Accompanying silent films

[coolpianoman]

I am attending a course in the Summer on how to accompany silent films which I am really looking forward to.  However so far we have been given no instruction on how to prepare for this and I wondered if anyone on here has any experience of playing for silent films and can give any advice on the playing or the preparation? Many thanks

[lostinidlewonder]

There was a nice book that I loaned from the library called "Motion Picture Moods for Pianists and Organists" Erno Rappe. It was a very large book with tonns of pieces ordered in terms of emotions, moods, well worth to explore this in preparation.

[coolpianoman]

That sounds great - thank you. I was anticipating improvising but I am sure there is some good material in this too. I have grasped that it is important to know the film reasonably well and what happens when together with some prepared themes one can use for different situations. Chris

[lostinidlewonder]

The link I provided after downloading it didn't seem to contain the music from the book which was odd so I removed the link, I also corrected the name of the book I copy pasted the wrong one ha! If I find it online somewhere I will post it.

[lostinidlewonder]

Here is a link of the book, though it is like 1.5 gigs lol

https://www.sfsma.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/RapeeMPM.pdf

From this page:
https://www.sfsma.org/ARK/22915/motion-picture-moods/