Search

Beginning with a quick history of film scoring and then taking the reader backstage to interview a dozen major screen composers, Overhearing Film Music represents three generations of movie soundtrack music. Ranging from groundbreaking composers who scored classic 1940s melodramas such as Laura and the Thief of Bagdad, to the jazz-influenced modernists who worked on Rebel Without a Cause and The Pink Panther, and into the symphonic renaissance represented by films like Star Wars and Harry Potter, Caps asks the seminal questions: How did this kind of active movie scoring evolve from silent films—and where is it headed? These interviews provide a master class in how and why to score a film. Interspersed among the interviews, Caps's single-subject essays provide concise histories of the use of choral music in films, African American and female film composers, and digital composing software for a new era.

Since the establishment of film music studies, there has been a steady growth of serious analytical work on the film music repertoire. Film Music Analysis: Studying the Score offers the first collection of essays dedicated to the close investigation of musical structure and meaning in film music. Showcasing scholarship from a diverse and distinguished group of music theorists and musicologists, this book presents the many ways to inspect the inner workings of film music in a manner that is exciting and accessible to anyone curious about this music, regardless of their background in film or music theory.Each chapter takes as its focus one music-theoretical parameter and explores how that concept can be used to analyze and interpret film music. Covering theoretical concepts that range from familiar categories such as leitmotif and pitch structure to more cutting-edge ideas such as timbral associativity, topic theory, and metrical states, the book provides a toolkit with which to explore this captivatingly varied repertoire. With example analyses drawn from classic and contemporary films, Film Music Analysis: Studying the Score is a valuable teaching tool and an indispensable addition to the library of any lover of film and music.

Exploring how music is used to portray the past in a variety of media, this book probes the relationship between history and fantasy in the imagination of the musical past. The volume brings together essays from multidisciplinary perspectives, addressing the use of music to convey a sense of the past in a wide range of multimedia contexts, including television, documentaries, opera, musical theatre, contemporary and historical film, videogames, and virtual reality. With a focus on early music and medievalism, the contributors theorise the role of music and sound in constructing ideas of the past. In three interrelated sections, the chapters problematise notions of historical authenticity on the stage and screen; theorise the future of musical histories in immersive and virtual media; and explore sound's role in more fantastical appropriations of history in television and videogames. Together, they poseprovocative questions regarding our perceptions of ‘early'music and the sensory experience of distant history. Offering new ways to understand the past at the crossroads of musical and visual culture, this collection is relevant to researchers across music, media, and historical and cultural studies.

A comprehensive introduction to film music, this book provides a concise and illuminating summary of the process of film scoring, as well as a succinct overview of the rich history of contemporary film music.Written in a non-technical style, this book begins by presenting a brief history of film music from the last 30 years, covering topics ranging from blockbuster franchises to indie film scores. It explores film music from around the world, including Bollywood and European Avant-garde cinema, and film music in animation, like Disney-Pixar and Japanese anime. It then offers a guide to the language of film music analysis, the creative process behind composing film music, and the use of current technology. The book champions diversity in the industry, with case studies and interviews from a range of active film composers, including: Pinar Toprak (Captain Marvel, 2019), Kris Bowers (Bridgerton, 2020), Natalie Holt (Loki, 2021), and Rachel Portman (Emma, 1996),Complete with a glossary of key terms and further reading, this book is an invaluable resource for all those beginning to study film music, as well as lifelong film music buffs seeking to update their understanding of film music.

Across his directorial films, American filmmaker Dennis Hopper used music and sound to propel the narrative, signpost the era in which the films were made, and delineate the characters'place within American culture. This book explores five of Hopper's films to show how this deep engagement with music to build character and setting continued throughout his career, as Hopper used folk, punk, hip-hop, and jazz to shape the worlds of his films in ways that influenced other filmmakers and foreshadowed the advent of the music video format.The author traces Hopper's distinctive approach to the use of music through films from 1969 to 1990, including his innovative use of popular rock, pop, and folk in Easy Rider, his blending of diegetic performances of folk and Peruvian indigenous music in The Last Movie, his use of punk rock in Out of the Blue, incorporation of hip-hop and rap in Colors, and commissioning of a jazz/blues soundtrack by Miles Davis and John Lee Hooker for The Hot Spot. Uncovering the film soundtrack as a vital piece of the narrative, this concise and accessible book offers insights for academic readers in music and film studies, as well as all those interested in Hopper's work.

The tensions between utopian dreams and dystopian anxieties permeate science fiction as a genre, and nowhere is this tension more evident than in Star Trek. This book breaks new ground by exploring music and sound within the Star Trek franchise across decades and media, offering the first sustained look at the role of music in shaping this influential series. The chapters in this edited collection consider how the aural, visual, and narrative components of Star Trek combine as it constructs and deconstructs the utopian and dystopian, shedding new light on the series'political, cultural, and aesthetic impact. Considering how the music of Star Trek defines and interprets religion, ideology, artificial intelligence, and more, while also considering fan interactions with the show's audio, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of music, media studies, science fiction, and popular culture.

Since the early days of motion picture production, film scores have helped define our emotional and aesthetic perception of stories on screen--particularly with space movies and television. The music from The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and others has helped define the public's awareness of space almost as much as the films themselves. In some cases, they have redefined the norms of film music. Star Wars not only revived the popularity of orchestral film scores but also helped stimulate an increased public interest in classical orchestral music around the world. This work explores the music and the composers who have helped define the sound of space for over a century, transforming how we perceive space and even inspiring greater interest in space exploration. This book also details how music has been performed and played in space since the early days of the'space race.'

