Uploaded 18 December 1998

During recent years, historical film has been of great interest to both historians and film scholars. There are many excellent studies that analyze historical film at a general level. Pierre Sorlin’s The Film in History (1980) is already a classic, but it does not actually focus on how history is narrated in the cinema. This question is, instead, a central theme in Robert Rosenstone’s book Visions of the Past (1995). Rosenstone’s work is a pioneer exploration on the methods of analyzing historical film. It does, however, give ample opportunities to consider further how history is really narrated. One area that especially requires attention is the role of sound in audiovisual historical narration. Actually, Rosenstone repeatedly refers to cinema as a visual medium, forgetting the auditive element. He writes that “voice sounds” of the actors can “create meaning”, but otherwise he argues that “images on the screen” finally create the “visual history”.[1]

The sound of history has long been a neglected area in the study of historical film. This is somewhat surprising when we think about the fact that historical films have always made auditive comments on the past, not only on how people spoke in the ancient times but also how the bygone period sounded, what kind of auditive elements did that particular historical era have: in ancient spectacle we hear noisy marketplaces of Jerusalem, roaring masses of Roman circuses, echoing catacombes of Rome. Films have not only given an illusion of seeing but also of hearing the past. History is not something merely to be seen or to be reasoned about: it is a full sensory experience where the ear should be addressed as much as the eye. Filmmakers have thus described history through sounds well before historians understood that also our auditive milieu has a history and can express history.

In addition to the creation of this soundscape, films also include music which may be historically significant. This article aims to consider the role of music in the making of historical meanings. My argument is that music can crucially participate in creating the historical atmosphere of a film. It can even contribute to the philosophy of history embedded in an audiovisual product: it can establish an image of historical reconstruction, an image that history can really be reached through the screen, as much as it can be used to question the sense of such an illusion.

The empiria  of this article consists of classical films. I have restricted myself only to the genre of epic spectacles of the 1950s and early 1960s – to such films as Quo vadis  (1951), The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959) and The Fall of the Roman Empire(1964). The music in these films undoubtedly supports the whole narrative, including its historical aspect, in the same way as it functions in other classical Hollywood films. It attaches emotions and affects to the described events. This article does not aim to emphasize the historical implications of this emotional element, although that certainly would be of great interest. Filmmakers have often wanted to demonstrate that ancient times were full of similar earthly worries to our modern life and that history really looked and sounded like a standard Hollywood melodrama. When we step into the past through the screen, we are not allowed to be confronted by anything too strange, not even music. History should sound familiar, similar to other films – or, at least, the feeling of otherness should not be underlined too much.

This article emphasizes three specific questions. The first one is: How did composers themselves conceive the problem of historicity, the difference between ancient music and our modern perspective. Historical narration, no matter written or audiovisual, is always a dialogue between historical horizons, past and present. How was this dealt with in the case of film music? This problem is illuminated by analyzing Miklós Rózsa’s methods of composing. The next question is: How did film music encompass the interplay of historicity and universality, especially in the case of Biblical films that wanted to stress their ever-relevant message. Third question is: Did music have any real commentative role in these filmic historical narratives or did it only have a supporting function? To this end, Dimitri Tiomkin’s score for The Fall of the Roman Empire will be examined to consider whether music can make a serious contribution to the historical interpretation within a film.

Film music traditions

Before going deeper into the musical scores of Hollywood spectacles, some consideration must be paid to the background of their musical style. These epics of the 50s and early 60s usually begin very similarly: Roman legions are marching in the introductory images of numerous films. Music is played fortissimo by a full-scale symphony orchestra. Of course, in cinema, one does not need a big orchestra to create loud effects but, in spectacles, this seems to be the case. [2]  Perhaps just this “loudness” is something that implies that history is to be expected. Let us consider two westerns of Howard Hawks: Red River seems to be more “history” than Rio Bravo. John Belton claims that there is a certain “epic expansiveness” in Red River which can be opposed to the “lyrical density” of Rio Bravo. [3] These films differ musically in that Red River uses a large symphony orchestra, whereas Rio Bravo is accompanied very gently by a small ensemble. Without doubt, there are many things that make these westerns differ from each other but certainly music plays a part in the formation of their distinct atmospheres. And, furthermore, “loudness” does not mean anything in itself: it does not mean that the film would automatically be interpreted as “history”, but when connected to other elements – advance reviews, advertisements, trailers and other such materials that precede cinema experience – it assures the audience about the historicity of the film.

