Modernism at the Movies - 'the Cabinet of Dr. Caligeri' and a Film Score Revisited

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Modernism at the Movies: "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and a Film Score Revisited Author(s): Julie Hubbert Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 88, No. 1 (Spring, 2005), pp. 63-94Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3601013Accessed: 20-10-2015 01:50 UTC

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The Twentieth Century and Beyond and Texts and Contexts

Modernism at the Movies: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and a Film Score Revisited

Julie Hubbert

In film history, few films have cast a longer shadow, especially in the history of silent film, than the German classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Even today, scholars view Caligari as one of the greatest films of the silent period and a landmark in the history of German cinema. Its famously distorted sets and fantastical, macabre imagery have influenced generations of filmmakers and challenged an equal number of scholars and critics to explain its significance from a variety of perspectives.

When the film premiered in Berlin in February 1920, it was an enormous success with German audiences and also with critics, who were impressed by Caligari's innovative narrative and production design. A good deal of the attention the film generated centered on its unusual scenario, which mixed elements of the mystery and horror film genres in an unprecedented way. Written by first-time screenwriters Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, the film tells the story of a strange and mysterious somnambulist, Caligari, who travels from town to town with his charge Cesare, leaving a string of unexplained murders in their wake. More remarkable than the film's narrative structure and its twist ending, however, was its production design, which featured the work of Hermann Warm, Walter R6hrig, and Walter Reimann, three painters who were active in the expressionist movement. Instead of constructing conventional sets, they executed their design ideas on a series of two-dimensional painted backdrops, drawing the town's exteriors and interiors-its win- dows, doors, rooftops, chairs, and staircases-at sharply distorted, vertigi- nous angles. These visual eccentricities extended to the film's exaggerated and theatrical costumes, makeup, and even lighting, all of which cast the film's disturbing narrative in an extreme world of shadows and light.1

In the long and varied critical history that this film has acquired since its premiere, scholars have examined Caligari's unique characteristics

doi:10.1093/musqtl/gdi002 88:63-94 Advance Access publication December 12, 2005 ? The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].



64 The Musical Quarterly

from a number of different perspectives. The film has been seen, for instance, as the product of the German film industry, an industry that despite a crippled postwar economy was flourishing because of a German embargo against Allied films. Caligari was the product of Universum Film Aktien Gesellschaft (UFA), a studio that not only wanted to emulate the Hollywood model, but also wanted to compete with it by experimenting with a more stylized and artistic approach to filmmaking.2 The film's unusual design has also been interpreted as the representation of expressionist philosophies and the distinctive postwar psychology that described much of the art in Germany between the wars. Many scholars have described Caligari as the quintessential expressionist film, as the epitome of the decadent and often macabre art that characterized much of Weimar culture in the 1920s.3 It has also been read as a film that reflects the political ideology of the Weimar government and the nascent agenda of National Socialism that would soon flourish in its wake.4

One of the more recent chapters in Caligari's critical history has focused on the reception the film received outside Germany, particularly in the United States. The same unofficial ban that kept Hollywood films out of Germany during World War I also kept German films from being shown in the United States. During the war, Hollywood feared the competition from the German imports just as American audiences feared the propaganda, both overt and subliminal, the films might contain. In the early 1920s, however, as the embargo eased, American distributors eager to profit from Germany's severely crippled economy began to shop for German films to import to the United States. The first German film to reach U.S. theaters after the war was Ernst Lubitsch's French Revolution drama Madame Dubarry, renamed Passion for its American premiere at New York's Capitol Theater in 1920. The film was such a phenomenal success that its record-breaking profits inspired the Goldwyn film com- pany to import another German film that had also recently played to great popular and critical success in Germany: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.5

When Caligari premiered at New York's biggest movie palace, the Capitol Theater, in April 1921, it did so to great critical acclaim and record attendance. Pre-booked for a weeklong run at the Capitol, the film played from Sunday, April 7, to the following Saturday, April 13, four times a day to a sold-out or near-capacity audience. By conservative esti- mates, well over 70,000 New Yorkers saw the film in the theater's cavernous 5,000-seat auditorium over the course of the week.6 In addition to being tremendously popular, the film was also a critical success. In New York, and in all the other American cities it traveled to after its premiere, critics praised the film as an artistic achievement and analyzed its unusual qualities with a variety of critical "isms" that were being used to characterize



Modernism at the Movies 65

much of the decade's new art. Most saw in the film's plot and production design not only aspects of expressionism, but elements of cubism and futurism as well. Other critics, however, reviewed the film as a straight-up genre picture, a thriller or "whodunit" in the style of Edgar Allan Poe.7 This critical contradiction between art film and genre picture was a special feature of the film's American release and to some degree was fueled by two elements that were added to the film at its premiere in New York. Samuel L. Rothafel, the Capitol Theater's director, added an explanatory pro- logue and epilogue that in many ways erased the film's unique narrative ambiguities.8 But he also added a musical score that emphasized and heightened the film's modern and artistic ambitions. Rothafel gave Cali- gari a new and special musical accompaniment, a compilation score that was by all accounts daring and revolutionary and did much to heighten, if not hyperbolize, the film's radical visual imagery.9 Compiled by Rothafel, one of the most experienced and highly regarded musical directors of the silent period, and Erno Rapee, the conductor of the Capitol's highly trained eighty-piece orchestra, the musical score itself was an achievement because it contained repertoire that had never before been heard in a film score. To accompany this highly unusual cinematic spectacle, Roth- afel and Rapee used the music of several of the day's most ultramodern and controversial composers, including Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev.

In Caligari's long critical history, this unique musical score has not gone unnoticed, but the discussion has been brief and articulated primarily by film historians, whose focus has been on interpreting the visual aspects of the film. In his history of silent film, for instance, George Pratt observes that the score represented a "staggering advance" in film accompaniment, but he offers no explanation of that achievement.10 David Robinson gives cursory mention to the score in his monograph on Caligari, observing briefly that it heightened the film's modernist characteristics.11 Kristin Thompson, in her detailed study of the reception of Caligari in the United States, England, and France, likewise comes to a similar and briefly reasoned conclusion. The score, she notes, "seems to have been part of an effort to emphasize the 'modern art' qualities of Caligari."12 Mike Budd's assessment of the score, while contradicting this conclusion, is equally unanalytic. As he sees it, the score overshadowed or "dismantled" the film's original "modernist ideal of the autonomous art work," not only by forcing it to adhere to the structural conventions of a compilation score, but also by tying it to a repertoire that already had its own separate modernist associations.13 Budd does little, however, to describe this modernist agenda in music, nor does he make any attempt to situate the score in a specific film music context. Instead he, Thompson, and Robinson support their brief references to the score simply by quoting large portions




of a review that appeared in the weekly music serial Musical America the week after Caligari's premiere.

However limited these analyses of Caligari's musical accompaniment are, they are more extensive than any in the film music literature. In fact, in this literature Caligari's American score gets almost no mention. In his book Sounds for Silents, for instance, Charles Hoffman reprints portions of the Musical America review.of the score but provides no accompanying com- mentary at all. In more recent studies of silent film accompaniment, references to Caligari's score have been equally vague or nonexistent. Gillian Anderson, for instance, gives cursory mention of it in her Music for Silent Films, but she, too, offers no analysis of either the score's content or its significance. Martin Marks makes no mention of it either, although admittedly his formidable text on silent film music, Music and the Silent Film, focuses primarily on scores and accompaniment practices before 1915. In the more comprehensive histories of film music, such as those by Roy Prendergast, Mark Evans, and Lawrence MacDonald, the spectacular event of Schoenberg and Stravinsky coming to the movie theater is not noted at all.

That this important score, one that articulated several "firsts" in film music accompaniment, should be so underrepresented in the film music literature is one oversight I hope to address in this article. But I also hope to correct assumptions film scholars have made about the score and the role it played in shaping the reception of the film in the United States. A closer and more detailed examination of the Caligari score from a purely musical perspective will, in fact, challenge several of those assumptions. It will confirm, for instance, that the oft-cited Musical America review is indeed essential for understanding the score, but it will also reveal that its text has not been analyzed to any significant degree, nor has there been any attempt to validate its observations by comparing them with reviews of the score made in other contemporary music sources. Several music serials, not only Musical America, reported on Caligari's daring musical score, and their reviews raise significant questions about the content of the compilation. Most film scholars have also suggested that a definition of European musical modernism in general was firmly established before the premiere of the film, and that the score brought a separate modernist subtext to the exhibition of the film. But a closer examination of the contemporary music literature finds aspects of this assumption highly ques- tionable. By re-examining well-known accounts of Caligari's score, but also by introducing new, previously unacknowledged descriptions of the compilation, this article will offer a clearer understanding of the role music played in the reception of one of the silent cinema's most important films. By describing essential aspects of the score that have been left unexamined, by investigating the larger reception the score received in




the music community, and by considering the general status of European modernism in the United States in 1921, this study will challenge many assumptions that have been made about the moderist intentions of both the score and the film. It will also provide a clear example of how the movie theater, a venue that has received little if any attention from American music scholars, played an important role, on at least one occasion, in the reception of new music in this country.

