I. Harmony: Simple schemes leading from I to V may be looped as often as needed or connected to other segments in related keys (Fig. 4). Segments with predominating diminished triads, diminished 7th chords or chromaticism may serve as harmonic wild cards to connect virtually any other two segments.

II. Syntax: Short musical phrases (I.a. “Idyllic,” segments 2–3) and multi-phrase periods (II.a. “Happy departure”) can be used as themes for screen characters, recurring locations, moods, or objects. Segments with contrasting musical ideas in close succession are useful to quickly establish a sense of dramatic conflict (I.E. “annihilated”). Some segments are explicitly designed for optional closure (Fig. 5). Sequences or repetitive figures can be extended or looped as long as needed for increasing or fading dramatic suspense and for static or contemplative scenes. For example, it would be easy to loop the first two measures of segment 2, or segments 2+3 or segment 3 alone in Figure 6 ad libitum.

III. Texture: There are homophonic segments (II.B. “Weird”; I.E. “annihilated”) and those featuring a leading voice over a

Figure 4: erdmann, Fantastisch-romantische Suite (Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1926), i.B. “lyri-cal,” mm. 1–5, piano-conductor. © Boosey & Hawkes; reproduced with permission. Asterisks indicate that vl, vla, vc, and cb may enter successively at different points in the score.



Figure 5: erdmann, Fantastisch-romantische Suite (Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1926), i.D. “Stormy,” mm. 5–15, piano-conductor. The inscription translates “only for a possible closure.” © Boosey & Hawkes; printed with permission.

Figure 6: erdmann, Fantastisch-romantische Suite (Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1926), ii.B. “Weird,” segments 2–3, piano-conductor. © Boosey & Hawkes; printed with permis-sion.



subdued accompaniment in the manner of a song or aria. They serve well to stress individuality and express emotions, e.g., with a camera close-up or dolly-in on a face. Sustained notes or chords, ostinatos, and pedal points (II.a. “Happy departure”) are further musical devices to accompany growing or fading suspense, periods of dramatic stasis, contemplative moments, and the like. contrapuntal segments may accompany complex, ambiguous situations or even create an uncanny mood. Figure 7 shows the beginning of II.d. “Unleashed” with alienated counterpoint patterns of the Baroque period:19 the soggetto in the manner of early keyboard ricercari and

19 Erdmann was well acquainted with Baroque music. He studied musicology in Breslau (see his thesis: Hans Erdmann, Katholische Kirchenmusik in Schlesien [leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1912]) and arranged Monteverdi’s Orfeo for its first modern performance in 1913.

motets (accelerating, as it were), the Lamento topos of a chromatically descending bass line (encompassing a tritone instead of a tetrachord), and the stretto entrances in tritone intervals (suggesting a distorted fugue) produce rhythmic, harmonic, and formal ambiguity that the Handbuch recommends for “night and growing dread.”20

Furthermore, motivic relationships connect several movements of the Suite. Some motifs recur in different pieces and thus could possibly assume a leitmotivic function. after all, photoplay pieces are not definite works but material for cinema music, and thus the integrity of form and semantics (the network of leitmotifs) is a matter of ad hoc arrangement. Siebert identified a “signal figure” (Fig. 8), comprising a changing note and a leap upward, as the most

20 Becce et al., Allgemeines Handbuch der Filmmusik, vol. 2, 4.

Figure 7: erdmann, Fantastisch-romantische Suite (Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1926), ii.D. “Un-leashed,” segment 1, piano-conductor. © Boosey & Hawkes; reproduced with permission.



prominent motif throughout the Suite.21 The signal motif has its first appearance in I.c. “Spooky” and is quoted in every subsequent movement (except for II.c.) in different registers and varied orchestrations.

I.c. “Spooky” (Fig. 9) features two topoi of silent film music, the first one being a “misterioso,” the second one an “agitato.” Other than former photoplay pieces, “Spooky” resembles a symphony or symphonic poem en miniature with its rising and falling dramatic curve: its opening with high-pitched sustained octaves and distorted horn fifths is a musical topos of “beginning” familiar from Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, and Mahler. The little drama further includes bird calls at (2), a brief danse macabre at (6), and finally the signal motif ominously calling from afar. These diverse segments do not fall apart, though, because they are connected by sustained notes and motivic development; for example, the bird calls at (2) prepare one of the Suite’s main motifs at (5). compared to Zamecnik’s “Storm Scene,” the movements of Erdmann’s Suite, even though they retain the segmented structure, have greater variety, development, and coherence.