Just as Hollywood spectacles show massive sets and thousands of extras milling around among the columns, they offer spectacular effects for the ear. The score of an epic usually begins with a fanfare introduction played fortissimo by trumpets, trombones and bassoons; after this, the full romantic orchestra performs the piece to its climax. Some films employ a post-romantic Wagnerian orchestra or perhaps an even larger ensemble. In The Fall of the Roman Empire, Tiomkin operated with an orchestra of 130 players, [4] whereas Elmer Bernstein’s The Ten Commandments managed with a relatively small orchestra consisting at its maximum of only 71 musicians. Bernstein used eight horns, however, which was unconventional. [5]  We might speculate that horns have a special role in historical film music, since they are often used in order to create spatial effects. This could be illustrated with the introduction of the main theme in Edvard Grieg’s piano concerto. It is played first on the flute, and then taken over by the horn. This shift gives a distancing effect. Maybe eight horns were needed to give the impression of “epic expansiveness”.

Only in exceptional cases is the introductory music written in a lyrical style and for a smaller ensemble. Tiomkin’s overture for The Land of the Pharaohs(1955) is an oriental song with a light accompaniment, where a Wagnerian orchestra would have been in total contradiction to the vocal part.

Using a big orchestra is not only a consequence of the cinematic endeavor to construct a spectacle, however; it also relates to trends in the history of music. The attempt to narrate stories through music emerged during the 19th century. Of course there had been commentative music previously, but the idea of telling stories solely by means of instrumental music was born during the romantic era, e.g. by Franz Liszt in his symphonic poems and his influence on the development of programmatic music. Later, programmatic music took on larger forms, e.g. in Peter Tchaikovsky’s Manfred or Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Antar symphonies. The former is based on Byron’s poem or, to be more precise, on a program written by the Russian critic Stassov, derived from Byron’s drama. Tchaikovsky’s music, like an objective storyteller, tried to render audible the events, emotions and conflicts – without words.

Film music does not directly derive from this romantic tradition; it has a much more complex background. It is probable that the pre-romantic rules for representing emotions have also influenced film music traditions. Baroque music, for example, used specified motifs or musical expressions to signify emotions or affects. Something from this tradition has survived in the cue sheets of the silent film era. Around 1909 the Edison and Vitagraph companies started to provide film exhibitors with cue sheets that offered appropriate music for each scene of a film. [6] Later, marketing of cue sheets became a large-scale enterprise, and catalogues offered suggestions for different emotions and tempers of film. A cue sheet catalogue from 1927 offered 165 pieces with different character, including keywords such as lonely, serious, fanatic, happy, graceful, joyful, humorous, mystical, poetic, oriental, pastoral, anger, sorrow, abandoned, tragic, doubtful… One of the keywords is ‘historical’, and the cue sheets under this character include only romantic music, either programmatic music or opera. Operas seem to be associated with many characteristics that might apply to historical spectacles. “Heroic”, for example, refers to passages from Wagner’s operas Götterdämmerung, Parsifal and Siegfried. [7] It is probable that Wagner’s music was especially used in biblical epics. The musical program of Fred Niblo’s Ben-Hur (1926) used Wagner’s “Charfreitagszauber” music from Parsifal, probably during the Nativity scene near the beginning of the film. The presentation opened noisily enough for the epic tradition with “Marche de la Reine du Saba”, composed by Charles Gounod, and ended with Wagner melodies again, this time the “Friedensboten” chorus from Rienzi. [7]

One essential mediator between romantic music and cinema was late 19th-century stage music. [9] The music of the “toga dramas” exercised a particularly strong influence on the subsequent musical component in film spectacles. In these historical melodramas, the function of music was to accentuate each situation portrayed on the stage. In accordance with the concept of affects, specified musical motifs were used to refer to specific emotions. In addition to this, scores freely applied Wagnerian leitmotiv techniques. For example, in his music for Ben-Hur (1899), Edgar Stillman Kelley, according to Katherine Preston, used at least three motifs. One was bound to Ben-Hur’s character, and the other two to “misfortune and ruin” and to “vengeance”.[10]

