The Sounds of the Silents in Britain

Julie Brown is Reader in Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has written on early twentieth-century music (especially Schoenberg and Bartók), television music and film music. Her publications include Bartók and the Grotesque: Studies in Modernity, the Body and Contradiction in Music, and Western Music and Race, which was awarded the American Musicological Society's Ruth A. Solie Award.Annette Davison is Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on film music and sound, music for the stage and for television. Publications include Hollywood Theory, Non-Hollywood Practice: Cinema Soundtracks in the 1980s and 1990s (2004), Alex North's A Streetcar Named Desire: A Film Score Guide (2009), and, with Erica Sheen, American Dreams, Nightmare Visions: The Cinema of David Lynch (2004).

• Introduction: The Sounds of the Silents in Britain ; Julie Brown and Annette Davison ; Speaking to Pictures ; 1. Professional Lecturing in Early British Film Shows ; Joe Kember ; 2. "Now, where were we?" Ideal and Actual Early Cinema Lecturing Practices in Britain, Germany and the US ; Judith Buchanan ; 3. Eric Williams: Speaking to Pictures ; Stephen Bottomore ; 4. Sounding Scottish: Sound Practices and Silent Cinema in Scotland ; Trevor Griffiths ; Accompanying pictures ; 5. "Suitable music": Accompaniment Practice in Early London Screen Exhibition from R. W. Paul to the Picture Palaces ; Ian Christie ; 6. The Art of Not Playing to Pictures in British Cinemas, 1906-1914 ; Jon Burrows ; 7. "The efforts of the wretched pianist: Learning to Play to the Pictures in Britain, 1911-1913 ; Andrew Higson ; 8. The Reception of British Exhibition Practices in The Moving Picture World, 1907-1914 ; James Buhler ; Performance in cinemas ; 9. Selsior Dancing Films, 1912-1917 ; Stephen Bottomore ; 10. Song Performance in the Early Sound Shorts of British Pathe ; Derek B. Scott ; 11. Atmospheric Film Prologues and the British Film Trade Papers, 1919-1926 ; Julie Brown, Royal Holloway ; 12. Animating the Audience: Singalong Films in Britain in the 1920s ; Malcolm Cook ; Musicians, Companies and Institutions ; 13. Workers' Rights and Performing Rights: Cinema Music and Musicians Prior to Synchronized Sound ; Annette Davison ; 14. Sound at the Film Society ; John Riley ; 15. Edmund Meisel's "visual sound" in The Crimson Circle (1929): The Case of the Vanishing Part-Talkie ; Fiona Ford ; Bibliography ; Index

This collection fulfills a need for addressing the history of British cinema sound, in which music was hardly covered in the 1930s. Especially for students and faculty interested in British cinema music ... Highly recommended.