The Dickson Experimental Sound Film, Popular Music, and the Invention of Moving Pictures

Abstract

ABSTRACT:When W. K. L. Dickson walked up to the recording horn with his violin sometime in 1894 or 1895 to perform in the earliest known surviving sound film, he played two excerpts from the 1877 French operetta Les Cloches de Corneville (The Chimes of Normandy) by Jean Robert Planquette. Two male employees danced to these very popular pieces of music from an enormously popular entertainment in what might be called the first music video. This essay unpacks this historic pairing of popular music and moving images to see what it can tell us about the role of popular music in the invention of motion pictures.