Why doesn Mont Alto use the original, authentic score for silent movies?
One possible definition of silent films would be “films that have no single, definitive sound track.” Most theaters in America in the silent film era created their own scores, so there was no single “original, authentic” score. If you saw a film in 1000 different theatres, you would probably hear 1000 different scores. It is true that many big productions had scores composed especially for them for their New York premieres by composers like Erno Rapee and Hugo Riesenfeld. But these scores were rarely used at many theaters outside New York unless an orchestra travelled with the film as a “road show,” and it would be better to refer to them as the “New York Premiere Score” rather than the “Original Score.” Mont Alto’s score compiling approach is historically authentic, even though these exact scores are unlikely to have occured during the silent era.