Caliga. Revisiting MusicalAmerica

The absence of a discussion of the Caligari score in the film music literature is no doubt due in part to the fact that the original score is no longer extant. Although few scholars have acknowledged this overtly, the original compilation score for the film does not appear to have survived. This is not to say that a score for Caligari does not exist. There is an annotated piano score for the film in the Museum of Modern Art's collection of silent film music housed at the Library of Congress, and an identical but clean copy of the same score is also in the Arthur Kleiner Silent Film Music Collection at the University of Minnesota.14 This Caligari score, however, is not the compilation described in the contemporary literature as having accompanied the film's New York premiere. It does not contain, for instance, any excerpts from Schoenberg's, Stravinsky's, or Prokofiev's works, music that the compilers themselves described in Musical America as being part of the score. This score is instead a compilation of conventional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music ranging from Beethoven and Schubert to Chopin and Grieg, as well as some contemporary cinema mood pieces by William Axt and Erno Rapee. Because there is no information about this compilation in either the MoMA or Kleiner collection, its origin and history can only be guessed at. While it is possible that this alternative score may have been compiled for the film's nationwide distribution that began just a few weeks after its New York premiere, there is little evidence to support this notion.15 A more likely possibility is that it was compiled much later by Arthur Kleiner, the pianist and Austrian emigre who ran the music department of the Museum of Modern Art's film division from 1939 well into the 1960s.16

In the absence of an original score, the article about Caligari in Musical America on 16 April 1921, the week after the film premiered at the Capitol Theater, offers the best alternative. (A reprint of the complete article is included in Figure 1.) Written by a reviewer identified only as B. R., the article boasts an interview with the compilers themselves, S. L. Rothafel and Erno Rapee, and a fairly detailed description of the




M:USIC AL AM ERICA 4

COMES STRAVINSKY TO THE FILM THEATER

:i'"'e of the Ultra-Modenists t Employed to Accompanv Remarktable Motion Picture at the Capitol Theater-- Distortion as Principle in

Adapting Motives to Night- mare Mood of Screen Plao --Latter an Origina: Tr,at-

meat of vs5 c l o p :, t h i c

W0t11 the opening of th5t md-houo< do., the crator, of the "The C.bict ol

Dr. Caligri" let in the lihth of Ioaingl t,on u;on thi mo-ie . With n geture

bold R:.1 admirable, they rai,?d the b:. mg flagC of iolturon whr, th. prosic h.a from the first held tith.. At {.s$ the camr prom to ;nher.t i

s rich ond rightful portin. Csamr" (the Somnambuolht) a Off the Hoeroineh in th.e Night--A Sriking Scene from "The Cabinet of Dr. Chligli

"The Cabinet of Dr. Clh g'ari" :s b.o Prootlyh tim A.oricA n prewirse of scheme of 'Dr. Catwilgr' pIopl.ooi

5curt;e:o 11;ls?j oSl ahs~ "Col"lig-i" ipioyed mu,ic czloultao -0 1.0 in 0.0 oul ii ijoIio ISo t. On, ~ ~~a.~oioSooO 00odo h-od o tdord =goo.o tOU a ,:PiY~3iT?L Jlr,;i r~r: --n th,c heiJghten its exotic character, to under- cracked ,-ctry ;s dotted with grote$que

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pr,v,pie~ of modcrm:..m a;phcd i;p; tk from the writingR of the modernmst.; De- t~,n. , ':: '-a steadily in m d e

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a !t! up Ii. Caorc. We we.t oo S,h6n-

re-?ron p ,ctur In tih

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hrg b , Debur. Stra-vi-ky, Prokofilt, an re /-. -;ai,"ju ;.i;c. his qr,;y music let S. L HRth.fel--in crti of Richard Strus for thematic material. irade, the: windew, s anrd d,>crp ;rea rd - - the artistic destinies of the big theatr-- We a :se, l our W : h~enl, ao3.igned char-

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: q~ak ,,cri-t;- :iet J 1 the principls o,f the -g}-r~, ]?he "{:g'c,t;nr" i,,, cc-.'~ f r "In handling the musical prob.en pre- pla.y a,:d :h,n proceeded to dugoft the e, r r. c planets; te -hado., arc uxtr.- x,ted by 'The Cabinet of Dr. Cllcarl mi*,'c, The me . It had, . it weru, to -mL.r ned Of:cac. Of t?,c t

.rrt-lr;':: , Mr. Rape (tthe conductor) and I fMlt k ir ma ,' e!ll;bie for citilenship in a -,d1-,1,1 it l-, r, that the orthodox thing -.ould -Lo do. right.-e ounrS

abdey'ir, a~ Exth~ hrilmp;r. orl !'.,r a,{s :ll. 'ift',m onccivtd slung revslut;onur? . .yte ;o-n iyT , :co i up on the Wgei :: s n -n t. lin- foo od foro si ore ofaithfully i'- 1 oii ik i the W,hd ryroo n

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..d :aS r For Cainr otif we went '.l.at ne s,~ n - he -hct:.. Lh ;', ,t Look pq,'hology into re?,oCKng--the to SLy.uks' * 'Til l Eulenspieg?l. Hi* .hich da-ce in a1 -l-b,ad br..n 'r,i:- p.ycholog' of the audience no les than- drn . -ur or is ug"stxl, .,h-,-1'., pi.), ir h-It. ta i p,?)cilu,cl-p,t ~:u~\ ? of the ploy. In the phorrln,nuL~or ic~il Cahjifl i or hif influence i at work on

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,--owed a bit from IN.-bu"y'. 'Afternoon ,,f a Faun,' Thea- main idea. appear imgly or together, whodle or in part, as :he psychgy of the tale demands. The i.eorin is not that of the original, but has I been chloo here and is contrived to

-mp}'.-izo the ..,abr-, Mdud brau was resorted to for most o o the S sionier sounds.

"I think I may confidntly, and justly. oy that the whole ropr,.ents ti o most daring musical achievement in the hi' oory of the American motion-pict1re theatr. We tried "ery hard with this picture. becauo we think o much of ik

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Figure 1. Headline trumpeting the ultramodern compilation score for the American premiere of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Musical America, April 16, 1921).

compilation's content. It also offers an assessment of the score's departure from convention and the new and daring things it was introducing to film music accompaniment. That the compilation was unusual and represented a "genuine musical departure" from traditional film accompaniments is an observation that is asserted at the very beginning of the article. After two paragraphs describing the film's unique visual aspects, praising it for raising the "blazing flag of futurism," the final five paragraphs of the article focus on the film's score, its content, and the method of

compilation that Rothafel and Rapee used to put the score together. This

;III IIIIII~




portion of the Musical America article has the additional distinction of offer-

ing primary source material. Most of the description is a direct quote, a firsthand account of the score from Rothafel, one of the compilers, himself:

Properly, the American premiere of "Caligari" employed music calculated to heighten its exotic character, to underline its fantastic aspects. At the Capitol Theater, where the film was introduced, the admirable symphony orchestra played a special score arranged from the writings of the modernists Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky and others. Of the compiling and adapting of the music let S. L. Rothafel-in charge of the artistic destinies of the big theater-speak.

"In handling the musical problem presented by 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' Mr. Rapee (the conductor) and I felt that the orthodox thing would not do. A film conceived along revolutionary lines called for a score faithfully synchronized in mood and development. We took psychology into reckoning- the psychology of the audience no less than of the play. In the phantasmagori- cal scheme of 'Dr. Caligari' people move and live in a world out of joint. The cracked country is dotted with grotesque houses, skinny twisted trees, enormously steep and rutted pathways.... The key principle of this sprawling architecture and wild terrain is, distortion. With that steadily in mind we built up the score. We went to Sch6nberg, Debussy, Stravinsky, Prokofieff, Richard Strauss for thematic material. We assembled our themes, assigned characteristic ideas to the principals of the play, and then proceeded to distort the music. The music had, as it were, to be made eligi- ble for citizenship in a nightmare country.

"The score is built up on the leitmotif system; quite in the Wagnerian manner. For Caligari's motif we went to Strauss's 'Till Eulenspiegel.' His idea recurs, or is suggested, whenever Caligari or his influence is at work on the screen. To identify Cesare, the Somnambulist, Mr. Rapee and I borrowed a bit from Debussy's 'Afternoon of a Faun.' These main ideas

appear singly or together, whole or in part, as the psychology of the tale demands. The scoring is not that of the original, but has been done here and is contrived to emphasize the macabre. Muted brass was resorted to for most of the sinister sounds.

"I think I may confidently, and justly, say that the whole represents the most daring musical achievement in the history of the American motion-

picture theater. We tried very hard with this picture, because we think so much of it. 'Caligari' is, to my mind, an imaginative masterpiece and a tri-

umph [of] directing. Musically no less than pictorially it opens up a virgin country."

As briefly back as five years Stravinsky or Schonberg in the movie house belonged to the inconceivable. To-day it calmly happens, and the audience calmly swallows the pill. It would have been far simpler, in preparing




accompaniment for this film, to dish up the old safe and sickening potpourri. The more admirable, then, is the departure made by Messrs. Rothafel and Rapee. The thing took more than courage; it meant double labor and it meant considerable expense. Four rehearsals were called. But the tune was worth the toll. The acrid air of Stravinsky has been borne into the film theater. It may clear the sweet murk before the last reel is run.17

While aspects of the score were indeed unprecedented and "opened up virgin territory in film accompaniment," other aspects of the compilation, the general form and structure in particular, were completely conventional. As Budd rightly points out in his assessment of the score, the compilation method that Rothafel and Rapee used to construct Caligari's score was, by the early 1920s, standard practice for film accompaniment in the New York movie palaces. Most compilations quilted together numerous pieces of preexisting music culled from popular music, concert hall repertoire, or collections and encyclopedias of cinema music. Most were also engineered to involve some measure, if not extensive use, of thematic repetition, or as Rothafel described it, they used a "a leitmotif system in the Wagnerian manner." A system of thematic presentation and development similar to Wagner's, in fact, had been a part of the film music discourse since the early 1910s and a regular part of cue sheet construction since the later years of that decade.18

Arranging this borrowed material into a coherent whole was also a conventional aspect of making a compilation score. Like the construction of any medley of music, film compilations required a certain amount of alteration especially to the phrase structure and cadences of the original material. Alterations of this sort were frequently made for the purpose of making one excerpt flow uninterrupted into the next. In many respects, Rothafel and Rapee follow conventional compilation practice by assigning themes to the central characters in the film and by "assembling" or alter- ing those themes so as to fit neatly together. While the two acknowledged modifying the orchestration of their source material for conventional reasons, however, they also acknowledged making some rather atypical changes. The orchestration or instrumentation was also rearranged or recomposed to give greater prominence to the brass section of the orchestra and the instruments they thought were best suited to musically express the sinister and the macabre. Only a recomposed version of the original material that featured the brass section of the orchestra more prominently was capable of acting as a kind of sonic companion to the film's dark and disturbing imagery. By describing this aspect of their compilation method as "distortion," as an extension of the more acceptable and benign process of assembling themes that most compilations engaged in, Rothafel called




attention to some of the extended techniques this unusual film demanded from the conventional compilation practices.

