The Composer Melodrama in Film
Hardly any other genre can be described as more melodramatic than the composer’s film. This does not seem surprising, as it is precisely here that drama and melos are inevitably combined, as musicians act as protagonists. As a result, it is usually their compositions that provide the soundtrack to their cinematic-fictional lives. Film has always made extensive use of this and created effective images that are emotionally moving and also bring moments of inspiration to life – even and especially when these moments were artistically constructed. From a historical perspective, the composer melodrama therefore represents a completely new way of telling life stories by utilising the possibilities of vividness and audibility in an innovative way. This applies not least to the charging of the classical canon with biographical concerns and episodes.
Based on the broad impact that composer films from Mozart to Tchaikovsky and Mahler have had to date, the project attempts a new and comprehensive representation of this genre, taking particular account of its precursors in fiction and music theatre as well as the visual arts in the sense of the stimulating visual media. In particular, the films themselves are in the context of the project scrutinised in their media disposition – in relation to the dynamic relationship between script, image and sound – in a new way.
Behind this is the directors’ and producers’ search for the possibilities of the composers’ inspiration, for the core of the creative and genius that is to be revealed in the films and at the same time is subject to strategies of self-mythification and external mythification.
The results of the project will be summarised in a book by edition text + kritik (Munich) in autumn 2025.
Contact and project leader
Project staff
Prof. Dr. Stefan Schmidl (ACDH-CH)
Project duration
September 2024 – August 2025
Funding
Stadt Wien, MA 7 – Kultur-, Wissenschafts- und Forschungsförderung