The use of the romantic orchestra to underline “historicity” came from this tradition; it was an influence that could not be evaded. When sound film made its breakthrough in the 1920s and 1930s, large ensembles were taken over to comment on screen events irrespective of the genre, perhaps because the tradition projected the romantic orchestra as neutral and objective. As Royal S. Brown states, the classical, symphonic musical score was established as the norm and became an essential component of the Hollywood studio system. [1] In ancient spectacles, however, composers needed to go beyond the normal romantic orchestra in order to achieve even more spectacular effects. The facilities for orchestral soundtrack improved during the 50s with stereophony. No other means to make “history” audible was recognized but post-romantic expanded ensembles à la Wagner and Mahler. Elmer Bernstein later argued that there was no sense in trying to compose in a manner contradictory to conventional musical language: “In a medium which reaches more people in one month than a so-called ‘serious composer’ reaches in an entire lifetime it is necessary that the screen composer has some recognition of the ‘language barrier’ which exists between his own highly sophisticated (we hope) language and the more primitive musical language of his vast and varied audience.” [12]

The otherness of the past

One of the most interesting dilemmas in composing for ancient spectacles was how to reconcile a modern perspective with the historical horizon of the period described, and how to conciliate musical traditions of the present day with musical comments on the past without committing serious anachronisms. Of course this problem is shared with historical research in general.

Historicism argued that we should try to understand the past from its own perspective, and that we really could totally eliminate our modern concepts during the process of research. A historicist would perhaps say that the music in a historical film should therefore be as authentic as possible, from beginning to end. Historicism spoke in other words for the total denial of ‘actuality’, as if it really were possible to be liberated from our present-day conceptions of reality. As I see it, however, current issues are always and unavoidably present whenever history is narrated, irrespective whether it is fictive imagination or scholarly work. Historical investigation is a process of dialogue in which our present-day thinking encounters the thinking of the past. The present day cannot be denied or eliminated: while describing the past the author is simultaneously writing about his own world, consciously or unconsciously, implicitly or explicitly.

This problem is comparable to the difficulties faced by a composer in creating music that will give a feeling of historicity, yet not be too strange for the modern ear. Film music could not sound too unfamiliar. Elmer Bernstein composed quite a number of pieces from Egyptian-source music for The Ten Commandments, but only a few pieces were used in the final release print. Egyptian music was regarded as “too unpleasant”, as the composer himself later wrote, although this music was far from authentic and was performed only on modern instruments. [13]

One reason why the producer did not want to use ancillary source music in The Ten Commandments may have been the fact that the actual score itself does not include any pre-modern elements at all. The music is all written in the style of late romanticism, with echoes of Wagner and Mahler. If there had been more source music, it could have sounded inconsistent with the score.

A composer who especially worked with the problems of historical film was Miklós Rózsa, whose filmography includes such epics as Quo vadis, Ivanhoe, Knights of the Round Table, Julius Caesar, Ben-Hur, The King of Kings, El Cid and Sodom and Gommorrah. On the possibilities of reconciling different historical horizons, Rózsa saw that there was an essential dissimilarity between opera and film. According to his view, opera is:

stylized art and, therefore, the music also is a stylized adaptation of a certain historical or nationalistic style. No one expects to hear 16th-century Minnesänger music in Die Meistersinger, antique Greek music in Electra, or ancient Hebrew music in Salome. The orientalism in Aida, Samson and Delilah or Queen of Sheba is only used as color and they are full-blooded, romantic operas mirroring the style of the period of their creation with no attempt whatsoever to represent the true style of the period of their action. But the motion picture is different. It is realistic and factual. It not only tries to capture the spirit of bygone eras but also tries to make believe that it projects before the eyes of the spectator the real thing. There are no painted backdrops, fake props, cardboard shields and wooden swords as in an opera, but everything is realistic to the fullest limit and if the public doesn’t believe that the Christians were actually eaten by the lions, the photoplay would have completely failed in its objective. [14]

We might of course criticize Rózsa’s ideas about realism, and argue that there certainly were some “painted backdrops, fake props and cardboard shields” in cinema after all, but this is not essential here. What is more interesting is that Rózsa, consistent to his view, set out to create his own historical style to reconcile the demands of the modern ear and the effort to be “authentic”. This project started with Quo vadis in 1951.

