Category Archives: From the Director

SFSMA Executive Director Kendra Leonard on the uses and adaptations of cue sheets for NewMusicBox: “Taking a Cue: Accompanying Early Film.”  See SFSMA’s collection of cue sheets at http://www.sfsma.org/ARK/22915/category/cue-sheets/!

If you missed Leonard’s first article on music for silent film on NewMusicBox, you can still read it at “New Music for a New Art Form.”

SFSMA Executive Director Kendra Leonard has authored four articles for NewMusicBox on music for silent films old and new! Check out the first installment of this series at New Music for a New Art Form: Photoplay Music, which includes information on music for early cinema, excerpts from SFSMA-held scores, and recordings by Ethan Uslan.

Future articles will be on topics including how accompanists used (and altered and ignored) cue sheets; scoring silent films today using yesterday’s music; and new music for silent film.

We’ve just digitized and uploaded almost 60 cue sheets from the Silent Film Collection at the American Music Research Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. These cue sheets were used by Claire Hamack, an accompanist, and include her notes and, in a few cases, her original themes for films. To find any of these, search for “Hamack.”

Pianist and SFSMA fan Michael Brown recorded all of the Sam Fox Moving Picture Music (see and download PDFs of  Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, and Vol 4. ) and put it up on YouTube! Check out this great recording here and follow Brown on Twitter at @ImMichaelBrown. Thank you, Michael!

Thank you to those of you who donated to SFSMA on #GivingTuesday in support of digitizing Erno Rapee’s Motion Picture Moods! We raised $375.00. We are planning on one more round of fundraising in the spring and will digitize the book over the summer of 2018.

Donors (in alphabetical order):

Dr. Paula Bishop

Dr. Maribeth Clark

Dr. James Doering

Dr. Samuel N Dorf and Dr. Maria Kisel

Dr. Naomi Graber

Dan Sanderson

Are you ready for #GivingTuesday? Want to help SFSMA bring more music to the world?

SFSMA wants to raise $750 to fund the digitization of Erno Rapee’s classic 1924 anthology of silent film music, Motion Picture Moods!

Motion Picture Moods contains more than 500 pieces of music organized by mood and by composers who both pre-date the silent film era and those who wrote specifically for the screen.

A benefactor has donated an original copy of the book to SFSMA, but we need to digitize it and add it to the catalogue, and that takes people power.

Help us fund this digitization! SFSMA will include all donor names on the main SFSMA website and on the catalogue page for the volume, and will send every donor a special SFSMA decal as a thank you!

You can donate directly at http://www.sfsma.org/support-the-archive/. You do not need a PayPal account to donate! Tag your donation with #givingTuesday so we can properly acknowledge your gift.

Thank you!

Dr. Colin Roust, Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Kansas School of Music, has been awarded an in-house General Research Fund grant to digitize the Chuck Berg Silent Film Music Collection. Working in conjunction with the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive (SFSMA.org), of which he is an officer, Roust will supervise and assist two University doctoral students, Brent Ferguson and Justin Sextro, in cataloguing, digitizing, and uploading the collection to SFSMA.org. over the summer.

Charles “Chuck” Berg (1941–2016), who taught film and media studies at the University of Kansas staring in 1977, donated his substantial music collections to KU’s Gorton Music and Dance Library in 2000. The Berg Collection includes the film music library of the Grand Opera House in Dubuque, IA. Built in 1890, the Grand was the premiere opera theatre in eastern Iowa at the turn of the century. In 1915, the theatre began showing silent films, a profitable decision that in 1928 led to its conversion into a full-time movie theatre. During the 14 years in which it screened silent films, the Grand’s music staff amassed a sizeable collection of pieces written specifically for accompanying silent films, often known as photoplay music. The Berg Collection’s photoplay music is especially valuable for researchers and present-day accompanists because it includes not just music for a single piano player, but full orchestral parts, which have been preserved in good condition and which feature a number of rehearsal and conducting notes that shed light on how the music was actually used.

The Silent Film Sound and Music Archive is delighted to have a hand in bringing this important collection to a wider audience and hopes to have the project completed by December 2017.

For further information, please contact:
Dr. Colin Roust, Assistant Professor, Musicology, KU, croust [at] ku.edu

Dr. Kendra Leonard, executive director of the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive, director [at] sfsma.org

Atlas Obscura writer Cara Giamio has been tracking down a cue for villains that earned its fame through parody. She contacted SFSMA director Kendra Leonard, SFSMA patron Ben Model, and Rodney Sauer of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra on her way to the truth!

Full article at: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-the-quintessential-villains-melody-snuck-into-the-popular-consciousness

SFSMA is delighted to announce that it has completed adding more than 300 pieces and 2300 instrumental parts to the Archive, thanks to the GRAMMY Foundation and Ben Model/Silent Cinema Presentations, Inc. You can find these pieces by searching under “Grammy”–enjoy!

Ragtime pianist Ethan Uslan dedicates Episode 9 of Carolina Shout to music for the silent film from SFSMA! Ethan interviews SFSMA director Kendra Leonard and plays selections from the repertoire Ethan recorded for SFSMA thanks to a grant from the Society for American Music.