Women's Music for the Screen: Diverse Narratives in Sound shines a long-overdue light on the works and lives of female-identifying screen composers. Bringing together composer profiles, exclusive interview excerpts, and industry case studies, this volume showcases their achievements and reflects on the systemic gender biases women have faced in an industry that has long excluded them. Across 16 essays, an international array of contributors present a wealth of research data, biographical content, and musical analysis of film, television, and video game scores to understand how the industry excludes women, the consequences of these deficits, and why such inequities persist – and to document women's rich contributions to screen music in diverse styles and genres.The chapters amplify the voices of women composers including Bebe Barron, Delia Derbyshire, Wendy Carlos, Anne Dudley, Rachel Portman, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Mica Levi, Winifred Phillips, and more. From the mid-twentieth century to the present, and from classic Hollywood scores to pioneering electronic music, these are the stories and achievements of the women who have managed to forge successful careers in a male-dominated arena. Suitable for researchers, educators, and students alike, Women's Music for the Screen urges the screen music industry to consider these sounds and stories in a way it hasn't before: as voices that more accurately reflect the world we all share.

2023 Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) Jazz Awards for Books of the Year—Honorable Mention RecipientOn December 4, 1957, Miles Davis revolutionized film soundtrack production, improvising the score for Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'échafaud. A cinematic harbinger of the French New Wave, Ascenseur challenged mainstream filmmaking conventions, emphasizing experimentation and creative collaboration. It was in this environment during the late 1950s to 1960s, a brief “golden age” for jazz in film, that many independent filmmakers valued improvisational techniques, featuring soundtracks from such seminal figures as John Lewis, Thelonious Monk, and Duke Ellington. But what of jazz in film today? Improvising the Score: Rethinking Modern Film Music through Jazz provides an original, vivid investigation of innovative collaborations between renowned contemporary jazz artists and prominent independent filmmakers. The book explores how these integrative jazz-film productions challenge us to rethink the possibilities of cinematic music production. In-depth case studies include collaborations between Terence Blanchard and Spike Lee (Malcolm X, When the Levees Broke), Dick Hyman and Woody Allen (Hannah and Her Sisters), Antonio Sánchez and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman), and Mark Isham and Alan Rudolph (Afterglow). The first book of its kind, this study examines jazz artists'work in film from a sociological perspective, offering rich, behind-the-scenes analyses of their unique collaborative relationships with filmmakers. It investigates how jazz artists negotiate their own “creative labor,” examining the tensions between improvisation and the conventionally highly regulated structures, hierarchies, and expectations of filmmaking. Grounded in personal interviews and detailed film production analysis, Improvising the Score illustrates the dynamic possibilities of integrative artistic collaborations between jazz, film, and other contemporary media, exemplifying its ripeness for shaping and invigorating twenty-first-century arts, media, and culture.

Hailed as a leading innovator of visual montage, unique storytelling style, and ground-breaking cinematography, Jean-Luc Godard is a prominent pioneer in sculpting complex soundtracks altering the familiar relationship between sound and image, but his achievements in sound have been largely overlooked. Such a lacuna in the extensive research on Godard's work is unfortunate, as Godard's lifelong preoccupation of exploring self-reflexively all aspects of filmmaking particularly affects film music. With the novel approach of metafilm music, extrapolated from Jean-Luc Godard's oeuvre, this book not only closes up a crucial gap in Godard research, but also offers detailed analyses of the music as metafilm music in Contempt, Alphaville, Band of Outsiders, Pierrot le fou, First Name: Carmen, Histoire(s) du cinéma, among other films and video productions. The innovative scholarly concept of metafilm music, enriching the burgeoning field of music in audio-visual media, describes how Godard thinks about film music with film music. This book thus provides a thorough examination of Godard's self-reflexive approach to film music which has resulted in a lifelong creation of multi-layered soundtracks pushing the envelope of film music and sound to the limit.

Michel Gondry's directorial work buzzes with playfulness and invention: in a body of work that includes feature films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep, to music videos, commercials, television episodes, and documentaries, he has experimented with blending animation and live action, complex narrative structures, and philosophical subject matter. Central to that experimentation is Gondry's use of music and sound, which this book addresses in a new detailed study. Kate McQuiston examines the hybrid nature of Gondry's work, his process of collaboration, how he uses sound and music to create a highly stylized reinforcement of often-elusive subjects such as psychology, dreams, the loss of memory, and the fraught relationship between humans and the environment. This concise volume provides new insight into Gondry's richly creative multimedia productions, and their distinctive use of the soundtrack.

Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn theme. Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible theme. Isaac Hayes'theme from Shaft. These iconic melodies have remained a part of the pop culture landscape since their debuts back when movie studios and TV production companies employed full orchestral ensembles to provide a jazz backdrop for the suspenseful adventures of secret agents, private detectives, cops, spies and heist-minded criminals. Hundreds of additional films and television shows made from the mid-1950s and beyond have been propelled by similarly swinging title themes and underscores, many of which have (undeservedly) faded into obscurity. This meticulously researched book begins with Hayes'game-changing music for Shaft, and honors the careers of traditional jazz composers who--as the 1970s gave way to the'80s and beyond--resolutely battled against the pernicious influx of synth, jukebox scores and a growing corporate disinterest in lavish ensembles. Fans frustrated by the lack of attention paid to jazz soundtrack composers--including Mort Stevens, Laurie Johnson, Mike Post, Earle Hagen, David Shire, Elmer Bernstein and many, many others--will find solace in these pages (along with all the information needed to enhance one's music library). But this is only half the story; the saga's origins are discussed in this book's companion volume, Crime and Action Jazz on Screen: 1950-1970.

Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn theme. Lalo Schifrin's Mission: Impossible theme. John Barry's arrangement of the James Bond theme. These iconic melodies have remained a part of the pop culture landscape since their debuts in the late 1950s and early'60s: a'golden decade'that highlighted an era when movie studios and TV production companies employed full orchestral ensembles to provide a jazz backdrop for the suspenseful adventures of secret agents, private detectives, cops, spies and heist-minded criminals. Hundreds of additional films and television shows made during this period were propelled by similarly swinging title themes and underscores, many of which have (undeservedly) faded into obscurity. This meticulously researched book traces the embryonic use of jazz in mainstream entertainment from the early 1950s--when conservative viewers still considered this genre'the devil's music'--to its explosive heyday throughout the 1960s. Fans frustrated by the lack of attention paid to jazz soundtrack composers--including Jerry Goldsmith, Edwin Astley, Roy Budd, Quincy Jones, Dave Grusin, Jerry Fielding and many, many others--will find solace in these pages (along with all the information needed to enhance one's music library). The exploration of action jazz continues in this book's companion volume, Crime and Action Jazz on Screen Since 1971.

The practice of blurring the line between score and sound design has transformed contemporary film soundscape by challenging not only the long-established hierarchical relationships between dialogue, music, and sound effects, but also the modes of perception shaped by classical soundtrack practices. The methods of this new trend rely on the language of contemporary popular and art music, producing soundtracks in which it is difficult to tell the difference between score and ambient sound, where pieces of electroacoustic music are merged with diegetic sound, sound effects are absorbed into the score or treated as music, and diegetic sound is treated as musique concrète. In Sound Design is the New Score, Kulezic-Wilson explores theoretical, aesthetic, and sensuous dimensions of this new trend, providing a multifaceted portrait of a practice which recognizes the interconnectedness of all soundtrack elements and emphasizes their inherent musicality. The aesthetic concerns of this practice are illuminated through the concept of the aesthetics of reticence which rejects classical narrative and scoring conventions and uses integrated soundtrack strategies to create the space for mystery in art and for individuality in the cinematic experience. The book's emphasis on sensuous and musical aspects of this practice, informed by the feminist discourse on the erotics of art, challenges popular notions about sensory cinema, demonstrating that the sensuousness of film form and its soundscapes is more sophisticated than simply being the result of excessive sensory stimulation facilitated by the use of digital technology or the'intensified'aesthetics it inspires. The discussion is supported by a wide range of case studies from American Independent, Asian, Australian, and European cinemas, including films by Shane Carruth, Claire Denis, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Harmony Korine, David Michôd, Gus Van Sant, and Peter Strickland.

Theorists of the soundtrack have helped us understand how the voice and music in the cinema impact a spectator's experience. James Buhler and Hannah Lewis edit in-depth essays from many of film music's most influential scholars in order to explore fascinating issues around vococentrism, the voice in cinema, and music's role in the integrated soundtrack. The collection is divided into four sections. The first explores historical approaches to technology in the silent film, French cinema during the transition era, the films of the so-called New Hollywood, and the post-production sound business. The second investigates the practice of the singing voice in diverse repertories such as Bergman's films, Eighties teen films, and girls'voices in Brave and Frozen. The third considers the auteuristic voice of the soundtrack in works by Kurosawa, Weir, and others. A last section on narrative and vococentrism moves from The Martian and horror film to the importance of background music and the state of the soundtrack at the end of vococentrism. Contributors: Julie Brown, James Buhler, Marcia Citron, Eric Dienstfrey, Erik Heine, Julie Hubbert, Hannah Lewis, Brooke McCorkle, Cari McDonnell, David Neumeyer, Nathan Platte, Katie Quanz, Jeff Smith, Janet Staiger, and Robynn Stilwell

The Soundtrack Album: Listening to Media offers the first sustained exploration of the soundtrack album as a distinctive form of media. Soundtrack albums have been part of our media and musical landscape for decades, enduring across formats from vinyl and 8-tracks to streaming playlists. This book makes the case that soundtrack albums are more than promotional tools for films, television shows, or video games— they are complex media texts that reward a detailed analysis. The collection's contributors explore a diverse range of soundtrack albums, from Super Fly to Stranger Things, revealing how these albums change our understanding of the music and film industries and the audio-visual relationships that drive them.An excellent resource for students of Music, Media Studies, and Film/Screen Media courses, The Soundtrack Album offers interdisciplinary perspectives and opens new areas for exploration in music and media studies.

Music in Action Film is the first volume to address the central role of music and sound in action film—arguably the most dominant form of commercial cinema today. Bringing together 15 essays by established and emerging scholars, the book encompasses both Hollywood blockbusters and international films, from classic works such as The Seven Samurai to contemporary superhero franchises. The contributors consider action both as genre and as a mode of cinematic expression, in chapters on evolving musical conventions; politics, representation, and identity; musical affect and agency; the functional role of music and sound design in action film; and production technologies. Breaking new critical ground yet highly accessible, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of music and film studies.

Nino Rota is one of the most important composers in the history of cinema. Both popular and prolific, he wrote some of the most cherished and memorable of all film music – for The Godfather Parts I and II, The Leopard, the Zeffirelli Shakespeares, nearly all of Fellini and for more than 140 popular Italian movies. Yet his music does not quite work in the way that we have come to assume music in film works: it does not seek to draw us in and identify, nor to overwhelm and excite us. In itself, in its pretty but reticent melodies, its at once comic and touching rhythms, and in its relation to what's on screen, Rota's music is close and affectionate towards characters and events but still restrained, not detached but ironically attached.In this major new study of Rota's film career, Richard Dyer gives a detailed account of Rota's aesthetic, suggesting it offers a new approach to how we understand both film music and feeling and film more broadly. He also provides a first full account in English of Rota's life and work, linking it to notions of plagiarism and pastiche, genre and convention, irony and narrative. Rota's practice is related to some of the major ways music is used in film, including the motif, musical reference, underscoring and the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic music, revealing how Rota both conforms to and undermines standard conceptions. In addition, Dyer considers the issue of gay cultural production, Rota's favourte genre, comedy, and his productive collaboration with the director Federico Fellini.

