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I'm watching Blood and Sand on the free streaming service Tubi and I'm so distracted by the music which sounds like someone just decided to mix random horn and blowing instruments throughout the 30 mins I just watched. Nothing at all resembling a proper score and sounds more like something from an old MS Dos game.
So I'd have to ask. I seen Nosferatu years ago on Youtube and the music was just random instruments thrown together to sound creepy but in reality sounds like a rushed random music put on that comes from a game on the old NES.
When I watched Birth of a Nation on Youtube, they used actual classical music but it sounds like something some random amatuer came up with.
Was music in the silent era really this bad? If not, than how come modern releases of old movies have such terrible music? Esp stuff you can find free on streaming services, internet archive, and esp Youtube?
The best score I heard was Intolerance on Youtube and while the music was good, it sounded just like a 3 hour long repetition of a single Piano track that plays over and over in the whole movie, often ruining the atmosphere because it loops in at inappropriate situation like the rape scene!
There are several answers to what you're asking, or several factors needed to understand why the situation is as it is.
First of all, no, the music played during silent films was, in general, not atrocious, but quite good. However, it was performed live in the cinema, either by a single keyboardist on a piano or a specialist organ, or in the larger movie palaces in major cities, by a partial or full orchestra. However, only some films had music written especially for them.
Birth of a Nation had a full orchestra at its premier, but the music played was by Wagner, including "Flight of the Valkyries". Nosferatu had a score composed for it, but only a few pages of the written score are known to survive. Fritz Lang's Metropolis had a full score, and the Kino Lorber Blu Ray, I believe, has a full performance of it accompanying the film.
But for most movies, there were "mood music" books that professional musicians (if a solo keyboardist) or conductors (if any size of an orchestra) would use to match the scene on the screen. The really seasoned pro keyboardists could provide a full, emotional musical accompaniment to a film they had never seen before, as they watched it.
Some silent films got re-released in the early sound era, like William S. Hart's final film, Tumbleweeds, and included a full score (and sometimes sound effects). Some late-period silents, like Douglas Fairbanks's last silent film The Iron Mask, were released with soundtracks on the films for theaters that had already converted to sound, as well.
As for "why does the music chosen for public domain silent films (which is now all silent films) suck?", that should be obvious, but I'll spell it out. They're in the public domain, so anybody can do anything with them that they want. It costs nothing to upload one to Youtube, for example, and if you have music that's free to use, you can just slap it on, and possibly earn a few bucks with minimal effort. Making or finding music that fits what's on screen for every scene takes a lot more effort, and time, so most don't bother, because they're not in it for love of the medium.
For a better sense of what the silent cinema was like as an experience, any of Kevin Brownlow's documentaries is worthwhile, but most especially his Hollywood: A Celebration of the Silent Cinema from 1980 is worth watching, all thirteen episodes.