I'm watching Blood and Sand on the free streaming service Tubi and I'm so distracted by the music which sounds like some
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Silent
UralosBolivarian — 7 months ago(August 26, 2025 06:34 PM)
I'm watching Blood and Sand on the free streaming service Tubi and I'm so distracted by the music which sounds like someone just decided to mix random horn and blowing instruments throughout the 30 mins I just watched. Nothing at all resembling a proper score and sounds more like something from an old MS Dos game.
So I'd have to ask. I seen Nosferatu years ago on Youtube and the music was just random instruments thrown together to sound creepy but in reality sounds like a rushed random music put on that comes from a game on the old NES.
When I watched Birth of a Nation on Youtube, they used actual classical music but it sounds like something some random amatuer came up with.
Was music in the silent era really this bad? If not, than how come modern releases of old movies have such terrible music? Esp stuff you can find free on streaming services, internet archive, and esp Youtube?
The best score I heard was Intolerance on Youtube and while the music was good, it sounded just like a 3 hour long repetition of a single Piano track that plays over and over in the whole movie, often ruining the atmosphere because it loops in at inappropriate situation like the rape scene! -
Paul P. Powell — 7 months ago(August 26, 2025 10:48 PM)
I can't speak to whatever re-releases you may have seen where the distrib-co cobbled something together.
The silent flick re-releases I've experienced, I attended in the theater. In such cases, the music performed were new scores specifically written for the movie by contemporary composers
(Philip Glass, in two instances).
[Hard to ask for better than the Philip Glass Ensemble. That is certainly not 'cheap' music.]
Or else otherwise, they were the original scores re-interpreted in a new performance with new arrangement.
In some cases it was the original organ piece simply updated with a new performance on an organ, or played on something else besides an organ.
All of these found favor with me.
Perhaps you are neglecting that the typical instrument played during a silent movie was an organ. Are you familiar with organ music? It's not even remotely the same concept of movie music as we know it today.
In silent movies, the organ notes are not intended to serve as background. The range of instrumentation just isn't there. Instead, it's substituting for the actor's voices, changes-in-mood, and changes-in-facial-expression, changes-in-gesture. It's a foreground element. May certainly jar modern-day viewers.
In any case, popular music in the 'teens, '20s, and '30s was excellent stuff. I cue it up in my own playlists as much as 30-40% of all my music listening; even though traditionally I'm a hard rocker.
The great 1960s cartoonist Robert Crumb –himself a musician –liked that era so much he wouldn't even listen to any American music produced after '39.
Paul P. Powell, Pool Player -
Paul P. Powell — 7 months ago(August 27, 2025 03:42 PM)
Another clue which confirms how good popular music was in the early 20th c.: remember that it was the height of dance music in America.
In the '20s & '30s people were obsessed with dancing. Dance-halls were everywhere; any decent-sized city had dancehalls every few blocks.
That doesn't happen if the music is bad.
Paul P. Powell, Pool Player