The Cambridge Companion to Film Music

A stimulating and unusually wide-ranging collection of essays overviewing ways in which music functions in film soundtracks.

Mervyn Cooke (Edited by), Fiona Ford (Edited by)

9781107094512, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 8 December 2016

438 pages, 23 b/w illus. 9 tables 26 music examples
25.3 x 17.8 x 2.3 cm, 1 kg

'… a fine addition to the film music literature. … Particularly successful is the combination of general overviews (historical, technological, theoretical, methodological) with case-study chapters that exemplify a range of approaches to examining soundtracks. This book could readily be offered to undergraduate and postgraduate students as a 'toolkit' to inspire and guide their own studies, and while the balance is towards musicological study, the relatively accessible tone and varied methodologies additionally make the book worthy of attention for those from other disciplines. The editors are to be commended for assembling a collection that represents much of the variety of modern film music scholarship.' Jonathan Godsall, Popular Music

This wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection of specially-commissioned essays provides a uniquely comprehensive overview of the many and various ways in which music functions in film soundtracks. Citing examples from a variety of historical periods, genres and film industries - including those of the USA, UK, France, Italy, India and Japan - the book's contributors are all leading scholars and practitioners in the field. They engage, sometimes provocatively, with numerous stimulating aspects of the history, theory and practice of film music in a series of lively discussions which will appeal as much to newcomers to this fascinating subject as to seasoned film music aficionados. Innovative research and fresh interpretative perspectives are offered alongside practice-based accounts of the film composer's distinctive art, with examples cited from genres as contrasting as animation, the screen musical, film noir, Hollywood melodrama, the pop music and jazz film, documentary, period drama, horror, science fiction and the Western.

Introduction Mervyn Cooke and Fiona Ford
Part I. Making Film Music: 1. Evolving practices for film music and sound, 1925–35 James Buhler and Hannah Lewis
2. 'Pictures that talk and sing': sound history and technology David Cooper
3. The composer and the studio: Korngold and Warner Bros. Ben Winters
4. Can't buy me love? Economic imperatives and artistic achievements in the British pop music film Stephen Glynn
5. 'A film's first audience': the composer's role in film and television George Fenton in conversation with Mervyn Cooke
Part II. Approaching Film Music: 6. Film music theory Guido Heldt
7. Studying film scores: working in archives and with living composers Kate Daubney
8. Returning to Casablanca Peter Franklin
9. Parental guidance advised? Mash-ups and mating penguins in Happy Feet Fiona Ford
10. Materializing film music Miguel Mera
Part III. Genre and Idiom: 11. Film noir and music David Butler
12. Another other history of jazz in the movies Krin Gabbard
13. Horror and science fiction Stan Link
14. The Western Robynn J. Stilwell
15. The music of screen musicals Caryl Flinn
16. 'Britannia - The Musical': scores, songs and soundtracks in British animation Paul Wells
Part IV. Music in World Cinemas: 17. Leone, Morricone and the Italian way to revisionist westerns Sergio Miceli
18. Music, noise and silence in the late cinema of Jean-Luc Godard Danae Stefanou
19. Hans Werner Henze and The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum Annette Davison
20. T?ru Takemitsu's collaborations with Masahiro Shinoda: the music for Pale Flower, Samurai Spy and Ballad of Orin Tim Koozin
21. Welcome to Kollywood: Tamil film music and popular culture in South India Mekala Padmanabhan.

Subject Areas: Music [AV], Films, cinema [APF]