Before figuring out what’s happening there, it might make sense to look at when the picture was taken, hopefully this will tell us something about the goofy golf hats and that mini organ behind the rock.  That organ box is actually a harmonium, fairly popular at the time, a pedal powered reed instrument where the performer simultaneously pumps air to the bellows with his feet and plays the row of keys in front of him.  That strange accordion sound in the Beatles “We Can Work it Out” is evidence of a harmonium player pedaling away in the background.  They were popular across the world among chaplains who would tote their suitcase-sized wind boxes onto the battlefield to host impromptu services playing battle hymns and spirituals to soldiers in the field.

Recently my friend purchased an old harmonium at an antique store and I got a chance to play it, not only does it require your feet and hands to play, but the tone is controlled by metal bars that are pushed out by your knees as you play.  It’s the musical equivalent of an elliptical machine and even the simplest tunes require an awkward gyrating dance somewhere between an Elvis impersonation and a bike ride.  Its appeal is immediately obvious, you can pack it up in a rolling box and bring a mini, screeching primitive orchestra wherever you go, a one man band.  The Harmonium is an instrument made to make as much music as possible with as little as possible.  Harmoniums and organs in general were in high demand during the 1920′s as were their performers, often referred to rather unceremoniously as “operators” in magazine articles of the day.  The call for organists was immense as was the demand for manufacturing the instruments, upkeep and tuning of the pipes.  The 1920′s saw the creation of dedicated schools to train organists in major metropolitan centers (1 in Chicago, 1 in Boston and 2 in New York).   What was it that created such a massive demand for players, a massive demand for these mini-orchestras.

The Roxy Theatre Motion Picture Orchestra during a performance

This was the silent film era. Before synchronization of sound recordings and moving images changed the game, most movie screenings were paired with music ranging from a single pianist at a small town movie house to jumbo orchestras at the New York’s Roxy Theatre.  It’s hard to say why music was seen as necessary in the projection of moving pictures from the get-go.  Austrian composer Hanns Eisler penned his own guess in 1947:

“the pure cinema must have had a ghostly effect like that of the shadow play–shadows and ghosts have always been associated.  The major function of music…consisted in appeasing the evil spirits unconsciously dreaded’ the role of music in the silent film play, then, was to ‘exorcise fear or help the spectator absorb the shock’   – Hanns Eisler

Whether Eisler got it right in that rather dramatic proposal, these silent “ghosts” must still be with us, music is seen as almost inseparable from modern moving images.  What has changed and evolved however is the way that this music is created and distributed.  Movies were a hugely popular past-time, people went to the movies more frequently than they do in the 21st century.

Jean Paul Sarte gives this account of a trip to the movies

On rainy days, Anne Marie would ask me what I felt like doing. We would hesitate for a long time between the circus, the Châtelet, the Electric House, and the Grévin Museum. At the last moment, with calculated casualness, we would decide to go to the movies… The show had begun. We would stumblingly follow the usherette. I would feel I was doing something clandestine. Above our heads, a shaft of light crossed the hall; one could see dust and vapor dancing in it. A piano whinnied away…  Above all, I liked the incurable muteness of my heroes. But no, they weren’t mute, since they knew how to make themselves understood. We communicated by means of music; it was the sound of their inner life. Persecuted innocence did better than merely show or speak of suffering: it permeated me with its pain by means of the melody that issued from it. I would read the conversations, but I heard the hope and bitterness; I would perceive by ear the proud grief that remains silent. I was compromised; the young widow who wept on the screen was not I, and yet she and I had only one soul: Chopin’s funeral march; no more was needed for her tears to wet my eyes. I felt I was a prophet without being able to foresee anything: even before the traitor betrayed, his crime entered me; when all seemed peaceful in the castle, sinister chords exposed the murderer’s presence. How happy were those cowboys, those musketeers, those detectives: their future was there, in that premonitory music, and governed the present. An unbroken song blended with their lives, led them on to victory or death by moving toward its own end. They were expected: by the girl in danger, by the general, by the traitor lurking in the forest, by the friend who was tied up near a powder-keg and who sadly watched the flame run along the fuse. The course of that flame, the virgin’s desperate struggle against her abductor, the hero’s gallop across the plain, the interlacing of all those images, of all those speeds, and, beneath it all, the demonic movement of the “Race to the Abyss,” an orchestral selection taken from The Damnation of Faust and adapted for the piano, all of this was one and the same: it was Destiny.
The hero dismounted, put out the fuse, the traitor sprang at him, a duel with knives began: but the accidents of the duel likewise partook of the rigor of the musical development; they were fake accidents which ill concealed the universal order. What joy when the last knife stroke coincided with the last chord! I was utterly content, I had found the world in which I wanted to live, I touched the absolute. What an uneasy feeling when the lights went on: I had been wracked with love for the characters and they had disappeared, carrying their world with them. I had felt their victory in my bones; yet it was theirs and not mine. In the street I found myself superfluous.  – Jean Paul Sarte