Modular Form in Historical Perspective

Modular techniques of borrowing, arranging, and composing persisted well into the sound era.22 The transition did not mark a total and abrupt change in the industry. Becce, Erdmann, axt, Mendoza, and other leading figures of the silent period were hired by the studios and continued to use the established repertoire and “mood catalogs” of music for the

21 Siebert Filmmusik in Theorie und Praxis, 148.22 as we finalized this essay, Bartolomiej P. Walus published his discussion of modular film composition according to theories by Sabaneev (leonid Sabaneev, Music for the Film. A Handbook for Composers and Conductors [london: Pitman, 1935]), Schillinger (Joseph Schillinger, The Schillinger System of Musical Composition [2 vols.; New York: da capo Press, 1978 (1941)]), and a wide variety of film scores from Eric Satie to the present (Bartolomiej P. Walus, “Modular Structures in Film Music: The answer to Synchronization Problems?” The Journal of Film Music 4, no. 2 [2011]: 125-55, actually issued in late 2014).

“talkies.”23 as Tom Schneller pointed out, Bernard Herrmann still used to compose his scores based on small musical cells in ever-new combinations and variants.24 Even the minimalistic film scores of Michael Nyman, Phil Glass, ludovico Einaudi, and others exhibit characteristics of modularity, let alone the music for video games, which is deeply integrated into the modular design of the software itself.

In its early stage, the modular design of photoplay music did not fit well with the major trends of compositional theory. Most treatises of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries try to combine an architectural and a logical paradigm, i.e., methods to compose established forms (top down) and, at the same time, to let motivic cells grow into an integrated organic whole (bottom up), thus justifying its status as a work of art. Neither of these strategies is useful in composing music for screen dramas, which do not fit the molds of sonatas, rondos, etc. and do not allow music to develop on its own terms for an extended period of time. On the contrary, as a functional (heteronomous) art, genuine film music and its emerging techniques of the 1920s are largely incompatible with traditional teachings of composition.

What, then, would be the historical context of modularity in photoplay music? We find similar principles at work among a very diverse range of

23 The music in Warner Brothers’ early sound film The Terror (1928) largely consists of photoplay music. Stock pieces from the silent years also went onto the soundtrack of Universal’s Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), and many other early horror sound films; see William H. rosar, “Music for the Monsters: Universal Pictures’ Horror Film Scores of the Thirties,” The Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 40, no. 4 (1983): 390-421. Still today, commercial services offer “production music” for films, TV and radio shows, advertisements, and video games. They originate in rental libraries of cinematic stock music in the silent period, and many categories and search terms of their databases use the traditional topoi of old card catalogs of the 1920s. de Wolfe ltd. (london), one of the largest providers of production music today, was established as a distribution service for cinema sheet music by Meyer de Wolfe in 1909.24 See Tom Schneller, “Easy to cut: Modular Form in the Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann,” The Journal of Film Music 6, nos. 1–2 (2012): 127-51. It was probably Fred Steiner who introduced the term “module technique” in his essay “Herrmann’s ‘Black-and-White’ Music for Hitchcock’s Psycho,” part 1, Film Music Notebook 1, no. 1 (1974): 29-36. Bill rosar pointed out structural similarities between Herrmann’s modular technique, film music of the early sound period, and photoplay pieces from the silent period; see his editorial “Bernard Hermann: The Beethoven of Film Music?” The Journal of Film Music 1, nos. 2–3 (2003): 121-50.

Figure 8: erdmann, Fantastisch-romantische Suite (Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1926), i.C. “Spooky,” segment 9, signal motif



styles and genres before, during, and after it took root in the silent cinema. Musical chance games and combinatorial experiments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries take a modular approach to composition. Best known are permutational schemes for dice games by Kirnberger, c.P.E. Bach,

and others to combine bars into a little Minuet or a Polonaise, and even individual parts into a contrapuntal piece.25 certain compositions by

25 leonard G. ratner, “ars combinatoria: chance and choice in Eighteenth-century Music,” in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Music: A Tribute to Karl Geiringer, ed. H.c.r. landon and r. chapman (Oxford: Oxford

Figure 9: erdmann, Fantastisch-romantische Suite (Berlin: Bote & Bock, 1926), i.C. “Spooky,” segments 1, 2, 5, 6, piano-conductor. © Boosey & Hawkes; reproduced with permission.



debussy and Stravinsky have been associated with filmic montage due to their stratified texture of interlocking strands.26 also, avant-garde composers post-1945 wrote music in open form that would be different in each new performance depending upon the choice of the performers.27 Such structural similarities are striking, indeed. However, we tend to agree with Scott d. Paulin’s skepticism about “correlations without causation” between debussy’s music and cinematic montage.28 In fact, all the similarities of these instances and modular photoplay music are superficial. It should be regarded neither as “Stravinsky light” nor proto-avant garde, nor a belated ars combinatoria.

