MUSIC 246
Lecture 8
Thursday, March 1, 2012


1950s
- End of the Studio System
- Challenge of new media - Television

Battle with television fought on two fronts:
- Subject matter
- Technology

Subject Matter:
- March 1930: The Production Code (Hays Office)
- Voluntary until 1934
- Films of the 1940s push the code, films of the 1950s begin to break it all together


Alexander North (1910-1991)
- Born in Chester Pa
- studied at Julliard (Aaron Copland)

A Streetcar Named Desire: (1951)
- Not just jazz influenced but Jazz music as film score
- Jazz - urban - sexuality

Elmer Bernstein: (1922 - 2004)
- Born in New York City
- Also went to Julliard (Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions)
- Armed Forces radio during the war

B-Movies: Cat Woman on the Moon

The Ten Commandments (1956)

The Man With The Golden Arm (1955)
- Ensemble is a Jazz Big Band
- the score is Jazz - not just Jazz influenced
- Jazz - urban - drug abuse

Technology:
- battle with television accelerates the move to all colour movies
- Hollywood began to experiment with various systems to create a wide-screen image
- Multiple systems in competition (just like sound) such as Cinerama, CinemaScope and Vista Vision
- Also saw the development of the first multi-channel sound systems for theatres
- epic films: Quo Vadis, The Robe, Julius Ceasar, Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, The Ten Commandments

Ben Hur (1959): Composer Miklos Rozsa
- suspension of narrative for moment of spectacle
- Music - Spectacle: creates distance to assist in suspension of disbelief