Before movies with sound came along with the advent of “talkies” musicians were required at every movie house, organists being able to play many parts at once were in demand.  Special “theatre organs” were installed in movie houses with pipes that could make the sounds of trumpets, voices, woodwinds, even gunshots and other novelty effects.  Every film was a concert and live music saw it’s golden age.  Estimates are that musical accompaniment to film accounted for around half of all musical employment, which is an amazing figure when I think about it.

Bells, drums and whistles on a theatre organ

My musician friends, like myself, rely on all manner of musical and other work to make ends meet.  I don’t think that’s at all uncommon, most musicians today fall somewhere between amateur and semi-professional.  The most talented musicians in the area might be computer programmers or electricians by day and don their jazz-clarinet capes and tights in the evening to play their hearts out.  I think that having a job apart from music can make the art better and more enjoyable as it frees it from the financial pressure imposed by being full-time musician.  But what would it be like the other way around, what would it be like if our musicians had day jobs playing music as the musicians of the 1920′s did?  What if music were the bread and butter AND frosting?

Musicians will never again be needed to fill the sheer output that the silver screen demanded.  Novelty organs will never again replace orchestras to keep up with the call for live music.  That harmonium player would be less obtrusive in a Klezmer band than a contemporary cinema megaplex.  In 1929 the film Jazz Singer came along, this blockbuster synchronized sound and movies creating all kinds of new possibilities for filmmakers.  The transition came faster then anyone imagined, the novelty was so great that soon every movie was shown this way, in less than 2 years the musicians of the silent era were out of work for good.  Calling it a musical Armageddon may be a little melodramatic, but if we are willing to consider the musical working class of the 20th century “exorcists” then maybe we can get away calling the end of the era an Armageddon.

Clearly the movie house workers were beaten out by a new technology and means of distribution, but music recording on the whole doesn’t seem to stop people from going out to see their favorite artists in person.  What makes live performance irreplaceable?  I can think of some reasons for myself that live performance is “better” than just sitting at home and listening to the CD, I bet it’s different for each person though.  There’s something that a live performance can do that “canned” music can’t touch.  LPs, CDs, MP3, Napster, ITunes are part of a long conga-line of technologies making musical recordings cheaper and more accessible.  We finally may be maxed out at how much music we can possibly listen to, it’s becoming so easy to find music and recordings that the market value of recorded music has been on a downhill slope since the 80s.  Many musicians are now looking at live performance as the only viable way to make living that isn’t going to change every time record companies figure out new ways of packaging and distributing their music.  Maybe we’ll see a resurgence of live music in coming years, maybe it’s already happening.

Now Back to this…

The caption of this picture places it at 1925 on the set of a motion picture called sun-up.  The harmonium player and violinist are playing music for the actors during a shot.  They were not being recorded, synchronized sound is still 5 years off, they are just playing for the benefit of the actors. Turns out this way very common, check out these pictures of other musicians playing on the set on silent films.

So-called mood musicians were commonplace and many thought that actors would be unable to emote without their musical contribution.  Some stars even demanded that they were on set for their scenes and requested specific music.

I love the expression on that guy’s face, hanging off a false-cliff.  Maybe it was a death scene, maybe a romantic one.

I’m coming back from a late night showing at the Hollywood Theatre.  Portland is a quiet city, and biking in the rain is a somber trip.  No matter who you go with, the movies are always a singular experience, just you and the big  screen, it is a little spooky in a way.  It’s late, there are very few cars out, and a fog hangs down from the yellow streetlights.  I’m comforted by knowing my next stop; Mississippi Pizza, where I’ll be seeing my friends band in their first performance.  The warmth of food and bodies is comforting.  Images of the movie I just saw are flashing in my head, and also this picture.

Phonographs existed in the 1925, in fact they were hugely popular.  But still the mood-musicians would trek out into the wilderness to do what a phonograph couldn’t.  Maybe that’s it; they may be as scared of Eisler’s ghosts as I am.

- Galen Huckins