Talking pictures : how they are made and how to appreciate them (1937)

Talking Pictures certain composition, played under an important dramatic scene, increases its emotional values, and why no other composition would bring as definite a reaction, then one has learned to evaluate music in photoplay production. The process of playing music under a dramatic scene is called "underscoring." It is not a new device, but with the coming of sound it has developed new methods and new importance. In the days of silent pictures when there was no spoken dialogue, music was played under every scene in a big picture. Important productions such as Ben-Hur, The Covered Wagon, and The Big Parade had complete, unbroken scores written for them. Radio announcers often wonder why Dvorak's The New World Symphony is so frequently called for by those telephoning "request numbers." This composition set the emotional tempo in the scene from The Ten Commandments in which Moses led twenty-five hundred Israelites in flight from Egypt. Here the combination of pictorial and dramatic beauty with a fine musical number gave a definite impetus to interest in The New World Symphony. Photoplays of the talking era seldom have uninterrupted musical scores. There are too many scenes in which music conflicts with crowd dialogue or action. The musical director deserves greater credit for underscoring a talking picture with fine orchestration than for the same work applied to a silent film. It is one thing to bolster voiceless pantomime. It is another to insert music under dialogue so that it increases the emotional reaction started by the words, without interfering with the aural reception of these words. [210]