Mickey-Mousing

Mickey Mousing [ ˌ mɪki maʊzɪŋ ] denotes a film music technology, are accompanied by music at precisely the events in the film. This often heavily accented musical elements found in this form, especially in the early animated cartoons of Walt Disney use, which is why the well-established by David O. Selznick name Mickey Mousing based on Disney's cartoon character Mickey Mouse (English Mickey Mouse) prevailed. An attenuated form of Mickey Mousing is the underscoring.

Bonds from the music program

The Mickey - Mousing is essentially not an invention of the film industry. Bonds were seen in less exaggerated form long before the creation of the film in the program music of classical music. So Joseph Haydn made ​​in his oratorio The Creation, the place and there was light with a sudden forte and can raise the pitch gradually in the description of the sunrise. In Mozart's Requiem is an ascending sequence of tones in the Lacrimosa is also used to describe the resurrection of the dead. In various fairs in the Crucifixus is a throbbing rhythm of the hammer symbolize with which Christ is nailed to the cross. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau's overture to his play Pygmalion, the hammer blows are imitated with which a sculptor perfected his statue. Since from the end of the 18th century, the music is no longer regarded as imitative art, these illustrations are, however, increasingly underestimated. Beethoven said about his Pastoral Symphony (1808 ), that they should be " more an expression of feeling than painting." In the entertainment theater like in melodrama and pantomime the illustrative music but remained present.

Application and intention

Between musical and noise -like accompaniment of the slapstick is classified, with which one action on the stage and later in the silent film acoustically amplified. In the sound film was Max Steiner, who used this technique in his music for King Kong and the white woman in 1933 as one of the first film music composer. In the film, Kongs are movements in climbing the Empire State Building with crescendos, that accompanied a getting louder the music, or synchronously amplified the steps of an Indian chief with bass instruments. Walt Disney took the film as a stimulus to further develop the new film music technology in his own films. In films such as the Silly Symphonies, Fantasia and the early feature-length Disney films of the "Masterpieces " series such as Pinocchio, the Mickey Mousing was perfected: Each jump Pinocchio is accompanied by a glissando, while a fall is accompanied with a deep bang. For masters of this form of musical accentuation developed especially Disney's " house composers " Paul J. Smith and Oliver Wallace. Carl Stalling, who coined the soundtrack for animated films with his music for Looney Tunes crucial combined the technology with postmodern aesthetics by moods generated in seconds and then be discarded. The use of matched to the film music content leads to an unconscious part of the viewer, which makes him close with skillful musical accompaniment to new cinematic contexts.