Silent Films/Loud Music

Essential reading for anyone who is interested in the art of silent film accompaniment, both past and present. Johnston analyses silent film scores with the keen eye of someone who has created some of the seminal works in the field himself. * Ken Winokur, director and percussionist for Alloy Orchestra * A handful of publications about silent film music have been written by composers who have equal credentials as scholars, and with this book Phillip Johnston has joined their esteemed ranks. It's high time for a book like this, one that engages with the phenomenon of new scores for old silent films. Johnston's rich and authoritative discussion probes the notion that new music for silent films is a form of re-examination, not only of the films but also of what film music can be. * K.J. Donnelly, Professor of Film and Film Music and Director of Doctoral Programmes for Film, University of Southampton, UK * Silent Films/Loud Music is a relentlessly fascinating book about how music occultly welds itself to image, to story, character and memory to create fascinating new alloys of art. Johnston argues that music never simply serves a film, it collaborates with images to create entirely surprising new imagistic effects. The act of creating a modern film score for a decades-old silent film involves a lively cooperation between the living and the dead; the latter are brought back to life, conditionally, for this important teamwork, their efforts warm as the quick, frequently resulting in airborne effects, complete and utter reorganizations of the film canon! It's exciting to comprehend, thanks to this ardent and beautifully researched book, just how much and how mysteriously music affects film, elevates it, reinvents it, and not just in the silents-and not just film either, but the narratives by which we come to understand our own lives. We're only beginning to understand everything, one realizes while reading these pages. Once it opens up new vistas of understanding, this book shows us the first few truly exciting steps we're about to take. Cinephiles! Read this book! * Guy Maddin, director of My Winnipeg and The Saddest Music in the World * The book provides a valuable insight into the practice of writing music for silent film, both traditional and modern, in theoretical and historical ways, as well as from the perspective of the author's own creative practice. * Loudmouth * Quite literally eye-opening. * Limelight *