Page 119 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

How Music Works: Film Composers, Labour, and the Screen Composers Association …
Working for Hollywood: Challenges for Professional Music
Organisations in the Film Industry
Hollywood’s musical workforce in the studio era was generally organ-
ised along the principles of the division of labour. ‘Workers’ in music de-
partments were overseen by a studio head, such as Leo Forbstein at Warn-
er Bros. Many music department employees undertook different tasks as
part of their daily jobs: composers conducted their own scores (or those of
their colleagues) and arranged or orchestrated music, while orchestrators
worked as music copyists. Film music labour in the studio era involved dif-
ferent professional tasks that – from a legal perspective – brought various
challenges for the composers in the industry, especially in obtaining credit
and royalties for their creative work. Providing Hollywood with music was
especially challenging in the 1930s and 1940s, which saw numerous ground-
breaking technological shifts in music production and reception, includ-
ing the advent of sound film, and later, the LP record. Professional socie-
ties were thus established to support various professions in the music and
film industries in obtaining and negotiating their copyrights and perform-
ing rights. In practice, it was guilds and unions that supported workers in
the music industry, basing their engagement on the notion of labour. Nev-
ertheless, film composers often operated in the legal space between differ-
ent kinds of labour. This situation prompted the composer and president of
the SCA Adolph Deutsch to call the film composer “the forgotten man of the
4
movies” in a 1940s article in Musical America.
One of the organisations that was probably most active in represent-
ing the rights of musicians (and continues to be so today) was the American
Federation of Musicians (AFM). The AFM was founded in 1896 to protect
the rights of American musicians – including “any musician paid for his
5
or her services” – and to prevent an influx of European musicians into the
American music market. The AFM concerned itself with the rights of musi-
cians working in orchestras at large, and was thus connected to the concert,
radio, and film industries. For many classical and popular musicians alike,
Hollywood’s film industry offered an opportunity for stable employment.
With the rapid technological advances of the era, the AFM especially con-
cerned itself with protecting live musicians against the exploitation of their

4 Adolph Deutsch, “The Composer: Forgotten Man of the Movies,” Musical America,
June 1946, 5.
5 Chris Wonderlich, “American Federation of Musicians,” in Encyclopedia of U.S. La-
bor and Working-Class History, ed. Eric Arnesen (New York: Routledge, 2006), 81.

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