Page 118 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes | Composers’ Societies Past and Present
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the Directors Guild of America. Against this background – and given the
active role unions played in Hollywood – it is not surprising that the labour
practices of musicians in Hollywood have been at the centre of research on
3
organisational and legal conventions concerning film music – an approach
that nevertheless covers only a part of the duties of film composers in Hol-
lywood. As film composers performed very different musical tasks for the
film industry, their work was also legally situated in the space between la-
bour and creative work. The special position of film composers in the space
between aesthetic and organisational conventions prompted the founda-
tion of the Screen Composers Association (SCA) in 1945 as a society to sup-
port the special needs of film composers in the industry.
In this article I argue that an examination of the foundational years of
the SCA, which is strangely under-researched, is a way to highlight, among
other things, the specific characteristics of composition in the medium of
film against the background of the music and the film industries. My ar-
ticle is based on the study of SCA records preserved at the Margaret Her-
rick Library in Los Angeles, as well as sources relating to the activities of
the SCA in other archives in the United States. I contextualise these ar-
chival documents by taking different professional societies in the film and
music industries into account, as well as the SCA’s public outreach strate-
gies. This approach allows me to expose aspects of a film composer’s work-
ing life in the United States beyond Hollywood. Composer societies such
as the SCA collectively exercised enormous power over how music ‘works’.
For example, the SCA dealt with industry labour practices and the legal
challenges of the international distribution of Hollywood film music, and
assisted composers in obtaining the performance rights for their music. In
addition to this, the SCA promoted the exchange of crucial information
on industry practices and provided social support for its members when
needed.

2 For a history of the Hollywood unions see: Kate Fortmueller and Luci Marzola, eds.,
Hollywood Unions (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2024).
3 See: James P. Kraft, “Musicians in Hollywood: Work and Technological Change in
Entertainment Industries, 1926–1940,” Technology and Culture 35, no. 2 (April 1994):
289–314; James P. Kraft, Stage to Studio: Musicians and the Sound Revolution, 1890–
1950 (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), and Gianluca
Sergi, “Organizing Sound: Labour Organizations and Power Struggles that Helped
Define Music and Sound in Hollywood,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Sound De-
sign and Music in Screen Media: Integrated Soundtracks, eds. Liz Greene and Dani-
jela Kulezic-Wilson (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 43–56,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51680-0_4.

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