![]() ![]() “I’ve only ever seen it listed once on a cue sheet,” says Kendra Leonard, director of the Silent Film Sound and Music Archive. Although it was occasionally mentioned in educational articles about film music, players seemed to eschew it. Strangely, though, very few of these thousands of scenes seemed to require the Mysterioso Pizzicato specifically. This scene, from 1915’s “The Alster Case,” seems ripe for a mysterioso. Andy and the Redskins, also from 1913, requires a “mysterioso of Indian character.” No matter what the theme of the film, there was always a scene ripe for a mysterioso, says Model. In A Transplanted Prairie Flower, a comedy-drama from 1913, a mysterioso is recommended for the part where Mary, a country transplant new to New York, sleeps in a chair in her city apartment, until she wakes up and sees burglars trying to sneak in. “Cue sheets”-instructions detailing what type of mood should be played during different scenes-give an idea of the mysterioso’s specific use. In a 1912 issue of The Moving Picture News, silent film theater director Ernst Luz describes the mysterioso as “the most beautiful effect of all.” “It should be used for such dramatic action, usually quiet, wherein the ensuing action is in doubt,” he wrote. ![]() Although each was a little different, they had certain things in common-they were minor-key, slow, and “just sound scary,” Model says. “And there would be a mysterioso.”Įventually, composers wrote hundreds of these mysteriosos. “There would be an agitato”-a hurried, choppy tune, perhaps for an action scene-“and a love theme, and a march,” says Model. In the mid-1910s, sheet music publishers, sensing a need, began churning out folios stuffed with variations on musical tropes, for accompanists to pick and choose between. “You’d get tired of playing the same pieces.” The cue sheet from an issue of “The Edison Kinetogram.” Thomas A. “Movie theaters were open 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week,” explains Ben Model, a silent film composer and a resident accompanist at the Museum of Modern Art. “Moods”-short riffs written to pair with different filmed scenarios-were a way for silent film accompanists to combat a unique type of job drudgery. But most agree that the piece started out life around 1916, as a silent film “mood.” Zamecnik, a composer who wrote scores for silent films at Cleveland, Ohio’s Hippodrome Theater. Bodewalt Lampe, a ragtime arranger most famous for his takes on dance-craze songs like the “Turkey Trot.” Others credit J.S. No one is quite sure who wrote the Mysterioso Pizzicato. Along with its villainous name, the Mysterioso Pizzicato has a fittingly roguish backstory-to reach its current level of ubiquity, it has had to muzzle history, defy experts, and slip past hundreds of its more musically interesting peers. ![]() This tune, called the Mysterioso Pizzicato, is a musical go-to for sneaky situations, forever associated with thieves, creeps, stalkers and spies. ![]()
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