Andrei Tarkovsky's Sounding Cinema adds a new dimension to our understanding and appreciation of the work of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) through an exploration of the presence of music and sound in his films.The first comprehensive study in English concentrating on the soundtrack in Tarkovsky's cinema, this book reveals how Tarkovsky's use of electronic music, electronically manipulated sound, traditional folk songs and fragments of canonized works of Western art music plays into the philosophical, existential and ethical themes recurring throughout his work. Exploring the multilayered relationship between music, sound, film image and narrative space, Pontara provides penetrating and innovative close readings of Solaris (1972), Mirror (1975), Stalker (1979), Nostalghia (1983) and The Sacrifice (1986) and in turn deeply enriches critical understanding of Tarkovsky's films and their relation to the broader traditions of European art cinema. An excellent resource for scholars, researchers and students interested in European art cinema and the role of music in film, as well as for film aficionados interested in Tarkovsky's work.

An exploration of how the introduction of recorded music affected the production, viewing experience, and global export of movies.In Movies, Songs, and Electric Sound, Charles O'Brien examines American and European musical films created circa 1930, when the world's sound-equipped theaters screened movies featuring recorded songs and filmmakers in the United States and Europe struggled to meet the artistic and technical challenges of sound production and distribution. The presence of singers in films exerted special pressures on film technique, lending a distinct look and sound to the films'musical sequences. Rather than advancing a film's plot, songs in these films were staged, filmed, and cut to facilitate the singer's engagement with her or his public. Through an examination of the export market for sound films in the early 1930s, when German and American companies used musical films as a vehicle for competing to control the world film trade, this book delineates a new transnational context for understanding the Hollywood musical. Combining archival research with the cinemetric analysis of hundreds of American, German, French, and British films made between 1927 and 1934, O'Brien provides the historical context necessary for making sense of the aesthetic impact of changes in film technology from the past to the present.“Movies, Songs, and Electric Sound is an insightful study in the beginning of cinema's sound era.” —popcultureshelf.com

Classical music masterworks have long played a key supporting role in the movies—silent films were often accompanied by a pianist or even a full orchestra playing classical or theatrical repertory music—yet the complexity of this role has thus far been underappreciated. Sounds Like Helicopters corrects this oversight through close interpretations of classical music works in key modernist films by Francis Ford Coppola, Werner Herzog, Luis Buñuel, Stanley Kubrick, Jean-Luc Godard, Michael Haneke, and Terrence Malick. Beginning with the famous example of Wagner's'Ride of the Valkyries'in Apocalypse Now, Matthew Lau demonstrates that there is a significant continuity between classical music and modernist cinema that belies their seemingly ironic juxtaposition. Though often regarded as a stuffy, conservative art form, classical music has a venerable avant-garde tradition, and key films by important directors show that modernist cinema restores the original subversive energy of these classical masterworks. These films, Lau argues, remind us of what this music sounded like when it was still new and difficult; they remind us that great music remains new music. The pattern of reliance on classical music by modernist directors suggests it is not enough to watch modernist cinema: one must listen to its music to sense its prehistory, its history, and its obscure, prophetic future.

The Hollywood careers of Aaron Copland and Hanns Eisler brought the composers and their high art sensibility into direct conflict with the premier producer of America's potent mass culture. Drawn by Hollywood's potential to reach—and edify—the public, Copland and Eisler expertly wove sophisticated musical ideas into Hollywood and, each in their own distinctive way, left an indelible mark on movie history. Sally Bick's dual study of Copland and Eisler pairs interpretations of their writings on film composing with a close examination of their first Hollywood projects: Copland's music for Of Mice and Men and Eisler's score for Hangmen Also Die! Bick illuminates the different ways the composers treated a film score as means of expressing their political ideas on society, capitalism, and the human condition. She also delves into Copland's and Eisler's often conflicted attempts to adapt their music to fit Hollywood's commercial demands, an enterprise that took place even as they wrote hostile critiques of the film industry.

Film has shaped modern society in part by changing its cultures of memory. Film, Music, Memory reveals that this change has rested in no small measure on the mnemonic powers of music. As films were consumed by growing American and European audiences, their soundtracks became an integral part of individual and collective memory. Berthold Hoeckner analyzes three critical processes through which music influenced this new culture of memory: storage, retrieval, and affect. Films store memory through an archive of cinematic scores. In turn, a few bars from a soundtrack instantly recall the image that accompanied them, and along with it, the affective experience of the movie. Hoeckner examines films that reflect directly on memory, whether by featuring an amnesic character, a traumatic event, or a surge of nostalgia. As the history of cinema unfolded, movies even began to recall their own history through quotations, remakes, and stories about how cinema contributed to the soundtrack of people's lives. Ultimately, Film, Music, Memory demonstrates that music has transformed not only what we remember about the cinematic experience, but also how we relate to memory itself.

Dass sich die gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse angesichts von Wiederaufbau und Wirtschaftswunder, Vollbeschäftigung und Gastarbeiterzuzug, aber auch im Hinblick auf die Aufarbeitung des Nationalsozialismus, den Kalten Krieg und die Wiederbewaffnung in den beiden Dekaden nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg radikal veränderten, ist eine Binsenweisheit. Allerdings ist die BRD-Filmproduktion der Zeit vor dem Neuen deutschen Film eine noch kaum erforschte Epoche deutscher Filmgeschichte. Insbesondere das Genre der seinerzeit sehr populären Schlagerfilme ist bisher wenig untersucht worden. Dieser Band möchte das Repertoire von etwa 250 Filmen anhand ausgewählter Beispiele in seinen diskursiven und sozialhistorischen Zusammenhang einrücken. Dabei wird der Schlagerfilm nicht nur als ein Genre der Kino- bzw. Musikunterhaltung betrachtet, sondern zugleich als ein Spiegel der Zeitgeschichte.