In reality, these distortions to the orchestration of the borrowed material were not as drastic or unusual as the modifications the compilers were forced to make to the orchestra's rehearsal schedule. Choosing and arranging the music for the compilation was not as difficult or "coura- geous" as rehearsing it. Of all the New York movie palace orchestras, the Capitol Theater's eighty-piece orchestra was known as not only the larg- est, but also the most skilled. Because film programs ran daily from noon until late in the evening, rehearsals for each new program and each new film accompaniment were typically held after hours, i.e., after midnight, from Thursday to Saturday before the Sunday premiere. While acts for any new program were rehearsed individually throughout the week in rooms beneath the stage, they and the film accompaniments were typically assembled formally in one or two of these late-night rehearsals.19 The ultramodern repertoire Rothafel and Rapee selected for the Caligari compilation, however, challenged this demanding rehearsal schedule. The extra two rehearsals it required ("four in all") created a significant strain on the already tightly scheduled and overworked orchestra, making them rehearse into the early morning hours not just for two nights, but for the better part of a week. And because the orchestra players needed to be compensated financially for the extra rehearsals, the score also taxed the theater's music budget by doubling its average weekly expenditures.

While many aspects of the score were unconventional, the repertoire Rothafel and Rapee chose was not only atypical, but was by all accounts unprecedented as well. Instead of using a "safe and sickening potpourri," a typical compilation of popular music numbers, mood music selections written specifically for the cinema, or excerpts from the oper- etta or light classical repertoire, Rothafel and Rapee daringly chose their selections not only from serious concert hall literature, but also from recent literature written for that venue. "We went to Sch6nberg, Debussy, Stravinsky, Prokofieff, and Richard Strauss for thematic material," they stated.

Upon closer examination, however, not all of the composers cited in this list were "modern" in the sense that the inclusion of their music in a film compilation was unprecedented. Both Debussy's and Strauss's music, in fact, had been a regular part of picture palace compilations for some time. In a Musical America article on film music repertoire in 1917, for instance, Debussy is described as already being a regularly featured composer in film accompaniments. Observing film accompanying practices in New York theaters, music critic John Alan Haughton wrote: "Sometimes there was at the piano some young student with real taste




whose knowledge of musical literature enabled him or her to improvise and to string together Chopin Nocturnes, 'Faust,' the 'Rakoczy' March, Debussy and Tschaikowsky as the scene or the inclinations of the music improviser demanded."20 Richard Strauss's music also seems to have been a regular part of film compilations. In the month preceding Caligari's premiere in 1921, for instance, Carl Edouarde, the director of the Strand movie palace orchestra, reported incorporating Strauss selections into one of his compilations. As Edouarde recounts, "a couple of weeks ago we ran Otis Skinner in 'Kismet' here at the Strand. If you saw the picture or remember the play you will recall the place when Skinner as 'Haji' is about to stab the merchant. Well, we used the music Richard Strauss has written for the scene in 'Salome' where John the Baptist is murdered. And it fit the scene admirably."21

Although there is evidence to suggest that some of Strauss's music, his orchestral tone poems in particular, was still virgin territory for film accompaniment, the modernity of the Caligari score did not rest on the inclusion of Strauss's or Debussy's works.22 What was unique about the score, as the headline of the article announced in bold typeface, was rather that Stravinsky's music had "come to the film theater." What made the repertoire of the compilation so exceptional was that Stravinsky was, for the first time, being used to accompany a film. Although the Musical America reviewer isolates Stravinsky in the title as the sole bearer of Caligari's uniqueness, presumably for space constraints, he reapportions the credit more evenly in the final paragraph of the article. It was both Stravinsky's and Schoenberg's music, he notes, that was responsible for having created a "daring musical achievement" in film music history.

"As briefly back as five years," observed the author, "Stravinsky and Schoenberg in the movie house belonged to the inconceivable." The inclusion of Debussy, Strauss, and even Prokofiev in a film accompaniment, it is implied, was not unprecedented. Rather, film music's virgin territory was being charted more specifically by the modernist compositions, the "acrid air," of two composers-Schoenberg and Stravinsky. The reviewer's declaration, in fact, is an observation that finds support in the contemporary film music literature. In the music serials before 1921, there is little evidence to suggest that either Schoenberg's or Stravinsky's music had been used in a film accompaniment.23

The final paragraph of the Musical America article, however, raises an interesting contradiction, one that has received little discussion in the Caligari literature. The film audience, the reviewer noted, did not resist the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, but instead "calmly swallowed" the modernist fare. The reception this music received in the movie theater, in other words, was noticeably different from the reception it had



Moderism at the Movies 73

received in the concert hall. Before Caligari, the description implies, the reception of Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's music had been marked not by calm, but rather by some level of resistance. While the critical appreciation of the compilation's content was informed by the reception these composers had previously received in the concert hall, the film audience's reaction to the music was also clearly at odds with that reception.

While most scholars have suggested that the score's modernist content profoundly shaped the reception of the film by importing not just Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's music, but their concert hall reputations as well, they have left this territory strangely unexplored and undefined. But as the Musical America review suggests, the concert hall reputation of these composers formed a crucial part of the initial assessment of the score. The contradiction between the reception of Schoenberg and Stravinsky in the two different venues suggests, in fact, that a clear definition of European modernism was not firmly in place in either the movie theater or the concert hall. Instead, the definition of musical modernism in both venues before 1921 appears to have been not only contradictory, but largely unformed as well. The Musical America article may be essential for giving, in the absence of an original score, the most detailed account of the compilation's content, but it raises significant questions about the nature of the modernism the score was thought to have imported, questions that necessitate not merely a wider examination of the reception of this film score in the contemporary music literature, but also a closer study of the reception of European musical modernism in the concert hall before 1921.

Caligarz Beyond MusicalAmerica

Contrary to implications in the existing Caligari literature, Musical America was not the only music serial that reported on the film's groundbreaking score. The compilation received significant attention in other contemporary music serials as well. The score was unusual enough from a musical standpoint that most of the major music publications of the day gave it some degree of special attention. Several of them, in fact, broke out of their regular reporting routines to do so. By 1921, the journals Metronome, Musical Courier, The Dominant, and Musical America had regular film music columns. These columns, however, were devoted primarily to describing the musical presentations featured each week at the big New York movie palaces-the musical selections and soloists that entertained cinema audiences between each film on the program. With the exception of Metronome, which had a long-running film accompaniment advice




column, these music journals did not regularly comment on the film scores themselves. The unusual content of the Caligari's score, however, forced these music journals to modify their reporting practices. Although most did not trumpet the occasion as loudly as Musical America did with a separate article and an attention-grabbing headline, all of the music journals devoted some space in their regular columns to discussing Caligari's unusual score.

These reviews reinforce the score's landmark status and the unprecedented territory in film accompaniment it inaugurated. One aspect of the compilation that they do not consistently reinforce, however, is its content. In fact they strangely contradict Rothafel's and Rapee's description of the score in Musical America. These reports describe a compilation that is different not only in terms of the number of composers drawn upon but also, more importantly, which composers were used.

Questions about the compilation's content surfaced with the earliest notices of the film. A week before the film opened at the Capitol Theater, the weekly music journal Musical Courier offered an assessment that, while supporting the view that the score represented a groundbreaking event in film music history, painted an entirely different picture of the compilation's repertoire:

Unusual interest has been created in the announcement that the Capitol Theater will show an imported film of cubist impressionism during the week of April 3, marking a new era in the making of feature films. This sensational picture is of German make and the principles of moder art have been employed, thus opening a new field for the adaptation of ultra- modem music to an excessively modern production. The musical setting, which is being prepared by S. L. Rothafel, is the result of a great deal of thought and consideration. The program will contain music by Strauss, Debussy, Moussorgsky and other distinguished moderists. The picture was somewhat of a sensation when it was first presented in Europe and prom- ises to surpass anything seen in this country in its utilizing the principles of advanced modem art.24

Although this review, which preceded the premiere of the film, may have been describing a draft version of the compilation, its content is quite different from the score Rothafel and Rapee themselves describe having compiled. In this account, the absence of Schoenberg and Stravinsky from the compilation is striking. It is as striking as the inclusion of Mussorgsky, a composer not mentioned by the compilers in their Musical America interview.

Musical Courier was not the only serial to offer a preview of the film score in its film music column. A discussion of the compilation's daring




content was also featured in the April 1921 issue of Metronome. In this preview, too, the content of the compilation is remarkably different from the Musical America account:

The announcement that S. L. Rothafel will present a foreign production utilizing the principles of modem art, introduces a new possibility in the adaptation of modem music to the films.

"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," which will be presented at the Capitol Theatre the week commencing April 3, demonstrates that the standards of art and production, which have hitherto been considered inflexible, can be discarded for a form of impressionism that creates and intensifies the mood and theme of the changing action.

