Jeff Lyon: Compositional Comparison of Czech and Classical Hollywood Cinema

Classical Hollywood filmmaking clearly made an impact on international cinema, even in the early years of film. But to what extent did early compositional practice in Hollywood influence other film composers around the world? This presentation is based on two main research topics:
The first is the Max Steiner Digital Thematic Catalog. This project is a collaboration between Jeff Lyon (Music Catalog Librarian, Brigham Young University) and Brent Yorgason (Music Theorist, Brigham Young University). Several sub-topics from the Max Steiner corpus will be outlined that have arisen from this corpus study, such as: stock music repurposing, diegetic and non-diegetic interchange, genre-specific scoring, early manuscript analysis, and overall corpus study principles.
The second project is sponsored by a Fulbright Scholar grant to the Czech republic and focuses on cataloging and identifying early Czech film score primary resources. Data from this research will be made available to film music scholars and will provide location data for primary sources.
Although both projects are ongoing, some similarities and differences can be drawn between compositional practices of early Hollywood and early Czech sound film. A focus will be placed on thematic compositional scoring.

Further Informations

The lecture is creditable for MUWI Aktuell