Before the composition of the score, Rózsa worked in archives and read old manuscripts in order to catch the style of 1st-century music. Quo vadis included quite a lot of source music, and Rózsa wanted it to sound at least plausible. The source music consisted both of Roman and Christian music, but the former presented a much more serious obstacle, since in spite of all the extant Roman literature, painting, architecture and sculpture, there are hardly any sources describing Roman music. The music of the Romans therefore had to be reconstructed, for which two models were used. Roman culture borrowed many of its elements from the Greeks, and this also applies to their music. Rózsa draw the conclusion that it was “not incorrect to reconstruct this music from Greek examples”. One of the oldest musical relics, the Skolion of Sikilos, dating from the 1st or 2nd century, gave the basis for Nero’s first song in the film, The Burning of Troy, and was finally performed by Peter Ustinov in the Phrygian mode! [15]

When composing Nero’s second song, The Burning of Rome, Rózsa used another strategy of reconstruction. He started from the assumption that, in Roman music, there was much that was later adopted by Christian medieval culture: “We can select from the early Christian music where the origin cannot be proven, and presume that the original source was Roman.” [16]  “The Burning of Rome” used a Gregorian anthem, Omnes sitientos venite ad aquas, as a point of departure. In addition to these melodies, Eunice’s song and all the Christian hymns were based on historical musical sources.

One problem was the orchestration of this source music. Today, we have reconstructions of ancient music that are based on the use of original instruments: for example, the recordings of early Greek music by the Atrium Musicae ensemble of Madrid under its leader Gregorio Paniagua. At the time of Quo vadis, however, there were no Greek instruments available, and the archaic sound had to be created on modern instruments. Rózsa used a small Scottish harp, the clarsach, the sound of which fairly closely resembled the sound of the lyre and antique harp; the bass flute and English horn had to serve as the aulos, while cornets mixed with trumpets and trombones “gave the roughness of the early brass instruments”. [17]

The question of ancient music does not relate only to the music played on-scene. Rózsa wanted to overcome the gap between diegetic source music and non-diegetic score by melting the historical horizons together. This intention can already be recognized in the prelude to the film, where Rózsa developed the melody from a Gregorian anthem, Libera me Domine, but with the words turned into “Quo vadis Domine?” . The underlying conflict between Christians and Romans is expressed by having Roman fanfares interrupt the melodic line of the hymn.

According to the Hollywood norms, however, film music should be written in the romantic style. Rózsa’s problem was therefore how to harmonize Gregorian or Greek melodies, without breaking the norm, yet simultaneously giving the feeling of antiquity. Neither the Greeks nor Romans knew polyphony in the modern sense. These melodies should, nonetheless, be harmonized “to make them emotionally appealing”. Rózsa himself later analyzed it thus:

A romantic, chromatic harmonization would have been out of place and a simple modal harmonization seemed to me the closest to the character of this music. The modern major and minor triads were unknown factors to the Romans, but our modern ears are so used to these sounds that it would have been impossible to ignore them completely… The dramatic music of Quo vadis is much less polyphonic than my previous film scores, for the only reason that extended polyphony would have clashed anachronistically with monodic music performed on-scene throughout the picture. [18]

Rózsa’s historical style was based, in other words, on the use of old melodies and motifs which were harmonized in a rough and simple manner. This went not only for source music but also for the commentative background music. Elements of modern harmonization and polyphony were needed both to comply with the Hollywood norm and to make the ancient melodies receivable without underlining them too much. George Duning, the composer of Salome, claimed Rózsa’s scores to be “stylistically correct and authentic” [19] , but this is untrue. In fact, Rózsa himself stated that “from the musicological point of view, it might not be perfectly authentic, but by using Greco-Roman modes and a spare and primitive harmonisation, it tries to evoke in the listener the feeling and impression of antiquity.” [20]  The scores are thus not–and could not be – authentic, but they try to absorb, as Frank K. DeWald writes, “a feeling of authentic time and place into the composer’s unique and completely twentieth-century idiom”. [21]

