The Sounds of Silent Films ― New Perspectives on History, Theory and Practice

The Sounds of Silent Films comprises up-to-date research on silent film sound, providing a particular focus on historical performance practices combined with detailed theoretical case studies. The contributions by eminent scholars in the fields of musicology, film studies and media studies, as well as curators and archivists, explore crucial notions such as the historicity of interpretations of silent film music and the diverse acoustic manifestations of film exhibition. The volume stands among the first to integrate a large number of texts that cover a variety of cultural and historical sites and their particular regional and local historical performance practices in, for example, Swedish, Polish, British, Italian, Austrian and Indian silent cinema. The contextualizations of silent film sound production are confronted with their reception in the United States and form a unique comparative perspective for the well-documented North American literature.

Claus Tieber is Lecturer at the University of Vienna, Austria. He completed his MA with a thesis on the American Western film and his PhD with a dissertation on the Hollywood gangster films. He received his Habilitation in 2008. He worked as commissioning editor in the TV movie department of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF).

Anna K. Windisch studied Theater, Film, Media and Communication Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. She was a doctoral research fellow at the University of Alberta (2011/12) and project assistant at the University of Salzburg (2012/13). In 2014 she was awarded a doctoral fellowship by the Austrian Academy of Sciences.