著者

柴田 康太郎

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美学 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.68, no.1, pp.109-120, 2017 (Released:2018-07-01)

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Movie theaters in the silent era had a feature as a concert hall. Especially in Japan in the Taisho era, they were central places where ordinary people heard Western music. Though they are important case for Japanese receptive study of Western music, how film audiences received it had scarcely been investigated. This study, focusing on some theaters in Tokyo especially around 1920 and 1927, tries to show their receptions of Western music. First three sections consider on the audiences’ columns in the pamphlets issued by one of the main movie theaters, Teikokukan in Asakusa. They show that audiences were so interested in Western music which was frequently played as intermission music that, when the same music was used for film accompaniment, it sometimes gained audiences’ attention more than the film it was used for. But until 1927, musical medleys had gradually gained popularity as a new form of intermission music. The popularity was based on each tunes’ associative images which had been formed in audience through their repetitive use in film accompaniment. The peculiar associations formed in the movie theaters gave birth to a unique musical practice.