Improvisation - Compilation - Composition. Film music at the beginning of the 20th century

Contributors

Program

In the early 20th century, there were various ways in which films were accompanied. Cinema musicians improvised or drew on collections of sheet music before creating their own film compositions. This was linked to aesthetic debates about what music was appropriate. Very different instruments were used for musical film illustration: from the piano to small bands to orchestras or large-scale cinema organs. The lecture aims to shed light on the historical dimension as well as current practice: in a discussion with organist Prof. David Franke, it will become clear how improvisation for film has changed and which artistic aspects are in the foreground today. The lecture will be literally accompanied by improvised musical examples.

Prof. Dr. Dr. Michael Fischer is Managing Director of the Center for Popular Culture and Music at the University campus Freiburg(ZPKM). He has also been teaching as an honorary professor at the College of Music in Freiburg since 2021. His research focuses on the history and theory of popular music.

Prof. David Franke is Professor of Organ and Organ Improvisation and Head of the Institute for Church Music at the College of Music in Freiburg. He gives organ and organ improvisation concerts worldwide, including improvisation concerts for silent films, with other musicians, for children and much more, and is a competition adjudicator and lecturer of master classes for organ and organ improvisation.

The event is part of the FZM lecture series "Improvising: Spontaneous Creativity in Art and Everyday Life" and part of the FZM event series "musik + wissen".

In the summer semester 2026, the Freiburg Research and Teaching Center(FZM) is organizing a lecture series on the topic of improvisation from various specialist perspectives and facets. In addition to ten lectures by members of the FZM and guests, which will take place on Wednesdays in the lecture hall of the University's Musicology Department, events with improvisational-musical performances or cross-genre performances are planned on five Monday evenings at the College of Music, two of which are part of the FZM event series "musik + wissen".

Here you can find the short program (pdf) (this file is not barrier-free) with all individual dates of the public lecture series.

The Freiburg Research and Teaching Center (FZM) is a joint institution of the College of Music and the University campus Freiburg with the aim of mutual networking in music-related research and teaching.