Red Riding Pictures Proudly Presents (2022)
Instrumentation: oboe, clarinet, violin, cello, double bass, piano
Duration: 8 minutes
Red Riding Pictures Proudly Presents is a retelling of the Red Riding Hood fairy tale in the style of music composed for silent films, a genre known as photoplay music that flourished from 1913 to 1929. My composition is based on a variety of historical sources, namely the Sam Fox Moving Picture Music composed by John Stephan Zamecnik. Zamecnik was a Cleveland-born composer who traveled to Prague to study with Antonín Dvořák. When he returned to America, he served as the music director for the Hippodrome Theater in Cleveland, composing music for screenings of silent films. His film compositions were published in the 1910s by the Sam Fox Publishing Company, the first company in the United States to publish original music for films.