Abstract
While only thirty percent of commercial silent era films survive today, there are still thousands of pieces of music composed and arranged for this medium that remain extant in archives and libraries, including those housed at universities and museums, in rental collections, and online. Music for Silent Film: A Guide to North American Resources lists archives and libraries that house this surviving early movie music, track down publications from the period about how and what to play for the movies, and provide details on more recent secondary sources devoted to the history and analysis of the music used for the silent cinema. These various resources for research in silent film music offer countless topics and materials for examining the use, signification, and preservation of silent film music. This article provides two case studies that demonstrate how print and online materials can be used to research a particular genre of silent film music. The first case examines music for “spook tales” (films involving the supernatural) held by the University of North Texas in the Music Library’s Special Collections, and the second details the reception history of the scores for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1916 epic film, Joan the Woman.
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