Music, Sound and Production Processes in Italian Cinema (1950-75): A Few Introductory Notes

Abstract

This double issue focuses on the artisanal and industrial settings that characterised music and sound production processes in Italian cinema during the period 1950-75. By addressing cinema from the vantage point of sound and music, we frame it as a ‘technological milieu’ that opens up two complementing research threads: (1) understanding the history of sound technologies and production processes in local film industries; (2) analysing how musicians related to film technologies, and the degree to which such technologies come to bear on composition processes. In line with this twofold perspective, we have attempted to identify particular traits of the Italian production system that might become useful reference points for other contexts. It is widely acknowledged that within the area of (especially cinematographic) sound technologies there lies a tension between local and global instances, and yet scholarship in this field is still young and not evenly distributed: besides Hollywood, in fact, inquiries on the history of sound technology in European cinema have only recently begun to come to light. As regards research in Italy, along with oral accounts, much progress has been made possible by the recent surfacing of archives and private collections that preserve the work of composers, technicians and studios. The time would seem ripe to combine archival, philological, historiographical, technological and ethnographic approaches and this very prospective inspired the conception of this double issue. International research is beginning to document the existence of rich and multifaceted practices that vary according to their historical and geographical context. Even when faced with standardised procedures, as is often the case with cinema, the history of cinematographic sound and film music is characterised by a plurality of adaptive processes: different contexts engender original practices and technical solutions that are intertwined with the specific artistic and stylistic conception underpinning each production system. In other words, whereas, the rapid diffusion and use of a given