Historical versus universal narrative

There are, of course, many elements that jeopardize the effort to “reconstruct” bygone eras. One aspect of interest is that ancient spectacles portray not only past events or processes, but also ahistorical, universal elements. This is why Rózsa’s Ben-Hur, especially in scenes that refer to divinity and transcendence, contains modern elements that would have been out of the question in Quo vadis . At the climax of the film, when Ben-Hur’s mother and sister are cured, Rózsa describes pain with a dissonant chord. [22]  The presence of Christ is stressed by the use of the organ, although this instrument does not strictly belong to the musical world of the era described. Rózsa also used the organ in King of Kings.

Elmer Bernstein wrote that one problem in Biblical films is the question: what kind of music should be composed for the scenes that deal with the presence of God? [23]  One method would be to use human voice and allude to Gregorian chant for example (as in Quo vadis ), or to Palestrina. A more modern method, initiated by Claude Debussy in his La cathédrale engloutie and Le martyre de Saint Sébastien , is to build the piece upon changing minor and major chords which give a feeling of transcendence. Alfred Newman used this in the Christ theme of The Robe (1953), as did Miklós Rózsa in Ben-Hur. [24] There is still one method based on orchestration, and that is to foreground the organ, since of all instruments, the organ is the most likely to evoke godly, divine emotions. In Quo vadis, which is very uncompromising in its style, this would perhaps have been a “clashing anachronism”, but in Ben-Hur, which is written in a more romantic manner, the modern ear can accept the use of a baroque instrument; or, more precisely, the organ is no longer associated with the baroque, but refers to ahistorical, universal values.

It thus seems that there is no single coherent historical style in the music of Hollywood epics, but several styles that derive from what the filmmakers finally wanted to stress. George Duning explained that when Columbia Pictures let him compose the score for William Dieterle’s Salome, it was agreed beforehand that the film is narrated more as a “dramatic love story” than as a description of historical events. [25]  This decision is of course reflected in the music.

Miklós Rózsa had severe problems with Julius Caesar because the original events occurred in the 1st century B.C., but Shakespeare’s play was written during the 17th century:

Should I have composed it in Roman style, it would have been wrong for Shakespeare – should I have tried to treat it as stage music to an Elizabethan drama in Elizabethan style, it would have been anachronistic from the historical point of view. I decided, therefore, to regard it as a universal drama, about the eternal problems of men and the most timely problems about the fate of dictators. I wrote the same music I would have written for a modern stage presentation: interpretative incidental music, expressing with my own musical language, for a modern audience, what Shakespeare expressed with his own language for his own audience 350 years ago. [26]

One of the most arresting scores is Dimitri Tiomkin’s music for The Fall of the Roman Empire . As already mentioned, Tiomkin used a huge orchestra which gave post-Wagnerian grandeur for this larger-than-life spectacle. He consulted with the producer Samuel Bronston and with the associate producer Michael Waszynski, and was given complete freedom to choose his own style. Such freedom was exceptional. Usually producers and directors gave suggestions and sometimes even wanted to dictate the whole construction of the score. Cecil B. DeMille, for example, was very closely involved in the process of composition. According to Elmer Bernstein, DeMille’s concepts were “quite Wagnerian both dramatically and musically”. Bernstein, who worked with DeMille in The Ten Commandments, comments that DeMille “believes firmly in the use of the leitmotif and the interplay of these motifs in scenes which affect the destinies of more than one character”.[27]  Bronston and the director Anthony Mann did not have such interest in The Fall of the Roman Empire, and gave Tiomkin a free hand. Later, explaining his approach, he states that he deliberately wanted to stress the universality of the events:

I excitedly started to block important dramatic and lyrical passages and found myself, to my great surprise, involved not with characters from eighteen centuries ago but with characters whose problems were remarkably like our own and practically coincidental with all human drama (…) I decided that it was my duty as a composer to be honest in order to give myself inspiration to work. I must dismiss all ideas of giving this picture quasi documentary-style music. My only plan would be to react spontaneously to the dramatic element which I gradually began to see and appreciate in Roman Empire. [28]

