Abstract
This comment, entitled Wünsche eines Kino-Stammgastes (desires of a movie theater patron) and printed in an Austrian trade paper in 1915, aptly describes a number of issues related to the musical repertoire heard in Vienna’s cinemas: exorbitant waltzes and marches, interspersed by opera and operetta arias, Wienerlieder z and pieces from the ‘classical’ canon had accounted for a considerable portion of the musical repertoire used in film accompaniment up to that point. However, despite this notion of a relatively small variety of typical Viennese music played in the city’s movie theaters the actual modes of musical accompaniment display a diverse and differentiated picture of the cinema sound in the ‘city of music’ during the silent film era.
Also the musical accompaniment has made significant progress, as the music numbers are now adapted to the film plot and — besides the perpetual waltzes and marches — also opera parts, Lieder and classical pieces are played.‘
Kinematographische Rundschau, 1915
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Notes
The most important studies include: Walter Fritz, Kino in Österreich, 1896–1930: Der Stumm film (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1981);
Michael Achenbach, Paolo Caneppele and Ernst Kieninger (eds.) Projektionen der Sehnsucht. Saturn — die erotischen An fänge der österreichischen Kinematografie (Vienna: Edition Film + Text, 1999);
Francesco Bono, Paolo Caneppele and Günther Krenn (eds.) Elektrische Schatten: Beiträge zur österreichischen Stummfilmgeschichte (Vienna: Verlag Filmarchiv Austria, 1999); and
Christian Dewald and Werner Michael Schwarz (eds.) Prater. Kino. Welt. Der Wiener Prater im Film (Vienna: Filmarchiv Austria, 2005).
Rick Altman (ed.) Sound Theory, Sound Practice (New York and London: Routledge, 1992): 9.
Derek B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis: The Nineteenth-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008): 117.
Bridging class divides was the very topic of operettas like Carl Zeller’s Der Vogelhändler which premiered at the Raimundtheater in Vienna in 1891. See also Christian Glanz, ‘Unterhaltungsmusik in Wien im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, in Elisabeth T. Fritz-Hilscher and Helmut Kretschmer (eds.) Wien Musikgeschichte. Von der Prähistorie bis zur Gegenwart (Vienna, Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2011): 495.
Siegfried Mattl, ‘Wiener Paradoxien. Fordistische Stadt’, in Roman Horak [et al] (eds.) Metropole Wien, Texturen der Moderne 1 (Vienna: Wiener Universitätsverlag, 2000): 22–96 (50).
See Walter Fritz, Geschichte des österreichischen Films (Vienna: Bergland Verlag, 1969): 22; and
Werner Michael Schwarz, Kino und Kinos in Wien. Eine Entwicklungsgeschichte bis 1934 (Vienna: Turia & Kant 1992): 22f.
The Urania, founded in 1897 as Wiener Urania Syndicat, was an association dedicated to adult education. The idea for this institution was born after University professors had been giving folkloristic public lectures at the University of Vienna, and the first Urania (named after the Greek muse Urania, the patron of astronomy), on which the Viennese association was modeled, was opened in 1888 in Berlin. Today, the space hosts a cinema and a lecture hall. For a detailed historical account, see Wilhelm Petrasch, Die Wiener Urania. Von den Wurzeln der Erwachsenenbildung zum lebenslangen Lernen (Vienna/Cologne/Weimar: Böhlau, 2007).
Rick Altman, Silent Film Sound (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004): 249.
The Österreichische Musiker-Zeitung noted 200 cinemas in Vienna in 1921. Johann Jaschke, ‘Entstehung und Organisation des Gremiums österreichischer Salonkapellenmusiker und-musikerinnen’, Österreichische Musiker-Zeitung (hereafter ÖMZ) 10 (1921): 115.
W. Waldmüller, ‘Ist die Kinomusik tantiemenpflichtig?’, KR 326, June 1914, 10–11.
Karl Biedermann, ‘Die Leiden der Varietémusiker’, ÖMZ 5 (April 1916): 34–37.
Richard Grünfeld, ‘Kinomusik und Filmillustration’, Mein Film 76, June 1927, 14.
Franz Lehár, ‘Ich lasse mich überraschen’, Mein Film 149, 1929, 4.
Alfred Grünfeld, ‘Kinomusik und Filmillustration’, Mein Film 76, 1927, 14.
Richard Grünfeld, ‘Kinomusik’, Die Kinowoche 8, 1919, 6.
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© 2014 Claus Tieber and Anna K. Windisch
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Tieber, C., Windisch, A.K. (2014). The Sound of Music in Vienna’s Cinemas, 1910–1930. In: Tieber, C., Windisch, A.K. (eds) The Sounds of Silent Films. Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137410726_6
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