FILM MUSIC NOTES
Film Music Notes was the official publication of the National Film Music Council, an American periodical that ran from 1941 to 1958 and spurred critical consideration and public appreciation of film music. The name of the publication changed over the years to Film Music (1951-1956) and then Film and TV Music (1956-1958). The magazine featured articles about and reviews of films with a focus on their music, serving as documentation and a window into the popular culture and film industry of its day. It included contributions from prominent composers and critics with numerous articles about and by Golden Age film music composers like Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Alex North, Bernard Herrmann, Dimitri Tiomkin, Franz Waxman, Miklós Rózsa and many others, along with excerpts of their music.
Using Google searches, I found three large PDF files containing multiple issues of Film Music Notes from 1949 to 1958 at the Internet Archive named 0911, 1215 and 1617 which I downloaded. I wanted to configure them so that if you went to a URL formatted a certain way, you would jump to a specific issue in one of these large files, but unfortunately I found out that this kind of URL would not work on cell phones. Eventually, I managed to split up the three large PDF files into smaller ones for each issue of the magazine using the "Print to PDF" feature of Firefox.
By doing more Google searches, I later found another
44 issues of Film Music Notes from the 1940s at the Internet Archive, but there were still issues missing from the years 1946 to 1949. These 44 individual issues were available in PDF format, though the size of them was large compared to the ones I had extracted and compressed from those in the three big PDFs.The printed quality of some of these magazines, which date back to 1941, is not very good. I might clean up some of them. Here is an example: before and after.
Comments? Corrections? Questions? E-mail me via this link.
This site is designed to be used with a computer or tablet. With a cell phone, it is recommended that you switch to the landscape mode.
THE 44 EARLY ISSUES
October 1941 to May/June 1942 (8 issues), Volume 1, Number 1 to Number 8
October 1942 to June 1943 (9 issues), Volume 2, Number 1 to Number 9
October 1943 to June 1944 (9 issues), Volume 3, Number 1 to Number 9
October 1944 to June 1945 (9 issues), Volume 4, Number 1 to Number 9
September 1945 to May 1946 (9 issues), Volume 5, Number 1-Number 9 (plus other material)A total of 44 issues, put out monthly, except for three months, July, August and September; May/June 1942 was a double-month issue.
Click here to read issues from October 1941 to June 1943 (17 issues).
Click here to read copies from October 1943 to June 1945. (18 issues).
Click here to read copies from September 1945 to May 1946. (9 issues plus other material).
"MISSING" ISSUES
As mentioned above, issues are missing between 1946 and 1949 for 3 years. I don't know when the format of the magazine changed during this period with a photo cover, and the frequency changed to bi-monthly between September/October and May/June. The people making the magazine took a break for 2 months every year, there are no issues for July/August.
September/October 1946 to May/June 1947 (5 issues)
September/October 1947 to May/June 1948 (5 issues)
September/October 1948 to May/June 1949 (5 issues)A total of 15 issues are missing. If you know where or how to get copies of these magazines, please contact me through the e-mail link at the top of the page.
UPDATE JAN./FEB. 2026 -- With the kind help of The Film Music Society, I have managed to obtain several of the "missing" issues, which will be appearing on the site in the next while.
ISSUES FROM LARGE PDF FILES
To the end of the page, the issues were extracted from the large PDF files at the Internet Archive: 0911, 1215 and 1617.
From September/October 1949 to May/June 1952 there were a total of 15 issues. You can access the page containing these by clicking here.
September/October 1949 to May/June 1950 (5 issues), Volume 9, Number 1 to Number 5
September/October 1950 to May/June 1951 (5 issues), Volume 10, Number 1 to Number 5
September/October 1951 to May/June 1952 (5 issues), Volume 11, Number 1 to Number 5
From September/October 1952 to May/June 1954, there were a total of 10 issues. You can access the file containing these by clicking here.
September/October 1953 to May/June 1954 (5 issues), Volume 12, Number 1 to Number 5
September/October 1953 to May/June 1954 (5 issues), Volume 13, Number 1 to Number 5
From September/October 1954 to May/June 1956, there were a total of 10 issues. You can access the file containing these by clicking here.
September/October 1954 to May/June 1955 (5 issues), Volume 14, Number 1 to Number 5
September/October 1955 to May/June 1956 (5 issues), Volume 15, Number 1 to Number 5The two magazines from the last cycle above were named SPRING 1956 and SUMMER 1956.
For the last years of the magazine, it was published as follows, a total of five issues and a single issue:
FALL 1956, Volume 16, Number 1
WINTER 1956, Volume 16, Number 2
SPRING 1957, Volume 16, Number 3
SUMMER 1957, Volume 16, Number 4
LATE SUMMER 1957, Volume 16, Number 5
FALL & WINTER 1957-58, Volume 17, Number 1These are all grouped into one file, which you can access by clicking here.
The magazine ceased publication in 1958. There were a total of 100 issues from 1941 to 1958.
The issues from the large PDF files at the Internet Archive -- 0911, 1215 and 1617 -- were originally from the Kansas City Public Library and ended up in the Prelinger Library in San Francisco. They were put in large binders, and some of the pages were trimmed so that a fraction of the page on the right or left is missing. Usually you can figure out what is said if what is missing is just text, but sometimes a bit of music also got cut off.