Contemporary Music Review

Vol. 27, Nos. 2/3, April/June 2008, pp. 171 177

What is Film Music?

Preface by Hyesu Shin

This article by Stefan Wolpe appeared in 1926 in Das Kunstblatt, a renowned but
controversial periodical with avant-garde tendencies that today is regarded as one of
the most important art-historical sources of the Weimar Republic.1 Wolpes article
belongs among the few essays on music. Despite the subtitle, Monthly Journal for
Artistic Developments in Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Literature, Music, the
periodical was largely dominated by the visual arts. The founder and publisher was
Otto Westheim, promoter and publicist of Expressionism, who was especially
interested in Oskar Kokoschka.2 This might help to explain the style of Wolpes
article, which can be described as thoroughly expressionistic, as one sees already at
the beginning with his critical yet amusing exclamations. His treatment of the topic
of film music accords with the spirit of the journal, which aimed to be international,
pluralistic and modernistic, and valued above all avant-gardist novelty. According
to Jost Hermand and Frank Trommler, the journal promoted Expressionism, then
Constructivism and finally Neue Sachlichkeit, but beyond all these aesthetic
standpoints it sought from all these movements the highest standards (Hermand
& Trommler, 1978, pp. 389ff).
Contributors who wrote for the journal included George Grosz, Oskar Schlemmer,
Le Corbusier, El Lissitzky, Theodor Daubler, Carl Einstein, Gustav Schiefler, Willy
Wolfradt, Will Grohmann, Alfred Kemeny and Ernst Kallai (Windhofel, 1995,
p. 332). In addition to Wolpes article in 1926 there were five essays on contemporary
music, including three by Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt. In the first issue he wrote an
article In Praise of the Gramophone, and in numbers 2 and 10 on Josef Matthias
Hauer3 and Ernst Krenek, respectively. In number 7, Hanns Gutman wrote on Opera
Outside of Berlin. Articles informed readers about film at irregular intervals; in 1926,
there were five brief notices in the reviews section.
Wolpes article consists of four parts. After a brief introduction he proceeds in the
next two parts to discuss what constitutes the essence of film music and how it ought
to be produced. In conclusion there is a kind of proclamation in which Wolpe calls
on musicians to produce with courage good and proper music for films.
It is noteworthy that Wolpe speaks of music for the cinema (Kino-Musik), as in the
original title, Was ist Kino-Musik? Although he uses Cinema Music and Film
Music interchangeably, he clearly favored the term Kino-Musik when he was pressing
ISSN 0749-4467 (print)/ISSN 1477-2256 (online) 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/07494460801990155

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his argument. The article has Film-Musik twice and Filmmusik once, indicating a
preference for the hyphen that marks a visual division between film/cinema and
music. With Cinema-Music the distinction between film and music is experienced
as a spatial and visual fact and thus is made more conscious to the reader than with the
term Film Music.4 It is precisely because film and music are two independent art
forms that are unified in the cinema that Wolpe makes an aesthetic point that could
also apply to the musical theater. In fact, his view on the musical theater is similar to
that of Kurt Weills, above all when Wolpe in the third section of his article discusses
the importance of rhythm in the creation of film music: A scenes rhythm, then, must
become the primary technical basis for the music. The Gestus was one of the central
ideas of Weills musical theatre: [The gestic means of music] is expressed first of all in
a rhythmic fixing of the text (Weill, 2000, p. 86). Rhythm is thus the decisive
dimension by means of which the music unites with the moving picture in the film and
with the text for the stage. The desired result in either case is music that, in terms of
Busonis image, forms a suit of armor that has integrity in and of itself.
Wolpes interest in film and film music had a family background. His father David
Wolpe lost his business in the collapse of the economy after the war and for a time
managed a small chain of movie houses until that business also failed. After Wolpe
reconciled with his father in 1921 and returned to live at home, he supported himself
by playing piano in his fathers cinemas. He told his third wife Hilda Morley that he
enjoyed the job, for it gave him the opportunity to exercise his gifts for improvisation
(Wolpe-Rademacher, 2003; Morley, unpub., p. 102). Thus Wolpes ideas on film
music were grounded in personal experience. He must have learned about what was
effective from experimenting and judging the reactions of the audience, if, as he
writes, one only has the courage. Thus he was able to conclude his essay in confidence
with the challenge: Beginplease, finally begin!
Translated by A. Clarkson
Notes
[1] Westheim (1926). Wolpe noted in his diary in 1926 that he spent an evening in the Kunstblatt
circle with Deri (?), van Linken (?), H.[annah] Hoch and [Paul] Westheim (Wolpe, Diary I,
p. 96, SWC).
[2] Westheim published the first monograph on Kokoschka in 1918.
[3] An article by Hauer on The Theory of the Atonal Melos appeared in the Kunstblatt in
December 1924.
[4] Wolpes ideas on film music had important consequences for his compositions for the musical
theater. See the article in this issue on Zeus und Elida: Wolpes Kunstjazz Opera.

