During the silent film era, screenings were accompanied live by pianists. There was no individual accompanying music for the respective films; the pianists had to be able to quickly adapt to different films. A helpful resource was the general handbook of film music, published in 1927 by Hans Erdmann, Ludwig Brav, and Giuseppe Becce at the Berlin publishing house Schlesinger. This handbook provides the most comprehensive and arguably the most significant documentation of the music practice of silent films in 1920s Germany. It includes, among other things, a thematic scale index that offered a refined, artistic method for the musical illustration of silent films.