In extending the traditional field of Word and Music Studies to include research on film and other forms of moving visualizations, this volume focuses on innovative discussions of artistic works showing relationships between three individual communicative media. This trifocal, interdisciplinary perspective is reflected in seventeen essays that cover the historical space from the 19th to the 21st centuries and discuss a wide variety of individual genres in the represented media. These range from Parisian cabaret to ‘revolutionary'Peking opera, from silent film to Holocaust narration, from documentary propaganda movies to opera film interludes, and more. The investigation of historical cases is broadened by reflections on theoretical and functional issues, primarily in film music, which show a remarkable breadth of technical and perceptual varieties.The essays here collected are of relevance to scholars and students of film studies, musicology, and literature, as well as readers generally interested in Intermediality Studies.

What happens when we listen to a film? How can we describe the relationship of sound to vision in cinema, and in turn our relationship as spectators with the audio-visual? Jean-Luc Godard understood the importance of the soundtrack in cinema and relied heavily on the impact of carefully constructed sound to produce innovative effects. For the first time, this book brings together his post-1979 multimedia works, and an analysis of their rich soundscapes.The book provides detailed critical discussions of feature-length films, shorts and videos, delving into Godard's inventive experiments with the cinematic soundtrack and offering new insights into his latest 3D films. By detailing the production contexts and philosophy behind Godard's idiosyncratic sound design, it provides an accessible route to understanding his complex use of music, speech and environmental sound, alongside the distorting effects of speed alteration and auditory excess. The book is framed by the concept of'acoustic spectatorship': a way of cultivating active listening in the viewer.It also draws on ideas by leading sound theorists, philosophers, musicians, and poets, giving particular emphasis to the pioneering thought of French sound engineer and theorist, Pierre Schaeffer.Softening the boundaries between film studies, sound studies and musicology, Godard and Sound re-evaluates Godard's work from a sonic perspective, and will prove essential reading for those wishing to rebalance the importance of sound for the study of cinema.

A theory of the soundtrack is concerned with what belongs to the soundtrack, how a soundtrack is effectively organized, how its status in a multimedia object affects the nature of the object, the tools available for its analysis, and the interpretive regime that the theory mandates for determining the meaning, sense, and structure that sound and music bring to film and other audiovisual media. Beyond that, a theory may also delineate the range of possible uses of sound and music, classify the types of relations that films have used for image and sound, identify the central problems, and reflect on and describe effective uses of sound in film. This book summarizes and critiques major theories of the soundtrack from roughly 1929 until today. Rather than providing an exhaustive historical survey, it sketches out the range of theoretical approaches that have been applied to the soundtrack since the commercial introduction of the sound film. The basic theoretical framework of each approach is presented, taking into account the explicit and implicit claims about the soundtrack and its relation to other theories. The organization is both chronological and topical, the former in that the chapters move steadily from early film theory through models of the classical system to more recent critical theories; the latter in that the chapters highlight central issues for each generation: the problem of film itself, then of image and sound, of adequate analytical-descriptive models, and finally of critical-interpretative models.

Auf einem »Boot inmitten des Atlantik« sieht der amerikanische Independent-Regisseur Jim Jarmusch seine stilistische Position: in einem Meer transnationaler Einflüsse, deren Wellen seine Produktion und Filmerzählungen prägen. Doch das Boot bliebe ohne den Wind der Filmmusik mit schlaffem Segel liegen. Benedikt Feiten nutzt Filmwissenschaft, Musikwissenschaft und transnational orientierte Amerikanistik, um deren narrative Funktionen zu ergründen. Er zeigt, wie die Musik ein Erzählsystem stützt, das nicht auf Entwicklung, sondern auf Wiederholung und Variationen aufbaut. Dies eröffnet über Jarmuschs Werk hinaus Ansätze, um alternative filmische Erzählformen aus einer neuen Perspektive zu betrachten.

In Hymns for the Fallen, Todd Decker listens closely to forty years of Hollywood combat films produced after Vietnam. Ever a noisy genre, post-Vietnam war films have deployed music and sound to place the audience in the midst of battle and to provoke reflection on the experience of combat. Considering landmark movies—such as Apocalypse Now, Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line, Black Hawk Down, The Hurt Locker, and American Sniper—as well as lesser-known films, Decker shows how the domain of sound, an experientially rich and culturally resonant aspect of cinema, not only invokes the realities of war, but also shapes the American audience's engagement with soldiers and veterans as flesh-and-blood representatives of the nation. Hymns for the Fallen explores all three elements of film sound—dialogue, sound effects, music—and considers how expressive and formal choices in the soundtrack have turned the serious war film into a patriotic ritual enacted in the commercial space of the cinema.

This book explores music/sound-image relationships in non-mainstream screen repertoire from the earliest examples of experimental audiovisuality to the most recent forms of expanded and digital technology. It challenges presumptions of visual primacy in experimental cinema and rethinks screen music discourse in light of the aesthetics of non-commercial imperatives. Several themes run through the book, connecting with and significantly enlarging upon current critical discourse surrounding realism and audibility in the fiction film, the role of music in mainstream cinema, and the audiovisual strategies of experimental film. The contributors investigate repertoires and artists from Europe and the USA through the critical lenses of synchronicity and animated sound, interrelations of experimentation in image and sound, audiovisual synchresis and dissonance, experimental soundscape traditions, found-footage film, re-mediation of pre-existent music and sound, popular and queer sound cultures, and a diversity of radical technological, aesthetic, tropes in film media traversing the work of early pioneers such as Walther Ruttmann and Len Lye, through the mid-century innovations of Norman McLaren, Stan Brakhage, Lis Rhodes, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, and studio collectives in Poland, to latter-day experimentalists John Smith and Bill Morrison, as well as the contemporary practices of Vjing.

