John Lanchbery, Christopher Caliendo and Film Music History: A Comparison between two Modern Scores (1997 and 2007) for John Ford’s 1924 Silent Epic Western, The Iron Horse

Abstract

The musical accompaniment of silent films is still a relevant issue today, as the vogue of “ciné-concerts” proves. As far as John Ford’s opus is concerned, music is part of the director’s understanding of the essence of cinema. In The Iron Horse, he kept the accompaniment under control by using diegetic music with a song “Drill, Ye Tarriers...”, but also thanks to the rhythm of the film’s overall editing. Two music composers, John Lanchbery in 1997 and Christopher Caliendo in 2007, were faced with the necessity of rendering Ford’s aesthetic choices. Though the first composer used Classical Hollywood Western music, and the second one used modern music as well as ethnic music, the comparison shows that both took care to render diegetic rhythms such as the steam engine or the hammering of the workers, along with the rhythm of the whole film. The discovery in 2012 of Erno Rapée’s 1924 score brings these questions to the fore.

Keywords

• The Iron Horse
• scoring
• silent movie
• music
• songs
• Western