In the early 1900s, Sid Grauman ran silent films with live orchestral accompaniment in his Hollywood 鈥渕ovie palaces.鈥� The musicians used thousands of scores to accompany the films, and the collection of these scores now lives in the CU 麻豆影院 library.听
The collection was donated to the AMRC in 2019 by Rodney Sauer. Sauer is a pianist, accordionist and director of the Monto Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, one of the nation鈥檚 top performers of music for silent film. As a lover of silent films, Sauer wanted the collection to be used and appreciated by students and community members.听
Using a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Committee, the AMRC along with the CU Libraries and the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive digitized the 3,854 scores of the collection. They are now fully online and available to the public. .
In Spring 2023, Sauer and AMRC Director Susan Thomas taught a class for DMA students titled 鈥淪coring Silent Film.鈥� In this class, the students compiled scores for three silent films using the Grauman collection. As their final, they presented a concert and film screening, showing off the brand-new scores.
The AMRC has recently听partnered听with Sauer to produce video tutorials to guide performance-oriented musicians on everything from genre selection to timing and period aesthetics. The AMRC is also working to produce music packets for K-12 musicians, especially high school orchestras, who will be able to create their own scores for specific films. As part of this project, the AMRC is partnering with the 听to increase the accessibility of the Grauman Scores Collection to musicians and scholars around the world.