Page 129 - 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 …
40
contracts. This focus on contractual matters and the benchmarking pro-
cess illustrates the importance of international cooperation in improving
the position of film composers in the United States. Over the years, secur-
ing the proper amount of foreign royalties through negotiations with AS-
CAP became one of the SCA’s primary functions. Composers such as Al-
exandre Tansman, who composed several film scores in the 1940s and was
not fully familiar with the legal situation of film composers, turned to the
SCA for assistance in obtaining royalties, particularly because he was not
41
an ASCAP member. Supporting film composers in claiming their royal-
ties from foreign performing rights societies through ASCAP cannot be
seen as a purely financial matter, because for the composers themselves it
also helped to strengthen the legal recognition of film music composition
as a legitimate professional activity.
The SCA also engaged with other composer societies in the United
States, such as the NAACC or LOC, often through intermediaries such as
Aaron Copland, who was active in both spheres. In particular, the LOC
provided a regular platform for film composers, and Leonard Zissu pub-
licly advocated for them in the LOC’s Composer’s News Record, comparing
their professional situation to that of musicians in other “commercial medi-
42
ums”. The 1947 monograph Composers in America by Claire Reis, found-
er of the LOC, included film composers for the first time as an integral part
of American musical life. Reis’ initiative received support from music critic
Lawrence Morton and composer Aaron Copland, both of whom are credit-
ed extensively in the book’s acknowledgements. Notably, the monograph’s
title reflects the émigré backgrounds and diverse nationalities of composers
in the film industry, rather than presenting them as “American composers”.
43
Lawrence Morton, whose brother Arthur worked as an arranger in Holly-
wood and was listed among the founding members of the SCA, also contrib-
uted – in addition to various articles on film music in the press – a foreword

40 See: “Draft Containing Proposed Standard Clauses of Composer-Producer Single
Picture Contract With a Minor or Independent Studio Without Publisher Affili-
ation” and “Draft Containing Proposed Standard Clauses of Composer-Producer
Term Contract for a Major Studio and/or a Studio with Publisher Affiliation” [MHL,
SCA Collection. Folder 31. Contract Committee].
41 See: Letter from Alexandre Tansman to the SCA, 1 Feb. 1949 and letter from Adolph
Deutsch to Alexandre Tansman, 4 Feb. 1949 both [MHL, SCA Collection, Folder 32.
Correspondence].
42 Zissu, “Commercial Mediums and the Composer,” 2.
43 For the historiographical importance of the monograph see: Zechner, “Unheard,
Unseen, Underappreciated?” 272–3 and 284–93.

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