Intersecting Film, Music, and Queerness uses musicology and queer theory to uncover meaning and message in canonical American cinema. This study considers how queer readings are reinforced or nuanced through analysis of musical score. Taking a broad approach to queerness that questions heteronormative and homonormative patriarchal structures, binary relationships, gender assumptions and anxieties, this book challenges existing interpretations of what is progressive and what is retrogressive in cinema. Examined films include Bride of Frankenstein, Louisiana Story, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Blazing Saddles, Edward Scissorhands, Brokeback Mountain, Boys Don't Cry, Transamerica, Thelma & Louise, Go Fish and The Living End, with special attention given to films that subvert or complicate genre. Music is analyzed with concern for composition, intertextual references, absolute musical structures, song lyrics, recording, arrangement, and performance issues. This multidisciplinary work, featuring groundbreaking research, analysis, and theory, offers new close readings and a model for future scholarship.

“A well-researched and thorough book examining what the author finds to be a unique facet of film music of the late 1940s and early 1950s.” —SoundtraxLavish musical soundtracks contributed a special grandeur to the new widescreen, stereophonic sound movie experience of postwar biblical epics such as Samson and Delilah, Ben-Hur, and Quo Vadis. In Epic Sound, Stephen C. Meyer shows how music was utilized for various effects, sometimes serving as a vehicle for narrative plot and at times complicating biblical and cinematic interpretation. In this way, the soundscapes of these films reflected the ideological and aesthetic tensions within the genre, and more generally, within postwar American society. By examining key biblical films, Meyer adeptly engages musicology with film studies to explore cinematic interpretations of the Bible during the 1940s through the 1960s.“A major contribution to the field of film music studies and ought to be widely read by musicologists with an interest in film. Really, it ought to be read by film scholars as well: although the depth of Meyer's engagement with the music is felt on almost every page, this is also a powerfully sustained exploration of the biblical epic as a film genre.” —American Music“Meyer's clear and articulate study promises to be a welcome addition to the reading list of anyone interested not just in film but in mid-century music history.” —Journal of the Society for American Music“An ambitious and fascinating book.” —James Buhler, The University of Texas at Austin

Winner of the Southwest Popular and American Culture Association's 2016 Peter C. Rollins Book Award in the category of Film/TelevisionThe popular music industry has become completely interlinked with the film industry. The majority of mainstream films come with ready-attached songs that may or may not appear in the film but nevertheless will be used for publicity purposes and appear on a soundtrack album. In many cases, popular music in films has made for some of the most striking moments in films and the most dramatic aesthetic action in cinema, like Ben relaxing in the pool to Simon and Garfunkel's'The Sound of Silence'in The Graduate (1967), and the potter's wheel sequence with the Righteous Brothers''Unchained Melody'in Ghost (1990). Yet, to date, there have only been patchy attempts to deal with popular music's relationship with film. Indeed, it is startling that there is so little written on subject that is so popular as a consumer item and thus has a significant cultural profile.Magical Musical Tour is the first sustained and focused survey to engage the intersection of the two on both an aesthetic and industrial level. The chapters are historically-inspired reviews, discussing many films and musicians, while others will be more concentrated and detailed case studies of single films. Including an accompanying website and a timeline giving a useful snapshot around which readers can orient the book, Kevin Donnelly explores the history of the intimate bond between film and music, from the upheaval that rock'n'roll caused in the mid-1950s to the more technical aspects regarding'tracking'and'scoring'.

By exploring the relationship between music and the moving image in film narrative, David Neumeyer shows that film music is not conceptually separate from sound or dialogue, but that all three are manipulated and continually interact in the larger acoustical world of the sound track. In a medium in which the image has traditionally trumped sound, Neumeyer turns our attention to the voice as the mechanism through which narrative (dialog, speech) and sound (sound effects, music) come together. Complemented by music examples, illustrations, and contributions by James Buhler, Meaning and Interpretation of Music in Cinema is the capstone of Neumeyer's 25-year project in the analysis and interpretation of music in film.

Music has been an integral part of film exhibition from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century. With the arrival of sound film in the late 1920s, music became part of a complex multimedia text. Although industry, fan-oriented, and scholarly literatures on film music have existed from early on, and music was frequently among the topics discussed and disputed, only in the past thirty years has sustained scholarly attention gone to music in visual media, beginning with the feature film. The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies charts that interdisciplinary activity in its primary areas of inquiry: history, genre and medium, analysis and criticism, and interpretation. The handbook provides an overview to the field on a large scale. Chapters in Part I range from the relations of music and the soundtrack to opera and film, textual representation of film sound, and film music as studied by cognitive scientists. Part II addresses genre and medium with chapters focusing on cartoons and animated films, the film musical, music in arcade and early video games, and the interplay of film, music, and recording over the past half century. The chapters in Part III offer case studies in interpretation along with extended critical surveys of theoretical models of gender, sexuality, and subjectivity as they impinge on music and sound. The three chapters on analysis in Part IV are diverse: one systematically models harmonies used in recent films, a second looks at issues of music and film temporality, and a third focuses on television. Chapters on history (Part V) cover topics including musical antecedents in nineteenth-century theater, the complex issues in sychronization of music in performance of early (silent) films, international practices in early film exhibition, and the symphony orchestra in film.

MTV utterly changed the movies. Since music television arrived some 30 years ago, music videos have introduced filmmakers to a new creative vocabulary: speeds of events changed, and performance and mood came to dominate over traditional narrative storytelling. Popular Music and the New Auteur charts the impact of music videos on seven visionary directors: Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola, David Lynch, Wong Kar-Wai, the Coen brothers, Quentin Tarantino, and Wes Anderson. These filmmakers demonstrate a fresh kind of cinematic musicality by writing against pop songs rather than against script, and allowing popular music a determining role in narrative, imagery, and style. Featuring important new theoretical work by some of the most provocative writers in the area today, Popular Music and the New Auteur will be required reading for all who study film music and sound. It will be particularly relevant for readers in popular music studies, and its intervention in the ongoing debate on auteurism will make it necessary reading in film studies.