The musical score is an important factor in the presentation of a screen production, and in this respect the introduction and development of music in the film world has been due to a large extent to the pioneering work of Mr. Rothafel. "Dr. Caligari" opens a new avenue of the music to this leader of exhibitors. The spirit of modem art is applied for the first time to the screen. The logical question here presents itself. Why not modem music in the presentation? The music of Strauss, striking, shimmering, biting tones in high and brilliant tints; the music of Moussorgsky rising from a soil that descends downward through all times and ages; the luminous phrases and limpid chords of Debussy will be brought for the first time to the temple of the motion picture. The possibilities are unlimited and the announced presentation is being anticipated with eager interest.25

This review, too, heralds the compilation as a milestone in film music accompaniment, a revolution in the selection of film compilation repertoire. But it also raises troubling questions about the authorship of those modernist selections. According to Metronome's reviewer, the score's distinction was that the music of Strauss, Debussy, and Mussorgsky, not the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, was being brought for the first time to the "temple of the motion picture."

The day after Caligari finished its spectacular weeklong run at the Capitol Theater, the Musical Courier carried a more formal review of the score in its 14 April film column. This review again notes the film's unique visual design and even speculates about its influence on the American film industry. But the most distinctive element in the review is the list of borrowed composers. In this account, that list is again different, and spectacularly so:

Then came this very extraordinary picture; for treatment and scenery there is certainly nothing on the American screen that is anything like it.




Just how this Cubist picture's success will influence our own film making is hard to determine just at this moment. Aside from the very extraordinary painted scenery, the story itself was all absorbing. Mr. Rapee, the musical director, arranged a very effective score, using the music of Debussy, Omstein, Strauss and many of our ultramodern composers. It has been some time since there has been as much interest created as at the Capitol last week.26

The repeated mention of Debussy and Strauss in this second Courier review would seem to make, in conjunction with the Musical America

account, the inclusion of those composers in the compilation all but certain. But the sudden and unanticipated inclusion of the American

composer Leo Ornstein is a dramatic and important development. It is as dramatic as the disappearance, once again, of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, and is very likely linked to it.

The Musical Courier review was not the only contemporary account to associate Ornstein with the Caligari compilation. The progressive com-

poser, who invigorated New York audiences regularly between 1915 and 1920 with his dissonant piano works, continued to surface in connection with the score well after the film left the Capitol Theater. In the film column in the August 1921 issue of Metronome, for instance, editor Jerome Lachenbruch referred to Caligari extensively in an article on the future of

original scores for feature films. Although he mentions Caligari primarily to criticize it as precisely the kind of film that should have an original score, not a compilation, it is not by accident that Ornstein's name is

again associated with the score:

Had Richard Strauss or Leo Omstein written a score for "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," which the writer considers one of the few genuine motion pictures ever made-the others being mere "movies"-an unusual combination of sight and sound must have resulted. While the score arranged for this picture was a workmanlike composite of kaleidoscopic and formal musical ideas, the lack of perfect union between music and picture was felt. Caligari called for a completely modern score, but it is doubtful if such a score could have been played throughout the country by the many little six- and seven-piece orchestras with which our Main Street theaters abound. Nevertheless, such musical treatment would have added to Caligari a new value. There is no reason why it could not have formed a symphonic nov- elty which could have been played in theaters throughout the country, like a theatrical or an operatic offering. The time will come when such performances will be not only general, but will also have the dignity of our present-day symphonic concerts.27

In this description of the score it is not so much the repertoire that is at issue, but rather the structure of the score. As Lachenbruch saw it,



Modemism at the Movies 77

Caligari's novel and artistic production design demanded a musical accompaniment that was daring not only in terms of repertoire but also in terms of form. The style of Strauss's and Ornstein's music may have matched the modem look of the film, but the expressive range of this repertoire was limited by the structural conventions of the compilation. For Lachenbruch, Rothafel and Rapee's score failed to give the film a commensurate sense of musical modernism not because its repertoire was not modem enough, but because the score's compilation or piecemeal for- mat was at odds with the film's unified visual and narrative style. The fact that Stravinsky and Schoenberg were also not logical candidates to give the film a corresponding sense of originality is as noteworthy, however, as Ornstein's continued attachment to the Caligari accompaniment.

Just as the fame of Caligari's ultramodern compilation score persisted, so too did the confusion over its content. In an article in the November 1921 issue of Metronome entitled "The Movies of Today and Their Music," the compilation was again hailed as an important achievement in film music accompaniment, one that had significantly changed the shape and sound of film accompaniment. As Metronome's reviewer heard it, the score's modernity was authored not by Stravinsky and Schoenberg, but by a different set of composers:

For some pictures the scores are so meritorious and appropriate as to travel with the films after they leave the New York houses. Hugo Reisenfeld's excellent score for "The Golem," a much discussed German film recently arrived, was sent to Boston along with a copy of the pictures where the combination equaled the metropolitan success. For "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," a violently futuristic Teutonic emanation, a score was prepared consisting of excerpts from the works of such men as Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Alexander Scriabin, Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel and other revo- lutionists and evolutionists, as Eugene Goosens terms them.28

For this reviewer, too, the compilation's most praiseworthy attribute was its revolutionary repertoire. But once again, identifying these modern composers seemed to challenge contemporary film music critics, if not escape them altogether. While Stravinsky was now a part of the compilation, Schoenberg and Prokofiev were still missing or had been replaced or displaced by yet another set of composers. This time it is Satie, Ravel, and Scriabin who, along with Stravinsky, are defining the sound of Caligari's modernism. Metronome's review, too, describes a remarkably different content, the most different yet from the compilers' own account in Musical America.

While these additional reviews of Caligari's score unanimously reinforced the unprecedented nature of the accompaniment, they also




consistently misidentified the compilation's content. None of them accurately recounted the compilers' own list of composers. All but one, in fact, failed to identify its signature feature, the avant-garde composers at the heart of the compilation, Schoenberg and Stravinsky. Some of this confusion is no doubt compounded by the fact that two of the accounts were previews and may have reflected draft versions of the compilation that were different from the final version. Eliminating these reviews from consideration, however, still leaves several descriptions of the score that depart significantly from Rothafel and Rapee's account. Another explanation that could account for the discrepancies in these additional reviews is that Mussorgsky, Satie, Ravel, Scriabin, and Ornstein were, in fact, part of the score, but were simply not referred to individually. It is possible that they were included but were assigned by the author of the Musical America review to the general category of "other modernists." This possibility too, however, seems unlikely considering that a unique feature of the score was that it included music never before heard in the movie theater. Had Rothafel and Rapee been introducing Ornstein's and Satie's music for the first time to the movie theater, they most likely would have trumpeted their arrival if not with a headline, then at the very least with specific mention of their names.

Rather, if the discrepancies in these reviews of the score attest to anything, it is that the definition of musical modernism was in the United States in 1921 generally vague and unformed. Without the access to the score or to its compilers that the reviewer for Musical America had, other film music critics had great trouble identifying who exactly was responsible for the score's ultramodern profile. A significant and previously unacknowledged part of this film score's history is that its content was something of a mystery even to contemporary critics. The discrepancies and contradic- tions in all of the contemporary accounts of Caligari's score point to a gap between knowledge of and experience with important European modernist trends, a gap present not just in the movie theater, but in the concert hall as well. The cumulative weight of these accounts demands even more emphatically than the Musical America article that Caligari's modernism be contextualized by a clearer picture of the reception of European musical modernism in the concert hall.

Cairgai and the Reception of European Modernism

If film music critics stumbled over the correct identification of Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's music in their reviews of Caligari's score, it was no doubt




because they and American concert hall audiences even as late as 1921 were generally unfamiliar with Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's work. In 1921, in fact, the sound of Europe's most modernist composers, Schoenberg and Stravinsky in particular, was almost as "inconceivable" to concert hall audiences as it was to moviegoers. In Schoenberg's case, this brief acquaintance with his work began late and ended quickly. American audiences were not exposed to any Schoenberg compositions until 1914, when the Flonzaley Quartet gave the first performance of his First String Quartet, op. 7, in New York.29 That same year New Yorkers also heard baritone Reinald Werrenrath sing Schoenberg's Lieder opp. 1-3, and Boston audiences were treated to the U.S. premiere of his Five Pieces for Orchestra, op. 16. The decidedly cool reception this significant orchestral work received, however, seemed to dampen enthusiasm for Schoenberg's music. In 1915, performances of his works were even more infrequent. Audiences in New York heard Leo Ornstein play Schoenberg's Three Piano Pieces, op. 11, and the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Society give the American premiere of the tone poem Pelleas und Melisande. That performance marked the beginning of a long, seven-year absence of Schoenberg's work from the American concert hall. After 1915 no further performances of Schoenberg's music were heard in U.S. concert halls until 1922.30

In many ways, this interruption was caused by World War I and the intense anti-German sentiment it created even in the arts. Even before the United States became actively involved in the war, an unofficial ban on the importation of German culture, and new modernist art in particular, began to be observed. In music, this censorship affected the performance of new German music and kept the music of highly controversial modernists like Schoenberg from being heard. 31 But as American critic Carl Van Vechten suggested in 1915 at the beginning of this ban, the reception of Schoenberg in the United States was also being shaped by the negative reception the initial, scattered performances of his work had generated. "To be sure," Van Vechten noted, "Schoenberg is barely a ghoulish name in this country, to be whispered shudderingly until some daring soul makes the Austrian composer a conventional thing of the past. The Kneisels have at last taken him up, if that means anything, and, of course, Ornstein has played him. The Flonzaleys have played a quartet and the Boston Symphony Orchestra has performed the five orchestral pieces.... This is as far as we have gone with Schoenberg."32

In terms of appreciating Schoenberg's new style of music, what was making a more significant impression on American audiences, even more than the sparse performances of his works, were the reports of premieres of Schoenberg's works in Europe featured in the American music press and




in scholarly publications. Many of these journalistic reports only added to Schoenberg's reputation as a "ghoulish" composer. In his essay on the composer in 1915, for instance, the American critic James Huneker, no doubt fueled by a healthy dose of wartime patriotism, described a performance of Pierrot Lunaire in Berlin with a mixture of disbelief and outrage:

In the welter of tonalities that bruised each other as they passed and repassed, in the preliminary grip of enharmonics that almost made the ears bleed, the eyes water, the scalp to freeze, I could not get a central grip on myself. It was new music (or new exquisitely horrible sounds) with a vengeance. The very ecstasy of the hideous! I say "exquisitely horrible," for pain can be at once exquisite and horrible ... your nerves-and remember the porches of the ears are the gateways to the brain and ganglionic centres-are literally pinched and scraped.33

Not all of the early Schoenberg criticism in American publications was so disparaging. In 1915, critic A. Walter Kramer championed Schoenberg's new modern style in the Musical Observer by calling not only for greater theoretical understanding of his work, but for more performances of it as well.34 The next year Egon Wellesz, one of Schoenberg's former students, mounted a rigorous defense of Schoenberg's modernism by way of an analytical survey of his works to date for the Musical Quarterly. In even these positive reviews, however, it is apparent that what was making the biggest impression on U.S. audiences were journalistic accounts of Schoenberg's music in Europe, not performances of the composer's works in U.S concert halls. In the opening paragraph of his article, Wellesz noted that Schoenberg was indeed "no longer a stranger to America." But if U.S. audiences enjoyed a familiarity with him, he continued, it was through "criticism in the daily papers and critical essays written in English," and not through performances of his work.35

Even long after the war and the unofficial end of the ban on new German culture, U.S. audiences continued to rely on journalistic accounts rather than actual performances of Schoenberg's work for their understanding of his new approach to composition. That these reports were also primarily negative only seemed to encourage the huge gap that was form- ing between knowledge and experience. In 1920, Musical America readers, for instance, were reminded that even though a successful performance of the Gurrelieder had just taken place in Munich, most of Schoenberg's compositions could scarcely be played without "the public expressing its disapproval by uproar and catcalls."36 In 1921, foreign correspondent Edward Dent colored his account of the London premiere of Schoenberg's Kammersymphonie, op. 9, for Musical America by describing the work as an




"almost self-consciously ugly work, especially in its orchestral coloring."37 Between 1915 and the premiere of Caligari in April 1921, the only exposure American audiences had to Schoenberg was through these journalistic accounts and a few scholarly publications, reports that perpetuated the characterization of Schoenberg as a "ghoulish" and difficult composer. Except for the brief and early flirtation with a few of his works between 1914 and 1916, these negative, secondhand reports continued to be the only experience American audiences had with Schoenberg's modernism before the premiere of Caligari in 1921.

Although Stravinsky was not subjected to the same wartime bias against new German art as Schoenberg was, U.S. audiences had only very limited exposure to his musical modernism before Caligari's premiere. The Boston Symphony performed Stravinsky's Fireworks in December 1914, and two years later Diaghilev's Ballets Russes completed a highly anticipated and well-advertised tour of the United States, performing The Firebird and Petrushka in numerous cities across the country, including New York. During the height of the conflict in Europe, however, New Yorkers heard only a single performance of Stravinsky's music, the Flonzaley String Quartet's performance of the Three Pieces for String Quartet in 1915. Even after the war, performances of Stravinsky's work were infrequent and featured primarily small or minor works. In 1918, New York audiences heard the London String Quartet perform "Pribautki" with soprano Olga Haley, as well as a second performance of Petrushka at the Metropolitan Opera, but they had to wait two long years before hearing another Stravinsky work and a minor one at that, the Flonzaley Quartet's premiere of Stravinsky's Concertino for String Quartet in 1920.38 There was no deliberate interruption in the performance of Stravinsky's music in the United States between 1914 and 1921, no antiwar bias levied against his music as there was against Schoenberg's. Yet by 1921, and the premiere of Caligari at the Capitol Theater, U.S. audiences still had not yet heard Stravinsky's most substantial compositions. Before Caligari, they under- stood Stravinsky, too, primarily by way of journalistic reports and scholarly articles.

A lack of firsthand experience also formed an essential part of early Stravinsky criticism in the United States. In his assessment of musical modernism in 1915, for instance, Van Vechten describes Stravinsky's reputation as being informed or disadvantaged by a general inexperience with his music: "Igor Strawinsky's early work, Fireworks, composed and published in 1908, has been vouchsafed us. Since then Strawinsky, who, to my mind, is the most brilliant of the new composers, has written three ballets, The Firebird, Petrushka and The Sacrifice to the Spring and the opera, The Nightingale. Not a note, so far as I am aware, of these most




interesting scores has been heard in New York, although Paris and London are thoroughly familiar with them."39

Much of the fault for this discontinuity between knowledge and experience, Van Vechten later noted, lay with the listening habits and tastes of American concert hall audiences and their general underappreci- ation of the genre of ballet. One reason Stravinsky's modernism was still unfamiliar here, Van Vechten surmised, was because "in America we are not accustomed to look to performances of the ballet, which after all, is not an institution with us, for musical manna."40

While the early criticism of Stravinsky's work in the United States was not as disparaging as the criticism of Schoenberg's music, American audiences knew of Stravinsky primarily by way of analytical accounts of his recent compositions and biographical material. In an article on Stravinsky for the Musical Quarterly in 1916, for instance, critic Stanley Wise addressed the dearth of Stravinsky performances in America by acquainting U.S. audiences with the composer himself, by giving Quarterly readers an extended description of the composer's personality and com- posing habits.41 This practice of substituting biography and verbal analysis for performances of his work continued long after the end of the war. Paul Rosenfeld's critical "portrait" of Stravinsky in 1920, for instance, contained a lengthy and detailed analysis of Le Sacre du printemps that described the work not only as a modern masterwork, but also as the expression of the technological aspects of modern life. Rosenfeld acknowledged that while European audiences were by now very familiar with this work, U.S. audiences had yet to hear it. As he reluctantly admitted, his lengthy analysis was based not on a current performance of the work in the United States, but on his experience of the premiere of the work in Paris nearly a decade earlier.42

The popular music presses, too, were full of reports and opinions of European performances of Stravinsky's works. Musical America readers were aware in January 1921 of the Paris revival of Le Sacre du printemps in concert version. They were also aware that European critics and audiences were now hailing the work as "one of the greatest achievements of the decade."43 U.S. readers were even aware of Stravinsky's emerging neoclas- sical style and the fresh controversy that it was causing. From Musical America's foreign correspondents, they knew of the hissing and laughter with which London audiences greeted the premiere of Stravinsky's Symphony for Wind Instruments in February 1921.44 By the April 1921 premiere of Caligari in New York, in other words, American audiences had extensive knowledge of Stravinsky's reputation as a controversial modernist composer. But aside from a handful of performances, U.S. audiences by 1921 had had very little direct experience with Stravinsky's




music. Just as their appreciation of Schoenberg's modernism was primarily theoretical, so was their appreciation of Stravinsky's.

One modernist composer with whom U.S. audiences did have both journalistic and firsthand experience in the years immediately preceding Caligari's premiere, however, was the American Leo Ornstein. In fact, until the early 1920s, U.S. critics and audiences considered Ornstein one of the most significant exponents of new modernist trends in music.45 In 1915, after a successful concert season in Europe, Ornstein had returned to the United States to occupy the position of enfant terrible of the American concert hall. Ukrainian by birth, but an American citizen after immigrat- ing as a teenager with his family, Ornstein repeatedly shocked American audiences between 1915 and 1920 with concerts of new and avant-garde piano works. Although Ornstein also played works by European contem- poraries, including Schoenberg, Scriabin, Erich Korngold, and Cyril Scott, it was his own programmatic piano compositions, works that were filled with deliberate dissonances and jarring tone clusters, that were making the most indelible impression on American audiences. After a series of four sensational concerts at New York's Bandbox Theater in 1915, for instance, critics immediately identified him as a modernist of the first rank. James Huneker labeled him "the only true blue, genuine Futurist composer alive," and fellow journalist Van Vechten called him "the high apostle of the new art in America."46

Although Ornstein claimed that his compositional style was unique, he was well aware that his unusual and ultramodern style was being compared to or confused with the work of the more well-known European modernists. "Mind you," Ornstein himself observed, "when I took the leap I had never seen any music by Schoenberg or Strawinsky. I was unaware that there was such a generality as 'futurism."'47 Ornstein was not the only one to hear a connection between his modernism and that of his European counterparts. American critics heard an overlap as well. "Ornstein has written a composition for orchestra entitled The Faun, which Henry Wood had in mind for performance before the war," Van Vechten observed. "It has not yet been played and I humbly suggest it to our resident conductors, together with Schoenberg's Five Pieces, and Strawinsky's Sacrifice to the Spring."48 In 1920, at the end of Ornstein's short-lived performing career, American critics were still defining their appreciation of Ornstein by comparing him with the radical modernists in Europe, Schoenberg and Stravinsky in particular, but Prokofiev, too. As Rosenfeld observed in 1920, "[Ornstein] has found America absolutely unprepared for his art, possessed with no technique to cope with it.... At present they are even classing him with Prokofief.... If he was less accomplished, less resourceful and magistral an artist than Strawinsky, for instance,




whom he resembles in a certain general way, he was at least a more human, a more passionate being."49