Tiomkin did not, in other words, want to compete with Miklós Rózsa’s “quasi documentary-style music” but, merely, to follow his own style. Nor did he want to apply the conventional leitmotif technique. In the Hollywood Wagnerian style, leitmotifs were normally used as a reference to the main characters of the picture. [29] Tiomkin, in contrast, composed themes for the basic ideas in the film. The first of these, symbolizing the fall of Rome, can be heard already in the prelude of the film. This tragic theme is later used in several contexts. In the final scene it is mixed with a tarantella when Rome is falling into chaos and the population is dancing in the streets and forums. This is a similar juxtaposition of disparate moods familiar from the third act of Bizet’s Carmen, where the gaiety of Escamillo is blended with the tragic confrontation of Carmen and Don José. In addition, there are themes referring to death (the funeral of Marcus Aurelius), to ambition (Commodus in the temple of Jove) and to the Pax Romana (Aurelius’ tribute to the provinces). [30]

The musical highlights of the film are the overture and the final scene, where the orchestra is at its largest. The music is written for three instrumental groupings: organ, symphony orchestra, and separate brass ensemble. The prelude begins with an introduction for solo organ in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach. The sound of the organ immediately generates a sense that this film is going to consist of something more than individual experiences and emotions. In a way, it elevates the themes to come to a more public level. This interpretation fits with Tiomkin’s own statements: his aim was to emphasize the universal side of the drama. Although the film was situated in the 2nd century, Tiomkin wanted to underscore that these events were not merely historical, but could also be encountered elsewhere, irrespective of time and place.

This musical accentuation does not, however, devalue the film’s historical interest, but seems rather to enrich it. In fact, the film poignantly shows its historicity already in the first scene, where the voice-over poses the crucial questions: “How can we account for the rise of Rome and how can we account for her fall?” From this historical perspective, the prelude takes on another connotation. The use of the organ suggests a reference to Christianity, and perhaps to the Christian faith as one essential catalyst in the fall of Rome. This implication is rather strange, however, since the film itself does not really take up the question of Christianity. In the film, the beginning of the fall of Rome is located between the deaths of Marcus Aurelius and his ‘son’ Commodus. Marcus Aurelius’ objective is to maintain the Pax Romana. His idea is to enlarge Rome by granting citizenship to the barbarians of the northern frontier. This endeavor is sabotaged by the greed and ambition of Commodus, who refuses to accept a policy of peace. The downfall of Rome begins, and materialist values destroy Rome from within.

Perhaps it was not Tiomkin’s intention to emphasize the role of Christianity in this process; nevertheless, this meaning can certainly be read from the first minutes of the film. The Fall of the Roman Empire seems to have only one character who is openly Christian, namely Timonides (James Mason), who tries to convert Ballomar to Christianity. Later, Timonides is killed when Rome starts to slip into chaos. Marcus Aurelius is not associated with Christianity, although his peaceful ideas might imply it. The film seems, however, to suggest a movement from Christianity to paganism, from cosmos to chaos. This feeling is intensified by the score, which starts with a Bach-like organ solo and ends with a secular tarantella, danced orgiastically by the populace of Rome.

Dimitri Tiomkin’s approach to composing for historical film is thus quite different from that of Rózsa. In the scores of Miklós Rózsa, the music usually did not attempt to comment on the historical interpretation of the film. Tiomkin’s music, on the contrary, captures a more independent role and is more reflective in its relationship to the script.

In conclusion, it can be stressed that there was no single historical style in the music of Hollywood spectacles but many. This was affected by several influences. When The Fall of the Roman Empire was made in 1964, the Hollywood codex had already lost its authoritative position. The composer was presumably not under such strict restrictions as previously; a greater degree of independence had become possible. On the other hand, compositional decisions presumably reflect the composer’s and filmmaker’s visions of history, and their assumptions about the purposes for which history is narrated.