Unique and often startling encounters between music and the moving image in the films of Stanley Kubrick are trademarks of his style; witness the powerful effects of Strauss's'Also Sprach Zarathustra'in 2001: A Space Odyssey and of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in A Clockwork Orange, each excerpt vetted by Kubrick himself. We'll Meet Again argues that, for Kubrick, music is neither post-production afterthought nor background nor incidental, but instead is core to films'effects and meanings. The book first identifies the building blocks in Kubrick's sonic world and illuminates the ways in which Kubrick uses them to support his characters and to define character relationships. It then delves into the effects of Kubrick's signature musical techniques, including the use of texture, form, and inscription to render and reinforce psychological ideas and spectator responses. Finally it presents case studies that show how the history of the music plays a vital and dynamic role for the films. As a whole, the book locates Kubrick as a force in music reception history by examining the relationship between his musical choices and popular culture, and reveals the foundational role of music in his filmmaking.

Beginning with the era of synchronized sound in the 1920s, music has been an integral part of motion pictures. Whether used to heighten the tension of a scene or evoke a subtle emotional response, scores have played a significant—if often unrealized—role in the viewer's enjoyment.In The Invisible Art of Film Music, Laurence MacDonald provides a comprehensive introduction for the general student, film historian, and aspiring cinematographer. Arranged chronologically from the silent era to the present day, this volume provides insight into the evolution of music in cinema and analyzes the vital contributions of scores to hundreds of films. MacDonald reviews key developments in film music and discusses many of the most important and influential scores of the last nine decades, including those from Modern Times, Gone with the Wind, Citizen Kane, Laura, A Streetcar Named Desire, Ben-Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, The Godfather, Jaws, Ragtime, The Mission, Titanic, Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings, Brokeback Mountain,and Slumdog Millionaire. MacDonald also provides biographical sketches of such great composers as Max Steiner, Alfred Newman, Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini, Maurice Jarre, John Barry, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Dave Grusin, Ennio Morricone, Randy Newman, Hans Zimmer, and Danny Elfman.Updated and expanded to include scores produced well into the twenty-first century, this new edition of The Invisible Art of Film Music will appeal not only to scholars of cinema and musicologists but also any fan of film scores.

The musical scores of Stanley Kubrick's films are often praised as being innovative and forward-looking. Despite playing such an important part in his productions, however, the ways in which Kubrick used music to great effect is still somewhat mysterious to many viewers. Although some viewers may know a little about the music in 2001 or A Clockwork Orange, few are aware of the particulars behind the music in Kubrick's other films.In Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films, Christine Lee Gengaro provides an in-depth exploration of the music that was composed for Kubrick's films and places the pre-existent music he utilized into historical context. Gengaro discusses the music in every single work, from Kubrick's first films, including the documentary shorts The Flying Padre and Day of the Fight,through all of his feature films, from Fear and Desire to Eyes Wide Shut. No film is left out; no cue is ignored.Besides closely examining the scores composed by Gerald Fried for Kubrick's early works, Gengaro pays particular attention to five of the director's most provocative and acclaimed films—2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut. For each film, she engages the reader by explaining how the music was excerpted (and changed, in some cases), and how the historical facts about a musical piece add layers of meaning—sometimes unintended—to the films.Meant for film lovers, music lovers, and scholars, Listening to Stanley Kubrick is a thoroughly researched examination into the musical elements of one of cinema's most brilliant artists. Appropriate for a cinema studies or music classroom, this volume will also appeal to any fan of Kubrick's films.

Im vorliegenden Buch betrachtet der Autor ausgehend von der Einordnung der Filmmusik im Kontext filmästhetischer Mittel alle wissenschaftlich erfassten Modelle seit der sogenannten Stummfilmzeit bis zur Gegenwart. Modelle z.B. von Zofia Lissa, Hansjörg Pauli, Norbert Jürgen Schneider, Georg Maas und Claudia Bullerjahn werden zusammengefasst, beschrieben und diskutiert. Darauf aufbauend entwirft der Autor ein neueres Modell, welches alle parallel verlaufenen Funktionen in ein System integriert und damit versucht der Dynamik und Komplexität von Musik in Filmen gerecht zu werden. Verdeutlicht wird dieses neue System zur Beschreibung der Funktionen anhand einer Filmmusikanalyse, sodass der Leser selbst die Anwendbarkeit des Modells prüfen kann.

The story of the music that accompanies the cinematic adventures of Ian Fleming's intrepid Agent 007 is one of surprising real-life drama. In The Music of James Bond, author Jon Burlingame throws open studio and courtroom doors alike to reveal the full and extraordinary history of the sounds of James Bond, spicing the story with a wealth of fascinating and previously undisclosed tales. Burlingame devotes a chapter to each Bond film, providing the backstory for the music (including a reader-friendly analysis of each score) from the last-minute creation of the now-famous'James Bond Theme'in Dr. No to John Barry's trend-setting early scores for such films as Goldfinger and Thunderball. We learn how synthesizers, disco and modern electronica techniques played a role in subsequent scores, and how composer David Arnold reinvented the Bond sound for the 1990s and beyond. The book brims with behind-the-scenes anecdotes. Burlingame examines the decades-long controversy over authorship of the Bond theme; how Frank Sinatra almost sang the title song for Moonraker; and how top artists like Shirley Bassey, Tom Jones, Paul McCartney, Carly Simon, Duran Duran, Gladys Knight, Tina Turner, and Madonna turned Bond songs into chart-topping hits. The author shares the untold stories of how Eric Clapton played guitar for Licence to Kill but saw his work shelved, and how Amy Winehouse very nearly co-wrote and sang the theme for Quantum of Solace. New interviews with many Bond songwriters and composers, coupled with extensive research as well as fascinating and previously undiscovered details--temperamental artists, unexpected hits, and the convergence of great music and unforgettable imagery--make The Music of James Bond a must read for 007 buffs and all popular music fans. This paperback edition is brought up-to-date with a new chapter on Skyfall.

