The Construction of the Spectator of the Musical Film at the Time of Technical Reproducibility (1902-1937)

Abstract

The filming of images since the end of the 19th century has made it possible to record and preserve musical performances whose social, cultural and historiographic interest increased with the consolidation of the talkies. The Phonoscènes (1902-1917) by Alice Guy (1873-1968), the Phonofilms (1923-1929) by Lee de Forest (1873-1961) or the films Vitaphone (1926-1932) tried to reproduce the experience of a musical performance
in real time but also its reception by imaginary spectators.
The technical advances of synchronized sound allowed the filming of orchestral formations such as the one starring Willem Mengelberg (1871-1951) at the Épinay-sur-Seine studios (Tobis Klangfilm, 1931), a document that pretends to be an impression of the reality of a concert but that reconstructs the musical performance from different camera positions and inserts filmed later. In this way, the musical interpretations of Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) in Moonlight Sonata (Lothar Mendes, 1937) are the result of a visual and narrative construction, typical of the society of the spectacle, from the expressive codes and of signification established in what Noël Burch calls the institutional mode of representation.
These musical films, outside of their documentary and historiographic content, allow us to assess the different phases that led to a paradigm shift in the processes of reception of musical interpretation within the cinema. The use of cinematographic techniques in musical filming led to the construction of a new type of omniscient spectator that adjust both the artistic aspirations of cinema and the listening modes derived from the Central European musical tradition.