That Ornstein was occupying the same conceptual space in the minds of American audiences and critics as his European counterparts is a theme that runs through much of the contemporary criticism of his work. Critics were unable to clearly conceptualize or categorize Omstein's music because, as Rosenfeld suggested, they lacked the "technique" and direct experience with European modernism. If this conceptual gap and general inexperience with European modernism was informing the criticism of Ornstein, however, it was also shaping the American criticism of other European modernists as well. In the absence of performances of these modernists' works, in fact, American critics often indiscriminately lumped together many contemporary composers, American or European, into a general and weakly defined modernist or futurist camp. This confusion and generally unformed sense of modernism is apparent in the U.S. reception of another new European composer in the late 1910s-Prokofiev. When Prokofiev made his U.S. debut with a series of three piano recitals at New York's Aeolian Hall in November 1918, American critics hailed him as both a genius and a "mad futurist."50 In a review entitled "New Ears for New Music," critic Richard Aldrich compared Prokofiev directly to Leo Ornstein, calling the "cerebral" and "startling" new composer a "psychologist of the uglier emotions-hatred, contempt and rage."51 At the Russian Symphony Orchestra's performance of the First Piano Concerto and Scythian Suite a few months later, Prokofiev was compared not only to Ornstein, but to all of Europe's current modernist composers. "Take one Schoenberg," wrote a reviewer in Musical America, "two Orsteins, and a little Satie, mix thoroughly with some Medtner, a drop of Schumann, a liberal quantity of Scriabin and Stravinsky-and you will brew something like a Serge Prokofiev, composer."52

Before Caligari's premiere in 1921, concert hall critics regularly and often indiscriminately lumped American and European modernist composers and different modernist compositional trends together. By comparing more current or local modernists like Ornstein and Prokofiev with less familiar European modernists such as Schoenberg and Stravinsky, American critics perpetuated, even promoted, the casual exchange of one modernist composer for another. It was perhaps not by accident, then, that film critics in early 1921 might have confused Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev for Orstein, Satie, Ravel, and Scriabin in their reviews of the Caligari compilation. In many ways they were only echoing the confusion over the reception of European modernism that existed in the concert hall. They were reflecting the wide gap that existed between knowledge and experience, between music criticism and concert hall programming, a




discrepancy that was casually but determinedly blurring the distinction between new European and American modernist composers in both venues. If a general unfamiliarity with musical modernism is evident in the reviews of Caligari's accompaniment, if critics had a difficult time accurately identifying the score's modernist components, then it was because a similar unfamiliarity with those same modernists attended the reception of their works in the concert hall.

Most music scholars have dated the more general and permanent arrival of European modernism in the United States to the years immediately following Caligari's premiere, to Stokowski's premiere of Le Sacre du printemps in March 1922 and Varese's premiere of Pierrot Lunaire in February 1923.53 It is not surprising, then, that when Rothafel and Rapee used Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's music to accompany The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari a full year earlier, their modernist score generated both precedent and confusion. In 1921, America's interest in European modernism, in Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's music in particular, was only beginning to coalesce and had yet to blossom into an observable movement. The score was greeted with both acclaim and confusion, with banner headlines and conflicted descriptions, because this was still new music to both concert hall and movie theater audiences. Audiences calmly swallowed the score's acrid contents because the performance of Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's modernist music in particular was nearly as unprecedented in the concert hall as it was at the movies.

If this broader examination of the Caligari compilation expands our understanding of musical modernism by defining more concretely the reception the compilation's source composers enjoyed in both the movie theater and the concert hall before 1921, then it also challenges some long-held assumptions about the score's impact on the reception of the film. Film scholars have long assumed that Caligari's score imported to the film the controversial and negative reputations that Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's music had acquired in the American concert hall. Certainly it did this, but only to a certain extent, and only to the extent that audiences were verbally aware of these composers' reputations. In the sense that their music itself was almost unknown to U.S. audiences, the score did not so much lend an understanding of modernism as it anticipated the establishment of European musical modernism in U.S. concert halls. The film did not so much borrow from the music a sense of modernism as it helped form that definition of modernism. The only observation perhaps more significant than the fact that Rothafel and Rapee brought Stravinsky and Schoenberg to the movie theater, and to 70,000 New York moviegoers no less, is that they did it before Stokowski and Varese brought Stravinsky's and Schoenberg's most significant works to U.S. audiences. They brought




European modernism to an audience the size and scope of which these two composers would never see in the concert hall.

For all the implications that the Caligari score has for the study of the American concert hall and the inclusion of the movie theater as an important venue in the development of music in this country, however, the contribution the score made to the history of film music is still the most compelling. Even at the end of the golden age of silent film, critics and compilers were referring to Caligari as a high-water mark in film accompaniment. In the first article on film music that the new journal Modem Music featured in 1926, movie palace music director Hugo Reisenfeld observed that Caligari still represented a high point for the cause of modern music at the movies: "The most interesting problem con- nected with the development of film music is the extent to which it has been affected by modern art tendencies in general. How little such music reflects the modern spirit either in the idiom employed, or structurally, in the matter of form is obvious when one compares the musical output for films with such a picture as Dr. Caligari. No score that has been written for the cinema has the distinction of this production in its truly contemporary feeling or unity of form."54

Certainly Caligari played a central role in bringing European modernism to the eyes and ears of American audiences. But nowhere was the impact of this innovation more purposely felt than at the movies. Rothafel and Rapee may have anticipated, even encouraged, the reception of European modernism in the concert hall, but in the movie theater they created a precedent that lasted not just the length of Caligari's premiere run in New York, but the entire length of the silent film period. As Reisenfeld observed at the end of that era, from a time that would soon see the introduction of sound film and an entirely new conception of the musical score, the Caligari compilation was not so much a precedent as it was a singularity. A final correction to the long appreciation of this score is the recognition of Reisenfeld's observation that Caligari represented not just the first importation of modem European concert hall music to the silent film score, but very likely the only importation of it in the silent film era.

Notes

1. The criticism of Caligari is extensive, but the following texts represent a kind of core literature for the film: Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947); Lotte Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Walter Kaul, Caligari und Caligarismus (Berlin: Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin, 1970); S. S. Prawer, Caligari's Children: The Film as Tale of Terror (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); John D. Barlow, German Expressionist




Film (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982); Mike Budd, ed., The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990); David Robinson, "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari" (London: BFI Publishing, 1997); and Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary (New York and London: Routledge, 2000).

2. See Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After, esp. chap. 4, "Erich Pommer, 'Die UFA,' and

Germany's Bid for a Studio System," 106-42. Caligari's unconventional, anti-genre aspects and UFA's role in encouraging them have prompted a related thread of discussion that has interpreted Caligari as one of the first "art" films. See Mike Budd, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Production, Reception, History," in Close Viewings, ed. Peter Lehman (Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1990), 333-52; and by the same author, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Conditions of Reception," Cine-Tracts 3, no. 4 (Winter 1981): 60-72; "Authorship as a Commodity: The Art Cinema and 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,"' Wide Angle 6, no. 1 (1984): 12-19; and "The Moments of Caligari," in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories, 19-36. Two broader critical studies do much to illuminate this

topic, including David Bordwell, "The Art Cinema as a Mode of Film Practice," Film Criticism 4, no. 1 (Fall 1979): 56-64; and Steve Neale, "Art Cinema as Institution," Screen 22, no. 1 (1981): 11-39.

3. Most criticism of Caligari devotes some space to discussing its expressionistic elements, as do a number of art and literary histories of the period, but one of the most con- centrated examinations is still Lotte Eisner, The Haunted Screen. But see also Elsaesser's Weimar Cinema and After, esp. chap. 2, "Expressionist Film or Weimar Cinema?"

4. See Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler, part II: "The Postwar Period," 43-130. Kracauer's approach to the film and Weimar cinema came under particular scrutiny by film scholars in the late 1970s, resulting in a great deal of revision to the topic as a whole. See in particular Noel Caroll, "The Cabinet of Dr. Kracauer," Millennium Film Journal 1, no. 2 (Spring-Summer 1978): 77-85; Barry Salt, "From Caligari to Who?," Sight and Sound 48 (Spring 1979): 119-23; and Michael Budd, "Retrospective Narration in Film:

Re-reading 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'," Film Criticism 4 (Fall 1979): 35-43.

5. Two lengthy articles discuss Caligari's distribution and reception in the United States. See Kristin Thompson, "Dr. Caligari at the Folies-Bergere, or, The Successes of an Early Avant-Garde Film," in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari": Texts, Contexts and Histories, 121-69; and David B. Pratt, "'Fit Food For Madhouse Inmates': The Box Office Recep- tion of the German Invasion of 1921," Griffithiana: La Rivista della Cineteca del Friuli 48/49 (October 1993): 97-157. The American reception of the film is also discussed in Mike Budd, "The Moments of Caligari," in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari": Texts, Contexts and Histories, esp. 77-108, and in Robinson, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, 49-51.

6. "'Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' Released; Broke Records at the Capital Theatre," Moving Picture World, 23 Apr. 1921, 852. According to Thompson, for Sunday's four opening-day showings, the total audience was 20,284. During the week, the film averaged a daily attendance of about 10,000, putting the total attendance number over the course of the film's weeklong run at more than 70,000; see Thompson, "Dr. Caligari at the Folies- Bergere," 140.

7. As a reviewer for the New York Tribune put it, the film revealed a "fantastic story of murder and madness such as Edgar Allan Poe might have written" (3 Apr. 1921, 18). The references to Poe and the interpretation of the film as a thriller surfaced in a number of film serial reviews as well as several newspaper columns as the film traveled across the




United States. See Edward Wietzel's review of the film in Moving Picture World, 16 Apr. 1921; and in Motion Picture News, "Caligari Film At Capitol," 9 Apr. 1921, 2374, and "Caligari an Unusual Offering," 16 Apr. 1921, 2589; "Whoops, My Dear, Do Bring on the Strait Jacket," Chicago Tribune, 15 May 1921, 14; and "Thriller in the Style of Poe for Miller's," Los Angeles Times, 6 Nov. 1921. Reviews emphasizing the film's more artistic ambitions, however, were equally numerous and surfaced both in mainstream press reviews of the films-in newspapers, for instance-and in reviews and articles in specialty magazines. "The most conspicuous individual characteristic of the photoplay is that it is cubistic, or expressionistic," wrote a critic for the New York Times, 4 Apr. 1921, 18. "Its settings bear a somewhat closer resemblance to reality than, say, the famous 'Nude Descending Staircase' but they are sufficiently unlike anything ever done on the screen before to belong to a separate scenic species." See also Quinn L. Martin, "The Cinema's Passing Show," The World (New York), 3 Apr. 1921; "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: A Radical Departure; Highly Artistic and Imaginative," Motion Picture News, 16 Apr. 1921, 2617; The Dial, May 1921, 604; "A Continental Film Recently Released in America Shows Successful Adaptation of Expressionism," Vanity Fair, July 1921, 32-33. For a more complete overview of Caligari's reception in the American press and film serials, see Pratt, "Fit Food for Madhouse Inmates," 103-19; and Thompson, "Dr. Caligari at the Folies-Bergere," 139-49.