In her article “Postmodernism versus illusionist narrative”, Sumiko Higashi parallels two historical films of the 1980s, Walker (1987) and Mississippi Burning(1988). Mississippi Burning resembles positivistic historical writing in the sense that it aims at illusionistic description of the past, it tries to show the past – in Droysen’s words -“wie es eigentlich gewesen ist.” In Walker, on the other hand, the discourse of telling is more foregrounded and, therefore, it reminds us of the dialogic research premises of the so-called “new history”.[31]  The Fall of the Roman Empire can by no means be measured as a postmodern film, but there seems to be a similar difference between it and Quo vadis , which falls into the category of “illusionist narrative”. It might be argued that in Quo Vadis , there was an idea of historical reconstruction behind the project, and the belief that such a reconstruction is possible. Furthermore, it seems that the filmmakers, including the composer, held the view that the real task of a spectacle is to deliver the spectator into the past and offer as coherent a vision as possible. In The Fall of the Roman Empire , the fact that history is always narrated by somebody for some actual purpose is more in the foreground. Here, the composer has an important role, not as an illustrator of the past, but as a commentator, who makes the film a polyphonic interpretation of history.

Endnotes:
[1] Robert Rosenstone, Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to our Idea of History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 34-37.
[2] As Kathryn Kalinak writes, spectacle is emphazised by “continuous playing and increased volume”. See Kathryn Kalinak, Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 97.
[3] Christopher Palmer, The Composer in Hollywood (New York: Marion Boyars, 1990), 141.
[4] Christopher Palmer, Dimitri Tiomkin: A portrait (London: T.E. Books, 1984), 121.
[5] Elmer Bernstein, “The Ten Commandments “, in Film Music: From Violins to Video, edited by James L. Limbacher (Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1974), 155.
[6] David Robinson, “Music of the shadows: the use of musical accompaniment with silent films, 1896-1936”, in Le giornate del cinema muto, Pordenone. Supplemento a Griffithiana no. 38/39, Ottobre 1990, 12.
[7] I have used a Finnish cue sheet catalogue from 1927. See Luettelo varastossamme olevasta kinomusiikista salonkiorkesterille. Katalog över kinomusik som för salongorkester finnes på lager. 1927(Helsinki: Fazerin musiikkikauppa, 1927).
[8] The musical program of Ben-Hur(1926), in Finnish Film Archive.
[9] See Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1987), 34.
[10] Katherine Preston, “The music of toga drama”, in Playing Out the Empire: Ben-Hur and other Toga Plays and Films, 1883-1908. A critical anthology, edited with introduction and notes by David Mayer and an essay on the incidental music for toga dramas by Katherine Preston (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 24-25.
[11] Royal S. Brown, Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 63.
[12] Bernstein, 156.
[13] Bernstein, 155.
[14] Miklós Rózsa, ” Quo vadis  “, in Film Music: From Violins to Video , 148.
[15] Rózsa, 150.
[16] Rózsa, 150.
[17] Rózsa, 152.
[18] Rózsa, 152-153.
[19] George Duning, ” Salome “, in Film Music: From Violins to Video , 145.
[20] “Notes by Miklós Rózsa”, in Original motion picture scores, El Cid, Ben Hur, King of Kings. Suites from the Epic Films for Orchestra, Chorus and Organ (Hamburg Concert Orchestra, Richard Muller-Lampertz. Recorded May 1962. VCD 47268).
[21] Frank K. DeWald, “The Son of El Cid – Part Two”, Pro musica sana 51, Summer 1993, 11.
[22] Palmer, The Composer in Hollywood, 220.
[23] Bernstein, 156.
[24] Palmer,The Composer in Hollywood, 84.
[25] Duning, 145.
[26] Miklós Rózsa, ” Julius Caesar“, in ,Film Music: From Violins to Video,132.
[27] Bernstein, 154.
[28] Dimitri Tiomkin, “A letter to listeners”, in Dimitri Tiomkin: The Man and his Music. NFT dossier no. 1(London: The National Film Theatre, n.d.), 63.
[29] Cf. Kalinak, 104-105; Brown, 98-99.
[30] See Christopher Palmer’s analysis of the score in Dimitri Tiomkin: A Portrait, 121-127; The Composer in Hollywood, 145-149.
[31] Sumiko Higashi, “Postmodernism versus illusionist narrative”, in Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past, edited by Robert A. Rosenstone (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1995), 188-201.