Film music up to 1958 developed alongside cinema itself, evolving from simple piano or organ accompaniments for silent films to fully orchestrated scores that enhanced narrative, mood, and characterisation in sound films.
In the silent era, composers and theatre musicians improvised or compiled existing music to synchronise with on-screen action, establishing early conventions of leitmotif and thematic association. With the advent of synchronized sound in the late 1920s, composers such as Max Steiner (King Kong, Gone with the Wind) and Erich Wolfgang Korngold (The Adventures of Robin Hood) pioneered the use of fully composed, symphonic scores, employing Wagnerian and late-Romantic orchestral techniques to convey drama, emotion, and character.
One notable film that doesn’t have a specific film score but uses another piece of music as diegetic (i.e. forms part of the narrative, unlike non-diegetic which sits outside of the action) is that for 1944’s Brief Encounter, focusing on the second Piano Concerto by Rachmanioff:
During the 1930s to 1950s, film scoring became increasingly sophisticated, with composers developing distinctive thematic identities for characters, locations, and emotional states, often using recurring motifs and rich orchestration.
Bernard Herrmann’s early work, including Citizen Kane (1941), demonstrated innovative harmonic language and instrumental colour to heighten psychological intensity, while composers such as Franz Waxman and Alfred Newman established expressive orchestral palettes that shaped Hollywood’s “Golden Age” style.
By 1958, film music had become a central dramatic force, capable of articulating narrative subtext, psychological depth, and emotional resonance, establishing compositional practices that would influence cinema for decades.
Next: Film Music from 1960 to 1974.