8. Budd, "The Moments of Caligari," 63-72. In the film and film music literature, Rothafel's name is frequently spelled Rothapfel. The famed music director changed the spelling of his name, anglicizing it or dropping the "p" after WWI in response to anti-German senti- ments. As Hall observes, Rothafel used his appointment as music director to the Capitol Theater in June 1920 to launch the new spelling. See Ben M. Hall, The Best Remaining Seats: The Story of the Golden Age of the Movie Palace (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1961), 66. In his study of Rothafel, Marks uses the "p," primarily because he focuses on Rothafel's career before the war, from 1910 to 1914. As Marks points out in a footnote, however, the spelling change after 1920 was hardly noticed because by then Rothafel was acknowledged even formally by his nickname, "Roxy." See Marks, Music and the Silent Film, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 264, n83. Because this article focuses on the music director's career at the Capitol Theater after 1920, I use the anglicized spelling of Rothafel's name throughout the discussion.

9. When the film premiered at the Marmorhaus Theater in Berlin, it reportedly had a very inadequate accompaniment, one that was replaced with a fresh compilation score by the well-known cinema musician Giuseppe Becce when the film was relocated a month later to the Mozartsaal. Although Becce's score, which is thought to have been very atonal, traveled with the film on its release throughout Germany and Europe, it is not known whether it was performed with each showing of the film. Additionally, Becce's special compilation is now lost, and there is little available information about it. The most detailed account of this original score for Caligari's Berlin premiere is Celia Skrine's liner notes for the Koch/Schwann 2001 recording of some of Becce's generic cinema music arranged for Caligari's scenario by Lothar Prox and Emil Gerhardt. Robinson briefly mentions the Becce compilation, although he describes it as having accompanied the Marmorhaus premiere. See Das Cabinet des Caligari, 46.

10. George C. Pratt, Spellbound in Darkness: A History of the Silent Film (Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1966), 355.

11. Pratt, Spellbound in Darkness, 48-50.




12. Thompson, "Dr. Caligari at the Folies-Bergere," 141-42.

13. Budd, "The Moments of Caligari," 72-74.

14. At the Library of Congress, which houses the Museum of Modem Art Collection, this score can be found in microfilm collection 3236, reel 4, item 12. This score for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 140-page piano score with a two-page typed synopsis or table of contents. Although the music notation appears to be printed, as are many compilation scores in the collection, the descriptive titles at the top are handwritten. There are also

many additional handwritten editorial markings in the score that range from tempo indi- cations to musical alterations (cuts, omissions, and alternative endings/cadences, etc.). The two-page typed synopsis that prefaces the score entitled "Film Music for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" contains sixty-two numbered scenes with a corresponding musical selection listed by title and author for each. The compilation includes selections by Mascagni (L'Amico Fritz), Chopin (Valse in A Minor), Schubert (ballet music from Rosamunde), Grieg ("Nightfall"), Beethoven (Coriolan Overture), and Bach (Toccata and Fugue in D), as well as selections of mood music by contemporary cinema composers William Axt, Emo Rapee, Giuseppe Becce, and J. S. Zamecnik. A brief description of this compilation is included in Gillian Anderson, Music for Silent Films, 1896-1927: A Guide (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1988), 16. What appears to be a clean copy of the score on

manuscript paper is housed at the Kleiner Collection at the University of Minnesota, a collection catalogued alphabetically by title. In the literature, there is some confusion in the references to this score, however, particularly in the use of the term "original." In her catalog of the Kleiner Collection in Appendix 3 of Music for Silent Films, 1896-1927: A Guide, for instance, Anderson has put the designation "original" next to her listing of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This must refer only to the quality of the copy: that is, to the fact that the score in the Kleiner Collection is a cleaner copy of the one in the Museum of Modem Art Collection. It is not the original score that was compiled by Rothafel and

Rapee for the premiere of the film at the Capitol Theater in 1921.

15. It was typical practice in the 1920s that once a film had premiered at one of the

large metropolitan movie palaces in New York, it went into national distribution, playing first at some of the movie palaces in other large cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and Baltimore, and then traveling to smaller cities and theaters with either smaller, less skilled orchestras or a pianist only. Once in distribution, cue sheets or suggestion sheets for many films were printed in weekly film journals such as Moving Picture World, Motion Picture News, and Exhibitor's Weekly, and even in monthly music journals like American Organist. These cue sheets were most often entirely different than the specialty scores prepared for premieres at the big New York movie palaces. Because they were created for small-town theaters and musicians who were typically less skilled or lacked the resources that the big movie palaces had in their libraries, they typically featured alto-

gether different selections. Although the journals printed such cue sheets for several other German invasion films-Deception and Der Golem, for instance, which were in fact

completely different than the ones constructed for their New York premieres-I could find no such suggestion sheet for Caligari in any of the journals listed above. The MoMA/ Kleiner score may have been compiled by a musician during Caligari's initial distribution in 1921-22 or was perhaps constructed for one of the early cine-club revival showings of the film in New York in 1926 and so may still be contemporary to the film. For a detailed distribution history of Caligari in the United States, see Thompson's "Dr. Caligari at the Folies-Bergere," 139-49, 158-63, and also Pratt's "Fit Food For Madhouse Inmates," 103-119. After it premiered in New York, Caligari went to Chicago, Los Angeles (where




it was boycotted), St. Louis, Kansas City, and then to smaller towns and venues. Although the distribution listings in Motion Picture News briefly mention that the film received "special musical treatment" in Kansas City, I have not been able to find further indication of what that treatment consisted of.

16. The Arthur Kleiner Silent Film Music Collection at the University of Minnesota contains the scores that Arthur Kleiner used and constructed during his tenure at the Museum of Modem Art in New York. In an interview in the New York Times in 1960, Kleiner revealed that he was a latecomer to silent film accompaniment and that he had never accompanied silent film before taking the job in 1939. Although he provided music for a significant part of the museum's silent film collection, which by the 1960s was being screened weekly, Kleiner admitted that he could locate only a few of the films' original scores (Reisenfeld's compilation for The Covered Wagon [1923] and Meisel's score for Battleship Potemkin [1926], for instance). In the majority of cases, Kleiner admitted, he constructed his own scores to accompany the films, albeit scores that were made very much in keeping with the style and repertoire of the silent period. See Joanne Stang, "Making Music-Silent Style," The New York Times Encyclopedia of Film, 16 Oct. 1960, and the unpublished catalogue description for the Arthur Kleiner Collection of Silent Film Music in the Special Collections Reading Room of the Elmer L. Anderson Library at the University of Minnesota.

17. B. R., "Comes Stravinsky to the Film Theater," Musical America, 16 Apr. 1921, 5.

18. Clarence Sinn, the advice columnist for the film weekly Moving Picture World, for instance, frequently counseled his readers to pursue a motivic method of accompaniment a la Wagner, invoking Wagner and his system of leitmotivs for both practical and aes- thetic reasons. For one example, see Sinn's column "Music for the Pictures," in the 21 Jan. 1911 issue of Moving Picture World. For a more detailed history of Wagner's role in early film music discourse, see Scott Paulin, "Richard Wagner and the Fantasy of Cinematic Unity: The Idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk in the History and Theory of Film Music," in Music and Cinema, ed. James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer (Hanover: Wes-

leyan University Press, 2000), 58-84; Charles Merrill Berg, An Investigation of the Motives

for and Realization of Music to Accompany the American Silent Film, 1896-1927 (New York: Amo Press, 1976), 74-81; and David Bordwell, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film

Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 33- 34.

19. Ben M. Hall, The Best Remaining Seats, 67-68. Hall gives a detailed account of Rothafel's method of rehearsing at the Capitol Theater when he took over musical direc- tion there in the summer of 1920.

20. John Alan Haughton, "Movie-Theaters Find Good Music an Important Asset," Musical America, 5 Jan. 1917, 47.

21. Horace Johnson, "Carl Eduoarde, Director of Music at the Strand Theater, Tells How to Interpret Motion Pictures," Metronome, March 1921, 77. Although both Strauss and Debussy were well acquainted with the cinema, neither seems to have been aware that their compositions were being used for film accompaniment at movie theaters in the United States. Debussy, for instance, was highly interested in the cinema, and although he never composed specifically for it, he did think the art of the cinema had a role to play in solving what he thought were some of the ontological problems of program music. See Richard Langham Smith, "Debussy and the Art of the Cinema," Music and Letters 54, no. 1 (1973): 61-70.




22. When the Capitol Theater announced that it would perform the entire tone poem Till Eulenspiegel on its musical program the first week of June 1921, two months after the premiere of Caligari, the event was described as a cinematic first. See Ero Rapee, Encyclopedia of Music for Pictures (New York: Belwin, 1925), 24. For Rothafel, too, Strauss tone poems represented the epitome of symphonic literature and the highest aspirations in the movie theater orchestra's quest for legitimacy. "When we undertook to have the Capitol Grand Orchestra play Richard Strauss' symphonic poem Ein Heldenleben," he observed, "we embarked on a daring adventure in the field of popular entertainment. The overwhelming success of its reception by our audiences was the most gratifying and encouraging element in our performance of this composition, and it justified our belief that our audiences are the finest in the world." Quoted in Ben M. Hall, The Best Remaining Seats, 175.

