The Cambridge Companion to Film Music

Mervyn Cooke editor Fiona Ford editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:8th Dec '16

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The Cambridge Companion to Film Music cover

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

A collection of essays from leading scholars and practitioners in the burgeoning field of film music studies. The book provides a uniquely comprehensive overview of how music functions in film soundtracks from a variety of historical periods, genres and film industries, including those of the USA, UK, France, Italy, India and Japan.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.

'Going beyond new historical research on early film music, genre studies, and film music analysis, this diverse collection of current essays is ambitious. … Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.' M. Goldsmith, CHOICE
'… 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

ISBN: 9781107094512

Dimensions: 253mm x 178mm x 23mm

Weight: 1000g

438 pages