Yet modular techniques of film music did not come out of the blue. There is strong evidence of historical links to modular practices in various genres of theatrical music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Scholars of nineteenth-century american theater are familiar with the connections between stage and screen dramas, and the symposium at long Beach in 2012 revealed how well musical repertoires fit into this picture.29 a close look at musical structures in historical perspective can add more pieces to this jigsaw puzzle, and arguably nineteenth-century ballet, vaudeville, pantomime, and spoken drama not only yielded a musical repertoire but also paved ways of modular thinking and practice that proved

University Press, 1970), 343-363; Sebastian Klotz, Kombinatorik und die Verbindungskünste der Zeichen in der Musik zwischen 1630 und 1780 (Berlin: akademie-Verlag, 2006).26 See richard langham Smith, "debussy and the art of the cinema,” Music & Letters 54, no. 1 (Jan. 1973): 61-70; rebecca leydon, “debussy's late Style and the devices of the Early Silent cinema,” Music Theory Spectrum 23, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 217-241; Mark McFarland, “The Origins of a Method,” Journal of Music Theory 48, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 295-324. The principles of interlock, stratification, and synthesis have been theorized first by Edward T. cone, “Stravinsky: The Progress of a Method,” Perspectives of New Music 1, no. 1 (1962): 18-26. On possible influences of debussy’s short-phrased style on Bernard Herrmann’s modular technique, see rosar, “Bernard Hermann,” 137. 27 The term “open form” refers to various kinds of indeterminacy often using some kind of musical modules for flexible performance: Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Klavierstück XI (1956) offers 19 musical modules that the performer can choose at will, whereas the 53 melodic patterns of Terry riley's In C (1964) are to be performed consecutively. Each member of the ensemble may repeat the cells ad libitum, but “performers should stay within 2 or 3 patterns of each other” (riley). Open form based on modules became a trademark of Earle Brown’s compositions. John Zorn’s game pieces (e.g., Cobra [1984]) and file-card compositions (e.g., Spillane [1987]) use short segments in highly diverse styles for improvisation. Zorn was inspired, among other sources, by Stockhausen’s concept pieces and the cartoon music of carl Stalling with its abrupt changes of diverse textures, styles, and topoi.28 There seems to be a good dose of irony in debussy’s advice: “appliquons à la musique pure le traitement du cinématographe” [let us apply cinematographic treatments to pure music] in order to cure the audience from boredom with, and misinterpretations of, Bach and Beethoven. See debussy’s review in Revue Musicale S.I.M. 9 (1913), no. XI: 44, and Scott d. Paulin, “‘cinematic’ Music: analogies, Fallacies, and the case of debussy,” Music and the Moving Image 3, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 10.29 Proceedings of “From Nineteenth-century Stage Melodrama to Twenty-First-century Film Scoring,” california State University, long Beach, april 12–14, 2012, in The Journal of Film Music 5, nos. 1–2 (2012).

to be convenient in the new medium of film. It is certainly no coincidence that the music of all these genres is strictly functional and often compiled and arranged ad hoc rather than being composed, and, like cinema music in the 1920s, it was often criticized for deficiencies, in particular its patchwork design, in comparison with opera, music drama, and autonomous instrumental music. Such standards turned out to be even less helpful once the rhythm of dramatic action was fixed on a film reel. Up to this point, the predecessors of film music had to dwell in the souterrain of music aesthetics.

There are some clues of terminology and practice that should be taken into consideration before discussing formal traits of modularity. The institutional heritage of the cinema and its music is obvious in the word Film-Theater, let alone “overture” or “melodrama.” More interestingly, the term Bühnenmusik in German nineteenth-century sources is not restricted to music on the stage but could also refer to any musical accompaniment of the stage.30 as music during the play—that is, incidental as well as atmospheric pieces and melodramatic “underscoring”—Bühnenmusik thus prefigured cinematic practice. The tasks of a nineteenth-century Kapellmeister included not only rehearsing and conducting but also arranging music, in particular at a theater. Wolfgang Zeller, Paul dessau, Hanns Eisler, Paul Hindemith, Mark lothar, and Edmund Meisel (to name but a few Berlin-based film composers of the 1920s) had a strong background in theater music. They knew how to arrange stock pieces and produce dramatic “cues” at short notice. Hans Erdmann, too, had first-hand experience in this line of work. Before he went to Berlin, composed the Nosferatu score, penned many essays on film music, and co-authored the Handbuch, he held appointments at five different theaters.31 The term Inzidenzmusik—a major functional category of film music in the Handbuch, sometimes mistaken for “diegetic music”—is obviously adopted from theater language. So is the term cue, applied already in the nineteenth century to pieces for the accompaniment of a melodrama (“melos”). These early musical “cues” foreshadow modular form insofar as they are quite short and marked by stereotypical headings for “plug and play” during the show: hurry, mysterious, choral, etc.32 Etymology testifies practice: the music was literally cued by stage action.

