| This dissertation broadens the current understanding of musical modernism though the examination of Zeitoper, or "opera of the times" and its reliance on the burgeoning medium of film. I propose that film and filmic techniques provided composers with the ideas to compose works that were "modernist" without relying on dodecaphonic or alternative harmonic vocabularies. My methodology combines both historical and musical analysis of three operas, Paul Hindemith's Hin und Zuruck, Kurt Weill's Royal Palace, and Stefan Wolpe's Zeus und Elida, revealing both musical borrowings from silent film scores and how visual ideas about film and filmmaking were translated into the music of the opera in general. A critical framework is provided by contemporary scholars and critics, including the formalist film critic Siegfried Kracauer and directors Erwin Piscator and Sergei Eisenstein. |
