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Many successful stage musicals have become additionally popular through the medium of motion pictures, but music as a basic element in filmmaking has gained recognition only since midcentury as something more than a means to heighten local colour or intensify emotional expression. In the early silent films, all kinds of music were recorded, classified, and adapted to fit different moods (Beethoven overtures for cowboy-Indian chases, for instance). Several talented hacks also wrote short descriptive pieces. A few bigger films, such as The Birth of a Nation, had special scores fitted to them. Since the 1960s it has turned a full ...(100 of 10139 words)