30 See angelika Tasler, “Schauspielmusik in den historischen Beständen des coburger Theaters,” in Theater mit Musik. 400 Jahre Schauspielmusik im europäischen Theater, ed. Ursula Kramer (Bielefeld: transcript 2014), 126.31 See the biographical information on Erdmann in Siebert, Filmmusik in Theorie und Praxis.32 See Henry Wannemacher, Melo-Dramatic Music, containing 20 Numbers or Dramatic Cues, such as Hurries, Combats, Tremolos, Mysterious Music, &c., &c.



The widespread practice of compilation also forms a link between (non-operatic) theatrical music and early modular photoplay music. While there is no need to describe compilation in silent film music accompaniment, it is worthwhile to recall strikingly similar traditions of theater music in the nineteenth century.33 Most German theaters had their own music library of both original compositions and stock pieces, which Ursula Kramer aptly termed Fundusmusik (literally: prop room music).34 These collections held overtures, entr’actes, and many generic pieces for standard scenes comparable to cinema music libraries in the 1920s.35 anton reicha’s treatise on composition of dramatic music—one of the few essays in this genre—testifies in 1833 that dance numbers at the Parisian operas were predominantly arranged from pre-existing pieces, such as “sonatas, quartets, symphonies etc.” reicha describes the required flexibility of the arrangements in terms that anticipate the tasks of a cinema Kapellmeister:

consequentially, the dance melodies of the composer almost always need to be changed thus: 1st they need to be shortened or extended, 2nd arranged for other instruments, 3rd omitted altogether and replaced by another piece instead, 4th changed in tempo, 5th supplemented with a short introduction or 6th a coda etc.36

Musical quotations flourished in this genre, and Parisian ballet pantomimes could even draw criticism for having too much original music because, by mere association with the original lyrics of a quoted aria or chanson, a “speaking melody” or “musical proverb” was a very efficient means to explain, or comment upon, the silent action on stage.37 This practice was common in the early cinema and persisted well into the sound era, particularly in Max Steiner’s scores. However, musical borrowing is much more restricted

(New York: a.M. Schacht, 1878).33 See also carlo Piccardi: “Pierrot at the cinema: The Musical common denominator from Pantomime to Film,” trans. Gillian B. anderson, Music and the Moving Image 1, no. 2 (2008): 37-52; 2, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 7-23; 6, no. 1 (2013): 4-54.34 Ursula Kramer, Schauspielmusik am Hoftheater in Darmstadt 1810–1918. Spiel-Arten einer selbstverständlichen Theaterpraxis (Mainz: Schott, 2008), 17.35 On cinema music libraries and their taxonomies see Plebuch, “Mysteriosos demystified,” 84-90.36 “Il résulte de tout que les airs de danse du compositeur éprouvent presque toujours les changements suivants: 1o On les raccourcit ou on les allonge. 2o On les instruments autrement. 3o On en supprime pour en mettre d’autres à leur place. 4o On en change le mouvement. 5o On y fait de courtes introductions. 6° On y ajoute des codas, etc.“ anton reicha, Art du Compositeur Dramatique, ou cours complet de composition vocale (Paris: costallat, 1833), 247.37 “l’emploi de ces airs parlants, de ces proverbes musicaux est d’un grand secours pour l’intelligence de la pantomime des ballets,” article “Proverbes musicaux” in M. castil-Blaze, Dictionnaire de musique moderne, vol. 2 (Paris: Magasin de musique de la lyre moderne, ²1825), 177-180.

in ballets and films than in operas, piano, or chamber music, for any quotation had to fit in the dramatic syntax, and had to start and stop just in time with the visible, wordless action.

In the late 1830s and 1840s, however, compilations for ballet as well as for spoken plays were met with growing criticism: the lazy composer “opens all known sources, he chooses a handful of known airs, he makes an inlay of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, doche, adolphe adam, Monpou, Gluck, rossini, auber, and has a head and a tail, many heads and many tails, and abracadabra, voilà à new ballet.”38 Nonetheless, smaller houses continued with musical patchworks for ballets, dance numbers in operas, and spoken plays throughout the century.

