Organ accompaniment to silent films, part 3 – the activity of Robert Hope-Jones and its importance

Abstract

The idea to write music for silent films, both in a form of written-down scores and composed live has experienced its renaissance for more than ten years. Thanks to a quite decent number of preserved theatre instruments and also due to the globalisation and wide data flow options connected with it, the knowledge and interest in Anglo-Saxon tradition of organ accompaniment in cinema were able to spread away from its place of origin. The article is the third part of four attempts to present the phenomenon of combination of the art of organ improvisation with cinematography and it was based on the fragments of the doctoral thesis entitled “Current methods of organ improvisation as performance means in the accompaniment for silent films based on the selected musical and visual work”. The dissertation was written under the supervision of prof. dr hab. Elżbieta Karolak and was defended at the Ignacy Jan Paderewski Academy of Music in Poznań in 2020. The article focuses on the profile of Robert Hope-Jones, an eccentric creator of cinema organ. It describes the period preceding the time when typical theatre instruments called “Mighty Wurlitzer” acquired their final shape, i.e., from the introduction of first electromagnetic tracture innovations in England, to the establishment of Hope Jones’s collaboration with the Wurlitzer company in the United States of America and the creation of instruments of the Unit Organ type.