Joseph Carl Breil

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Joseph Carl Breil was born in 1870 in Pittsburgh and was a singer, conductor and composer before he went to work for the cinema. For the American screening of Queen Elizabeth (1912) he wrote one of the first original film scores in the United States. His best-known work is the music for D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915). Breil combined themes of his own with familiar melodies from operas, folk songs and nineteenth-century popular music. A large orchestra played the score in the premiere theatres. The love theme 'The Perfect Song' became a hit. The film is notorious for its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan, and that racism also resonates in the way the music characterises groups.

Listening

• 
  Cotton Fields (In the Gloaming) / Love Strain · New Zealand Symphony Orchestra & Clyde Allen, 1915
• 
  The Battle Between the States · New Zealand Symphony Orchestra & Clyde Allen, 1915
• 
  Lincoln's Assassination · New Zealand Symphony Orchestra & Clyde Allen, 1915
• 
  The Battle · Joseph Carl Breil, 1915

Works

• 1912Queen Elizabeth
• 1915The Birth of a Nation
• 1916Intolerance

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Film Music Map^NL Map
• The Dream Factory: Film Reel 1^NL Reader

Mentioned in other articles

• Symphonic silent film scores (Hollywood and Weimar) GenreFor the racist epic The Birth of a Nation (1915), Joseph Carl Breil made a mixture of his own themes, folk songs and classical quotations, such as Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

See also

• Symphonic silent film scores (Hollywood and Weimar)