By the mid century most German theaters employed an orchestra, even those whose repertoire did not (or only rarely) include operas and operettas, let alone ballets.39 Their Bühnenmusik often included melodramatic pieces, less so in published scores (for example, in Beethoven’s music for Goethe’s Egmont) but more frequently in actual practice.40 Not surprisingly, the first known instance of melodramatic passages in a composition for a repertoire drama (Johann andré’s music for King Lear, 1778–79) has been compared to filmic montage due to its quick mood shifts alternating, as it were, between two different perspectives.41

Two cases in point from the early twentieth century are Eduard lassen’s music for Goethe’s Faust and Felix Weingartner’s music for the same drama.42 Both scores consist of incidental pieces (songs, hymns, dances, etc. on stage), topical numbers (fanfare, religioso, mysterioso, etc.), “mood music,” and melodramatic passages including a heavy dose of tone painting, runs, tremolos, and sustained chords—stock patterns of musical accompaniment for screen melodrama as well and not only in Germany. lassen’s

38 La France musicale February 3, 1839, quoted in Marian Smith, “Borrowings and Original Music: a dilemma for the Ballet-Pantomime composer,” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, 6, no. 2 (1988): 3-29, here 14.39 See, for example, the listings of employees in Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach (1854–1893) and similar annuals.40 cf. albert Schaefer, Historisches und systematisches Verzeichnis sämtlicher Tonwerke zu den Dramen Schillers, Goethes, Shakespeares, Kleists und Körners (leipzig: Merseburger, 1886), 6. Schaefer also points out that music for spoken plays, like stage props, should be rather flamboyant and not too subtle.41 Ursula Kramer, “Zur Bedeutung Johann andrés für die Herausbildung einer neuartigen, ‘analogen’ Schauspielmusik. Seine Kompositionen zu Macbeth und King Lear,” in Carl Maria von Weber und die Schauspielmusik seiner Zeit, ed. dagmar Beck and Frank Ziegler (Mainz: Schott, 2003), 69. Kramer refers specifically to andré’s melodramatic accompaniment of the witch scene.42 Eduard lassen, Musik zu Goethes Faust, parts 1 and 2, Breslau: Hainauer, c. 1900; Felix Weingartner, Musik zu Goethes Faust, leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1907.



and Weingartner’s scores include verbal cues from the script, which the conductor must follow closely while observing the stage.43 The stage leads the conductor, not vice versa. Thus, conducting music to a film would have been less of a challenge for a seasoned theater Kapellmeister than for an opera conductor in the 1920s. Moreover, both lassen’s and Weingartner’s scores exhibit characteristics of modularity, such as double barlines and fermatas separating sections of different characters as well as instructions to repeat brief passages if need be.44

When Hans Erdmann advertised his Fantastisch-romantische Suite as the “the first deliberate attempt to facilitate individual formal design” of accompaniments to various films, he slightly overstated the novelty of this conception. His achievement was rather to take some time-proven methods a few steps further on a path that cinema and theater musicians like himself had pursued for well over a decade. However, there is no single straight road leading from the nineteenth-century stage to the early twentieth-century cinema. Our notion of a “prehistory” implies a perspective on the past as a ramified network of diverse practices. Hence we have tried to reconstruct the daily problems of a cinema Kapellmeister in the 1920s, the practical conditions and the resources to solve them. like any cinema musician in these years, he had to learn on the job, and he did so by applying and altering the repertoire and routines he knew. In conclusion, we think that neither Italian opera nor the Wagnerian music drama was as good a working model as was music for pantomime, ballet, vaudeville, and spoken drama. They do not constitute film music avant la lettre, to be sure, but they provided materials, methods, and models that turned out to be useful when pictures were set in motion.

43 “In all melodramas, the conductor must follow the tempo of the actor so that all the cues exactly coincide with the measures where they are written.” (“Bei allen Melodramen muss der musikalische dirigent dem Schauspieler im Tempo folgen, so dass die Stichwörter genau auf die Takte fallen, wo sie stehen.”) lassen, Musik zu Goethes Faust, part 1, 12.44 “repeat this measure until the cue” (“dieser Takt wird wiederholt bis das Stichwort fällt”), footnote in lassen, Musik zu Goethes Faust, part 2, 96. likewise, Weingartner suggests repeating single phrases of one number as required by the change of scene. (“Von den Takten * – * können Takt 1–4, 5–8, 9–12 und 13–16 beliebig wiederholt werden, falls die Verwandlung noch nicht fertig ist. Eventuell werden alle 16 Takte, oder die ersten 8, oder die letzten 8 noch einmal gespielt.” Weingartner, Musik zu Goethes Faust, 25.



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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited withoutpermission.

hans erdmann’s score for nosferatu and the idea of modular form

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