Hailed for its dramatic expressionist visuals, film noir is one of the most prominent genres in Hollywood cinema. Yet, despite the'boom'in sound studies, the role of sonic effects and source music in classic American noir has not received the attention it deserves. Siren City engagingly illustrates how sound tracks in 1940s film noir are often just as compelling as the genre's vaunted graphics. Focusing on a wide range of celebrated and less well known films and offering an introductory discussion of film sound, Robert Miklitsch mobilizes the notion of audiovisuality to investigate period sound technologies such as the radio and jukebox, phonograph and Dictaphone, popular American music such as'hot'black jazz, and'big numbers'featuring iconic performers such as Lauren Bacall, Veronica Lake, and Rita Hayworth. Siren City resonates with the sounds and source music of classic American noir-gunshots and sirens, swing riffs and canaries. Along with the proverbial private eye and femme fatale, these audiovisuals are central to the noir aesthetic and one important reason the genre reverberates with audiences around the world.

Film music is as old as cinema itself. Years before synchronized sound became the norm, projected moving images were shown to musical accompaniment, whether performed by a lone piano player or a hundred-piece orchestra. Today film music has become its own industry, indispensable to the marketability of movies around the world. Film Music: A Very Short Introduction is a compact, lucid, and thoroughly engaging overview written by one of the leading authorities on the subject. After opening with a fascinating analysis of the music from a key sequence in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, Kathryn Kalinak introduces readers not only to important composers and musical styles but also to modern theoretical concepts about how and why film music works. Throughout the book she embraces a global perspective, examining film music in Asia and the Middle East as well as in Europe and the United States. Key collaborations between directors and composers--Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Akira Kurosawa and Fumio Hayasaka, Federico Fellini and Nino Rota, to name only a few--come under scrutiny, as do the oft-neglected practices of the silent film era. She also explores differences between original film scores and compilation soundtracks that cull music from pre-existing sources. As Kalinak points out, film music can do many things, from establishing mood and setting to clarifying plot points and creating emotions that are only dimly realized in the images. This book illuminates the many ways it accomplishes those tasks and will have its readers thinking a bit more deeply and critically the next time they sit in a darkened movie theater and music suddenly swells as the action unfolds onscreen. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

In Off Key, Kay Dickinson offers a compelling study of how certain alliances of music and film are judged aesthetic failures. Based on a fascinating and wide-ranging body of film-music mismatches, and using contemporary reviews and histories of the turn to post-industrialization, the book expands the ways in which the union of the film and music businesses can be understood. Moving beyond the typical understanding of film music that privileges the score, Off Key also incorporates analyses of rock'n'roll movies, composer biopics, and pop singers crossing over into acting. By doing this, it provides a fuller picture of how two successful entertainment sectors have sought out synergistic strategies, ones whose alleged'failures'have much to tell about the labor practices of the creative industries, as well as our own relationship to them and to work itself. A provocative and politically-conscious look at music-image relations, Off Key will appeal to students and scholars of film music, cinema studies, media studies, cultural studies, and labor history.

Bringing together some of the most influential international scholars on the subject, this anthology provides a detailed, diverse and accessible perspective on music in the cinema.

Pocket Essentials is a dynamic series of books that are concise, lively, and easy to read. Packed with facts as well as expert opinions, each book has all the key information you need to know about such popular topics as film, television, cult fiction, history, and more. Classical purists say it isn't'real'music, yet it regularly tops charts and plays to sell-out concert hall audiences. This book looks at such topics as who have been the most influential composers, which scores have best served a film and why, and what have been the historical, social, and technological changes that have affected the industry. From Ben Hur to Star Wars and Psycho to Scream, film music has played an essential role in such genre-defining classics.

From the silent era to the present day, popular music has been a key component of the film experience. Yet there has been little serious writing on film soundtracks that feature popular music. Soundtrack Available fills this gap, as its contributors provide detailed analyses of individual films as well as historical overviews of genres, styles of music, and approaches to film scoring.With a cross-cultural emphasis, the contributors focus on movies that use popular songs from a variety of genres, including country, bubble-gum pop, disco, classical, jazz, swing, French cabaret, and showtunes. The films discussed range from silents to musicals, from dramatic and avant-garde films to documentaries in India, France, England, Australia, and the United States. The essays examine both “nondiegetic” music in film—the score playing outside the story space, unheard by the characters, but no less a part of the scene from the perspective of the audience—and “diegetic” music—music incorporated into the shared reality of the story and the audience. They include analyses of music written and performed for films, as well as the now common practice of scoring a film with pre-existing songs. By exploring in detail how musical patterns and structures relate to filmic patterns of narration, character, editing, framing, and mise-en-scene, this volume demonstrates that pop music is a crucial element in the film experience. It also analyzes the life of the soundtrack apart from the film, tracing how popular music circulates and acquires new meanings when it becomes an official soundtrack.Contributors. Rick Altman, Priscilla Barlow, Barbara Ching, Kelley Conway, Corey Creekmur, Krin Gabbard, Jonathan Gill, Andrew Killick, Arthur Knight, Adam Knee, Jill Leeper, Neepa Majumdar, Allison McCracken, Murray Pomerance, Paul Ramaeker, Jeff Smith, Pamela Robertson Wojcik, Nabeel Zuberi