A good score can transform a film but cinema can also change our understanding of music, as Richard Tognetti explains.

When Louis Le Prince invented the first motion picture camera in the mid-1880s, there was one notable shortcoming – the films were silent. While people flocked to marvel at this new technological wonder, the lack of sound made the experience sterile and two dimensional, so to combat this absence of atmosphere, musicians were engaged to add an appropriately emotive score. From humble beginnings – the first public projection of a movie in Paris on December 28 1895 featured a solitary guitarist – the aspirations of music for the screen soon ballooned to encompass the full riches of the symphony orchestra, a precedent set by famed inventor Thomas Edison, in 1896.

Thus was born a whole new genre of musical thinking, and in the ensuing 135 years since the advent of the movies, controlling the powerful influence music has over a viewer’s experience of a film has become a refined art. It’s this important symbiosis between cinema and music that has provided the inspiration for the latest programme of the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s 2016 season, Cinemusica.

In partnership with Sydney-based trio,...