Although women comprised the majority of American cinema accompanists during the silent film period (c. 1895–1927), few of their music libraries or compositions have survived, whereas collections created by male cinema musicians dominate the silent film music archives. Women musicians suggested, shaped, and helped define the musical tastes of the time; educated listeners; and showed how music could serve as a creative, narrative, and interpretative force in the cinema. I offer an accounting of extant collections by women accompanists and read their contents and contexts from a feminist perspective. Using hints and fragments found in letters, period trade journals, and catalogs, I then speculate on an imaginary archive, one that collects music composed or played by female silent film musicians whose work has been lost to us, but whose influence in the development of film music is unmistakable.
Imagining Women’s Archives of Silent Film Music
Kendra Preston Leonard is a musicologist and music theorist whose work focuses on women and music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and on music and screen history. She is the founder and Executive Director of the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive (www.SFSMA.org), and the author of numerous scholarly works, including Music for the Kingdom of Shadows: Cinema Accompaniment in the Age of Spiritualism; Music for Silent Film: A Guide to North American Resources; and Shakespeare, Madness, and Music: Scoring Insanity in Cinematic Adaptations. Her current book project is on race and gender in silent film music.
Kendra Preston Leonard; Imagining Women’s Archives of Silent Film Music. Feminist Media Histories 1 April 2024; 10 (2-3): 61–86. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fmh.2024.10.2-3.61
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