References
Hermand, J. & Trommler, F. (1978). Die Kultur der Weimarer Republik. Munich: Nymphenburger.
Morley, H. (unpub.). A thousand birds: A memoir of Stefan Wolpe. Hilda Morley Papers, Berg
Collection, New York Public Library.

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ber den gestischen Charakter der Musik. In S. Hinton and J. Schebera (Eds),
Weill, K. (2000). U
Kurt Weill, Musik und musikalisches Theater: Gesammelte Schriften, mit einer Auswahl von
Gesprachen und Interviews. Mainz: Schott.
Westheim, P. (Ed.). (1926). Das Kunstblatt: Monatsschrift fur kunstlerische Entwicklung in Malerei/
Skulptur/Baukunst/Literatur/Musik. Wildpark-Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft
Athenaion.
Windhofel, L. (1995). Paul Westheim und Das Kunstblatt: eine Zeitschrift und ihr Herausgeber in der
Weimarer Republik. Koln/Weimar/Wien: Boehlau.
Wolpe-Rademacher, I. (2003). Recollection. In A. Clarkson (Ed.), Recollections of Stefan Wolpe.
Available online at: http://www.wolpe.org.

What is Film Music?

Stefan Wolpe (translated by Sherri Jones)
1.
Soon enough this will demand serious attention. However, people are seldom more
boring than when it concerns matters of principle. Fussing at them would be too
unjust, for they are neither held rigorously enough accountable, nor has anyone made
it clear to them what its all about. How unfortunate it is that film music so quickly
outgrew its baby shoes. But now its over with! The lonely band members and
musicians left behind in the dark are long dead. The earnestness and harmony of the
harmonium are no longer, the amusing bum-bum-tremolo of the piano as well. Ah
ye magnificent premonitions of grand principles! Time and the inconsequentiality of
passing fashion have turned a deaf ear to what those masters of the dark with humble
inspiration produced, and what would be considered childish today will once again
be taken up, examined and developed by youngsters to come under more reasonable
circumstances.
2.
The film industry, after having established the infinite contrasts of infinitely human,
not to mention all-too human, actions into stereotypes, attempted to turn music into
the shadiest form of affect-art. One has seldom had the chance to discover the
gestures woven into cinematographic language in the noblest musics materials by
finding it expressed in the music; for the conductors are lousy and even worse than
that are their hearts.
Only good art forms possess their own psychic logic. The metamorphoses and
subsequent final forms of their Gestalt, the more precise exemplifications of their

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gradual fatesin short, their structuresare unfavorable, even irreconcilable, with

