Bernhard Kaun, An Anonymous Film Composer

The 1924 UFA film Siegfried, directed by Fritz Lang, premiered in America in Rochester, New York, on April 13, 1925, contrary to existing accounts which cite the subsequent New York City debut which took place at the Century Theatre August 23, 1925. The music accompanying the premiere is examined in broad terms along with the musicians engaged in compiling and presenting the score, principally the conductor Victor Wagner and the American born composer Bernhard Kaun whose film career started with Siegfried. Kaun’s task was arranging Richard Wagner’s music-drama scores for an ensemble of fifteen musicians and the achievement led Victor Wagner to recommend Kaun to the director of the Eastman School of Music, Howard Hanson, for whom Kaun worked up to the year 1928. Kaun was well suited to the Siegfried scoring job because of his formal education in Germany as a classically-trained musician, the son of noted composer and pedagogue, Hugo Kaun. Contemporaneous sources are also explored relating to Hugo Riesenfeld’s alternative synchronized musical score played at the Century by members of the New York Metropolitan Opera House orchestra, one of the earliest film soundtracks to be recorded.