Joseph Carl Breil

stage director, composer and conductor. He was one of the earliest American composers to compose specific music for motion pictures. His first film was Les amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912) starring Sarah Bernhardt. He later composed and arranged scores for several other early motion pictures, including such epics as D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), as well as scoring the preview version of The Phantom of the Opera (1925), a score that is now lost.^{[citation needed]} His love theme for "Birth of a Nation", titled "The Perfect Song", was published by Chappell & Co. in an arrangement for voice and keyboard. It was later used as the theme for the radio show Amos 'n' Andy.^[1]

University of Leipzig to study law. While in Leipzig he began to study music composition and singing at the Leipzig Conservatory. These were followed by singing lessons in Milan and Philadelphia (with Giuseppe del Puente).^[1]

Victor Records in 1910), for Edward Locke's three-act play, The Climax, which premiered on 12 April 1909, at Joseph W. Weber's Music Hall, New York City. After this he spent the next decade composing mostly film music. It is his work in this medium that his legacy rests on. He also composed the one-act lyric opera, The Legend, one of the first such works by an American. The Legend, on which Breil had begun work in 1907, premièred at the Metropolitan Opera on 12 March 1919, to less-than-favorable reviews. He died of heart disease on 23 January 1926, following a nervous breakdown suffered on account of the failure of his final opera, Der Asra.^[1] He is interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.^[4]