regard to their later use. An artistic phenomenon attains significance only within its
context, and its context alone is what proves its meaningfulness and shields it from
vainglorious self-reflections arising out of its many-facetted affects. The phrasing and
subdivisions of its proportions and dimensions, how efficiently its episodes (i.e., its
developments) are treated, that is, its conception and the realization of the ideaall of
this (and those with experience certainly know more!) is stimulated through the
intelligence of a well-trained, abundantly creative, talented economist. How, one may
ask, has it become possible to cause an intact art form to become so utterly
meaningless, so meaningless that it is not even in a position to serve new demands,
much less capable of crystallizing new meaning? One took from music what it couldnt
give, but didnt take from it what it would have been able to give (albeit not of its own
accord)! They took away the atmosphere and manhandled its articulations, yet they
didnt take its forms, though doing so would have destroyed its consciousness. They
forgot how easy it is to cultivate form whose motivations would not have been
psychological and whose Gestalt would not have been the worst identification.
It is necessary to be clear about the reason why music should accompany (really
accompany!!!) or illustrate a film. The essence of an accompaniment reinforces the
synthesis of the materials; the essence of an illustration reinforces the acoustic markers of
the events taking place and their forms of articulation. An adequate understanding of
what constitutes truly good film musicthus able to translate by way of its sounds,
communicate through its rhythms and phrasings, and judge by its rests and pauses
is possible only through the unification of these two disciplines.
The better the film, the more compelling and unambiguous its actions and
upheavals, and the purer its mimetic outpourings and the rhythm of its pictorial
sequences are, then the more the problematic issue of musics sound is directed
toward the most rudimentary units of motion. The more monumental the impulses,
shapes and suggestions on the screen are, then the more monotone and modest, yet
all the more sure-footed music is in its expression! The assuredness of such music is
that it refrains from reinforcing or intensifying the most vigorous gestures, doesnt
participate in the agitations, tragedies and more high-strung, temperamental
episodes, but rather furnishes the only thing that matters: reflexive graphics. For
the purpose of film music is the dissolution of all one-sided mimetic intensities that
portray [malen] instead of describe [schildern]. What language suppresses cannot be
compensated for by gestures; conversely, music, through its sound and more
importantly its pictoriality, is itself saturated with postures and symbolic gestures in
which the individual characters and their parallel ornamentation find their realization. Music as ornament hardly captures an audiences undivided attention, because
music accompanies it. Music accompanies both the audience and the film, and it is
essential to realize that music entertains the senses in order to stimulate the
audiences imagination [Vorstellung].
Film musics expression resides in nuance, and the value of the nuance resides in
the eloquence of its affect! Music comprehends a gesture without making it. It is not

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supposed to produce it, rather it is the actors job to demonstrate it. Music expresses
itself only in one specific direction while the actor experiences all his traumas. Music
has no other reality beyond its notes, indeed no other, and yet it possesses the ability
to influence sensory and private feeling, which it then proceeds to capitalize on by
capturing the audience before the actor does. In the meantime each actor is hardly
aware of this, and therein lies the magic: the actor fosters a calming of the senses by
charming them all so as to rattle just one of them more thoroughly.
3.
Film music is not concert music. In the beginning was the rest. The rest in music does
not mean: no music. (We do not want to give those without talent the benefit of the
doubt; it would be best that they not begin at all.) It is a mistake to demand of music
that it adapt itself to us. Woe to a film if its bad! Only a bad film serves as a
playground for antiquated and foolish tragedies, for idiotic rhapsodizing and
unceasing melodrama. These days one is apparently reluctant to die on screen, which
is a good thing: one more reason for music to be denied its elegiac posturing. The
more subtle a scenes rhythms are, the more dynamic the plasticity and fate of the
characters and crowds are, the more ascetic their feelingsthe more focused their
goals and prejudicesthen all the more challenging are the responsibilities of the
music. There is no room for even the best melody in film, since it would have to be
listened to, and in a movie the music is not meant to be heard, unless, of course, one
values being taxed. Away with the musical props by Massenet, Auber, Thomas and all
the others, which died an all-too just deatha death so just that it could hardly stand
the transformation even in the dark. Film music is without character, it is neither
sublime nor proud; this music is soley destined for versions, formulas and types of
sound, it is prepared beforehand and prepares for what comes next: it lacks the
wherewithal of something that develops so that it can understand itself. There is no
other possibility! As true as it is that the film determines the music, it is equally
unquestionable that film music doesnt make music, for if it did, it would have to
begin somewhere, and it happens not to prefer to begin properly, to keep from
developing the wrong way. Current film music instrumentalizes emotions without
any sense of its gradations. It is dramatic and always eager to be upset, whether it is
dealing with intimate tragedies or raging and bloody circumstances. It goes along
with everything, although it actually is a part of nothing, and the very last thing it has
to offer in the way of stupor and drunken exactitude is emphasisalthough it cant
even differentiate between the colors that determine the emphatic. One can read
about what kinds of ridiculous principles and dated bad taste one still pays tribute to
today in a recently published manual for film illustrations (by Otto Junne, Leipzig).1
Good music for the cinema guides the effects of a scene. First one has to study the
rhythm of a scene, even when its structure is built entirely differently. Music must
nevertheless strive to emulate a scenes imagined, more sublimated potential, thus, its
utterly pivotal power centerthen, in the same way that rhythm melds together the