23. In her article on Schoenberg and film music, for instance, Sabine Feisst makes no mention of the use of Schoenberg's music in any silent film compilation, not even Caligari. See "Arnold Schoenberg and the Cinematic Art," Musical Quarterly 83, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 93-113. Additionally, I have found only one fleeting reference to the use of Stravinsky's music in the movie theater before 1921, the year of the Caligari compilation. In a 1918 article in the music journal Metronome evaluating the improvements in musical accompaniments heard at the movies, columnist Frank Edson observes that movie theater conductors had a certain amount of license in programming musical

accompaniments. "They are not held by the terms of endowments, to any period of music. They can wander far afield, and they frequently perform the new as well as the established. In one evening it is not at all unusual to hear played by one of these orchestras, pieces by Stravinsky, Scriabine, Liszt, Wagner, and Verdi." See Frank Edson, "Develop- ment of Music Through the Movies," Metronome, Mar. 1918, 45.

24. "At the Picture Houses," Musical Courier, 24 Mar. 1921, 56.

25. "Unusual Program at the Capitol," Metronome, Apr. 1921, 84.

26. "At the Picture Houses," Musical Courier,14 Apr. 1921, 56.

27. Jerome Lachenbruch, "Photoplay as the Harbinger of a New Music-Form," Metro- nome, Aug. 1921, 66.

28. A.E.D., "The Movies of Today and Their Music," in the Baltimore Sun, reprinted in Metronome, Nov. 1921, 70. The date of the original newspaper article is not given. In 1921, Eugene Goossens was an assistant to Thomas Beecham and a prominent conductor in London.

29. The first performance of Schoenberg's work in the United States garnered some favorable reviews, but it also received cautionary qualification. The quartet, some critics were quick to note, was an early work and far removed from Schoenberg's more recent

experimental works that were leaving European audiences "bewildered, annoyed, discour- aged and dismayed." See "Flonzaley's Play Schonberg," New York Post, 27 Jan. 1914; quoted in Carol Oja, Making Music Modem: New York in the 1920s (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2000), 48.

30. Oja, Making Music Modem, 47-50. See also Richard Crawford, America's Musical Life: A History (New York: Norton, 2001), 568-70. Some discussion of the prewar reception of Schoenberg's work in the United States is also included in Sabine Feisst's com- mentary in Part IV, "Schoenberg and America," in Schoenberg and His World, ed. Walter Frisch (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 285-336.




31. Throughout the war and even a few years after, the parameters of the unofficial ban on German music were referred to in the contemporary music literature. In an article in Musical America on 16 Dec. 1916, for instance, it was reported that "when war first broke out an effort was made in England in the first heat of antagonism to have all music by German composers, whether living or dead, banned from the concert halls. Since then wiser counsels have prevailed so that only the living Germans are now debarred."

Although Strauss was a living composer, applications of the ban varied when it came to his music. At the same time that his orchestral works were growing in popularity in American concert halls, performances of his operas were for the most part prohibited in the United States as well as in England and France. In a 5 Jan. 1918 article in Musical America, for instance, a columnist reported that "strictly modernist composers like Strauss are not represented in the opera and concert halls of either [France or England]," and that "New York had eliminated all opera in German." When it came to opera, because he was both a modernist and a German, Strauss was doubly boycotted in the United States. See also "No Ban on German Masters in Either France or England," Musical America, 5 Jan. 1918, 1-2.

32. Carl Van Vechten, Music After the Great War and Other Studies (New York: G. Schirmer, 1915), 36-37.

33. James Huneker, Ivory, Apes and Peacocks (New York: Scribner, 1915; repr. New York: Sagamore Press, 1957), 60.

34. See "This Man Sch6nberg! A Word of Warning to the Wise," Musical Observer, 12 Feb. 1915, quoted in Frisch, Schoenberg and His World, 313.

35. Egon Wellesz, "Schonberg and Beyond," Musical Quarterly 2, no. 1 (1916): 76.

36. "An Old Schonberg Work Stirs Munich," Musical America, 19 June 1920, 16. For a similar assessment of Schoenberg's work in the United States, see also Paul Rosenfeld, Musical Portraits: Interpretations of Twenty Moderm Composers (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920), 242-43.

37. MusicalAmerica, 25 June 1921, 11.

38. Oja, Making Music Moder, 48-56.

39. Van Vechten, Music After the Great War, 36-37.

40. Van Vechten, "Igor Strawinsky: A New Composer," in Music After the Great War, 85-86.

41. C. Stanley Wise, "Impressions of Igor Strawinsky," Musical Quarterly 2, no. 2 (1916): 249.

42. "Through him [Stravinsky], music has become cubical, lapidary, massive, mechanis- tic ... The elegance of Debussy, the golden sensuality, the quiet, classic touch, are flown. Instead, there are come to be great, weighty, metallic masses, molten piles and sheets of steel and iron, shining adamantine bulks... Indeed the change is as radical, as complete, as though in the midst of moonlit noble gardens a giant machine had arisen swiftly from the ground and inundated the night with electrical glare and set its metal thews and organs and joints relentlessly whirring, relentlessly functioning." Rosenfeld, Musical Portraits, 191-204.

43. "Musical Opinion Rallies to 'Sacre du Printemps,' Revived in Paris-Score Will Be Recognized as Greatest Achievement of Decade" read the subtitle of Edwin Evans's




feature article on Stravinsky in the 12 Feb. 1921 issue of Musical America. Under the internal subheading of "Paris' Changing Attitude," Evans also revealed that the world premiere of Stravinsky's Concertino for String Quartet in New York was met with the same resistance that the Rite of Spring had encountered in Paris eight years earlier: "It will be remembered that in 1913 the work [Rite of Spring] was received in the same way as New York received the Concertino [for String Quartet]."

44. "London Greets New Stravinsky Symphony With Laughter," Musical America, 9 Jan. 1921, 10. "At the Koussevitsky concert in Queen's Hall, the parts having arrived at the eleventh hour, Stravinsky's new 'Symphony of Wind Instruments' dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy, was performed for the first time a few nights ago. Stravinsky, who was present, was cheered by the audience, in accordance with British traditions of sportsmanship, but his music was greeted with mingled cheers, issues and-unkindest of all-laughter!"

45. Oja, Making Music Modem, 11.

46. Van Vechten prefaces his essay on Omstein with the quote from Huneker. See Van Vechten, Music and Bad Manners (New York: Knopf, 1916), 227 and 233; see also his review of the first concert in the New York Times, 27 Jan. 1915.

47. Van Vechten, Music and Bad Manners, 234.

48. Van Vechten, Music and Bad Manners, 243.

49. Rosenfeld, Musical Portraits, 276-77 and 279. For additional contemporary reports affirming Orstein as a significant exponent of the most modem and futuristic music trends in the United States in the 1910s, see also Charles Buchanan, "Orstein and Modem Music," Musical Quarterly 4, no. 2 (1918): 174-83, and Frederick Marten, Leo Ornstein: The Man, His Ideas, His Work (New York: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1918; New York: Arno Press, 1975). A more complete assessment of Omstein's music and career can also be found in Oja, Making Music Moder, 11-24. See also Carol Oja and Michael Broyles, "Leo Orstein," New Grove Dictionary of Music, ed. Stanley Sadie (New York: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 18, 747-48.

50. "Serge Prokofieffs Achievements Win Acclaim from American Public," Musical America, Nov. 1918, 5.

51. See Richard Aldrich, Concert Life in New York, 1902-1923 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1941), 580-81: "New ears for new music! The new ears were necessary to appreciate the new music made by Serge Prokofieff in his first piano-forte recital at Aeo- lian Hall yesterday afternoon ... He is blonde, slender, modest as a musician, and his impassibility contrasted with the volcanic eruptions he produced on the keyboard. We already have one musical anarch here, Leo Orstein, yet that youth's Wild Man's Dance is a mere exercise in euphony, a piece positively Mozartian, in comparison with the astounding disharmonies gentle Serge extorted from his suffering pianoforte."

52. Quoted in Israel Nesteyev, Prokofiev, trans. Florence Jonas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960), 170.

53. Oja, Making Music Moder, 48-50. As Oja observes, the broader reception of both Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's music in the United States was tied to the formation of groups devoted to the performance of new music, groups that did not surface formally until the early 1920s: "The founding of New York's moder music societies in the early 1920s generated a booming trade in European modernism, and other strategic points of




Euro-American contact occurred, including especially the New York premieres of Pierrot Lunaire and Le Sacre du printemps.""Something certainly 'pulled'," Oja observes in another chapter, "when it came to Le Sacre du printemps and Pierrot Lunaire, modernist milestones premiered abroad in 1912 and 1913, respectively, which in the early 1920s had not yet reached a New York concert stage" (184-86 and 285-91). See also R. Allen Lott, "'New Music for New Ears': The Interational Composers' Guild," Journal of American Musicol- ogy 36, no. 2 (1983): 267-86. Crawford, too, dates the arrival of musical modernism in the United States to the 1922-23 performances of Schoenberg's and Stravinsky's works: "Not until after the atonal song cycle Pierrot Lunaire was premiered in 1923 was Schoenberg's music heard with any frequency in New York, and then it was more likely to appear in moder-music concerts organized by societies of composers and other interested parties than in more standard venues like symphony or chamber-music programs." Amer- ica's Musical Life, 569.

54. Hugo Reisenfeld, "Film Music," Moder Music 3, no. 2 (Jan. 1926): 30-31.



Modernism at the Movies - 'the Cabinet of Dr. Caligeri' and a Film Score Revisited

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