Avant garde film: sound, music and avant-garde film culture before 1939

In this chapter I will mainly focus on approaches to, and applications of, sound and music within a number of avant-garde films, summarizing some of the dominant music approaches within the filmic avant-garde up until 1939. The major concern will be the coming of sound and the reactions that this major technological shift engendered from writers and artists concerned with the formal and artistic side of cinematic expression. Following this, I will chart the main connections between discourse on sound and the manner by which it was employed in some key avant-garde films. First, though, I will summarize some of the relations between sound and avant-garde previous to the actual ‘sound era’.