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more fragile impacts and outpourings of every feeling, the music should be a
magnificent framework for the situation, through the finest reflections and (the
above-mentioned) reflexive graphics, which, without a trace of vehemence, ultimately
leads to more temperate contours, forms and vivid arpeggiosseeing to it that it
avoids stepping on a scenes toes or misleading the audience with its melodramatic
asthmatic wheezing. A scenes rhythm, then, must become the primary technical basis
for the music. Out of this the music then etches out all the precise articulationthe
articulation of the atmosphere, of the characters, of relationships and all their
unambiguous and ambiguous tensions. Howevertaking care to never intimidate or
impose upon a scene, thereby advertising its vulnerabilitiesmusic, with its innate
strengths, should never detract from whatever is momentarily being expressed or
highlighted on the screen. In the same way, the music can neither allow itself to
burgeon into an auditory vehicle nor into an entourage of affects; its criterion is
instead founded upon each specific type of rhythm in which the movements
homogeneity is elucidated, exposed and sublimated in the most versatile way.
The intrinsic difference between rhythm and tempo is still being contorted into the
worst possible directions. Tempo is a form of rhythmic effect; rhythm is a form of
essential relationships. Music that tries to attain psychic sensations by way of tempo
destroys every nuance of intimate mobility and stimulation in that it makes the
visible seem normal instead of keeping it in check. Tonal constructions, soundscapes
and an unremitting, practically inconceivable rhythm are the tangible and more
modern fundamentals of this music. Only the kind of technical perfection that
transforms de-psychologized music into sublime energies is able to deliver that
particular aesthetic harmony in which the synthesis reconciles the effects of the
various materials and thereby renews its style through this amalgamation.
4.
The first thing that has to be done is a radical reorientation of all matter and
materials. Comedythe cinematic burlesquedemands its own musical characterizations, its witty, one-of-a-kind improvisations (minus any obbligato bass or any
obbligato descant), its skimming the cream off the top, its punch lines, spontaneous
impulsivities, and lively monodieswhat valuable prospects to be in command of
every situation, in every situation to be orchestra [Kapelle] and conductor [Meister]
alike.
Emphasize and pay attention to the rhythms, the rhythms that are the scenes
themselves. Grade the tone colors, sections and rest according to their contrasting
values. Hire virtuosos who grasp the passions of their instruments; experiment,
produce figures, passages and formulas. Colors and the rhythmic consequence of
tone-color-melody [Farbmelos] widen themselves into those gestures that are
imbedded in a great succession of entities! Why Grieg when the sun sets? Why
Chopins B-flat minor when someone is in a bad way? Why Beethovens Fifth every
time two or more are on the rampage? Music has no compassion! Its greatest

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contentment should be its passivity; its global character negates the instantaneous
passions on the screen. Music is only interested in the behavior of characters, crowds
and fates. When theres action, music should be meager; when theres no action in a
scene, it should be arrogant and just musical.
No more pre-composed music, not the bad, even less the good! Overlook
convention, which is a victim of weak nerves.
Good, convincing film music wont be performed by a hundred musicians who
could just as well be sitting in a symphony orchestra (if they would have learned all
they could), but by musicians who can pick up a cinematic effect with their ears and
savor it on their instrument. Beginplease, finally beginto create unpretentious
scores that no longer leave the music in straights, but gets it involved. Begin to hone
stylized fantasies that grant the scene freedom and suppleness without later finding
itself listed on censors sheets of melodic props, invoking neither the forms nor means
with which finer and more specific things are organized.
Have the courage to think of everything, and dont confuse nerves comfort and
the ill will of a poor and vaguely fickle audience with serious tasks worthy enough to
involve the brave and dashing minds of today.
Note
[1] Bijok, J. (Ed.). (1921). Handbuch der Film-Illustration. Leipzig: Otto Junne.