What instruments were used in melodrama?

Answer 1

That is an impossibly broad question to ask, but I'll answer to the best of my abilities.

For starters, there are many types of film music: the 'classical model', the jazz score, the synthesized score, the pop score, and what I call the 'neo-classical model'.

Classical film scoring is the sound we associate mostly with older movies. It has a sort of romantic-era orchestral sound. One good example, although this is a relatively modern one, is the score for the original Star Wars trilogy (by John Williams). This kind of score features a full orchestra: strings (violin, viola, cello, bass); woodwinds (flute, oboe, bassoon, clarinet, sometimes Saxophone); percussion (timpani, drums, cymbals, xylophone, etc.); brass (trumpet, trombone, tuba).

Jazz scores gained a lot of popularity in the jazz era and featured typical big band instruments: brass (trumpets, trombones); drums (drumset, maybe vibraphone); bass; sometimes vocals. Jazz scores also sometimes used other instruments, but always in a jazz setting.

Synthesized scores gained a lot of popularity in the 1980s and are epitomised in the work of Vangelis (Blade Runner). Basically, everything is done with a synthesizer, although more traditional instruments are sometimes incorporated.

Pop scores are the modern equivalent of jazz scores. They use the instruments, sounds, and tropes of popular music. Instruments include (but are not necessarily limited to): keyboards; Electric Guitar; electric bass; drumset.

Neo-classical scoring is a return to the Romantic-era sound (somewhat) and the techniques of more traditional film scoring, but with a more modern sound, and including some more modern instrumentation. This means that the lion's share of the work is done by a traditional symphony orchestra (see the instrument list above), but modern instruments (like electric guitars and synthesizers) are included as well. Hans Zimmer, Nicholas Hooper, and Howard Shore are among the many, many examples of composers who fall into this category.

Answer 2

Victorian melodramas were often accompanied by small pit-orchestras composed in a very similar balance to a modern orchestra (but with many fewer performers). Half a dozen violins, a Clarinet or two, a cello, a percussionist and perhaps a pair of brass players (a cornet and an ophicleide) would give you a wide range of tonal colours quite cheaply.

You need to remember that until the very end of the Victorian era old instruments such as key bugles, cornettes, serpents, and the ophicleide were still commonplace - and would mix in with what we now consider normal orchestral instruments.

It varied a lot depending on what the local theatre could get, and how much it could make from each performance.

Answer 3

It tended to be a piano which was played live at the picture house. The pianist made up his own music as he watched the film. He would have a number of favourite themes such as suspense, hurry-hurry, romance, danger, chase, action, dream and so on to fit the action on the screen. My uncle Alfred W. Lane did it.

Answer 4

In Silent Movies pianos are used mainly