music in films: a critical review of literature, 1980-1996 · music in film written between 1980...

Music in Films:A Critical Review of Literature, 1980-19961

ROBYNN J. STILWELL

THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC

Volume 1, Number 1, Pages 19-61ISSN 1087-7142 Copyright © 2002The International Film Music Society, Inc.

1I would like to express my thanks to Bill Rosarand Tom DeMary for doing some of the legworkin the United States that I was unable to do inthe United Kingdom. Also my thanks to Eliza-beth Endsley for compiling the bibliography andespecially for chasing up Internet references.

I began compiling this article for differentreasons altogether. The first was my doctoralexams in 1992. At the time, the idea of concen-trating on film, dance, and theatre music insteadof concert hall music was not only unusual butdownright controversial (not, I hasten to add, inmy own department, but in the field at large);ironically, those were the areas my first teachingjob wanted, and the literature survey receivedanother influx of material. In the tenor of thisarticle, beyond its bibliographical content, Irealized that I had first-hand experience to

Over a century has passed since December 28, 1895,when the Lumière Brothers

first demonstrated their cinémato-graphe to the public in Paris in anexhibition that was accompaniedby a pianist.2 As so many booksand articles are at pains to remindus, film was never silent. It wasmerely mute.

Music was a vital part of thefilm exhibition, performance, andexperience from the beginning.The piano in the corner moviehouse, the mighty Wurlitzer organin the theater, the orchestra in themovie palace—these were asessential to a film presentation asthe projector and the screen. Anynumber of theories for the pres-ence and persistence of music inconjunction with film have beenproposed. But whether throughtheatrical tradition, the practical

need to cover up the noise of theprojector, the psychological neces-sity of providing “depth” for the“ghostly” two-dimensional imageson the screen,3 or some combi-nation of such factors, music hasbeen considered indispensablefrom the beginning. When moviesbegan to talk in the late 1920s, itheralded a turning point in a tech-nological revolution that led to thephysical welding of sound (includ-ing music) to image, transformingthe ephemeral into a semblance ofpermanence.

The purpose here is not totrace the history of music in film,but to survey the literature aboutmusic in film written between1980 and 1996. Film music litera-ture is a strange hybrid, much likeits subject, existing in a limbo cutoff from the main body of both itsprogenitors: neither film studies

nor musicology have paid muchattention to film music in the past,and like a squalling brat, filmmusic studies have continued toprotest loudly the neglect. While itis true that film studies and musi-cology have been largely uninter-ested in film music—or, to be fair,ill-equipped theoretically toapproach the synthetic form—thevociferous plaints of completeneglect are gradually being ex-posed as hyperbole.4

In 1979, musicologist MartinMarks published the milestonereview article “Film Music: TheMaterial, Literature, and PresentState of Research,”5 seriouslyaddressing the special problemsand nature of film music scholar-ship for the first time. Marks’sarticle is highly recommended foran overview and as a starter bibli-ography for the neophyte. The

impart about the transition of film music studiesfrom a musicological backwater to one of itsleading waves.2The Oxford Companion to Film, 1976 ed., s.v.“Music.”3This theory goes back at least as far as the workof film theorist Béla Balász (Der sichtbare Mensch,oder die Kultur des Films [The visible person, orthe culture of film], Vienna & Leipzig, 1924).4See Caryl Flinn, Strains of Utopia: Gender, Nostal-gia, and Hollywood Film Music (Princeton: Prince-ton University Press, 1992: 3-4 as well as Marks,“Film Music” (see below). In their review ofFlinn’s book and Kathryn Kalinak’s Settling theScore: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992)in the Journal of the American Musicological Society(67/2 [Summer 1994]: 364-85), James Buhler

and David Neumeyer take up the issue of “ne-glect” and point out that it has been used veryeffectively to structure arguments; but the timein which we can legitimately use such an argu-ment has now surely past. Buhler and Neumeyer’sreview article also contains a concise survey offilm theory and the (lack of) film music theory.5Notes (1979): 282-325. An updated version waspublished in the Journal of the University Film andVideo Association 34, no. 1 (Winter 1982): 3-40,thereby proving one of Marks’s points—that thatmuch of the literature was published in “ephem-eral or out-of-reach journals” (p. 290). Becausethe second version differs from the first pri-marily in additions to the bibliography, andbecause the first version is more easily accessiblethan the second, all page references will be tothe version in Notes.

20 THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC

comprehensiveness is admirable,and daunting to those who follow.6

The present article is meant toaddress the next couple of de-cades–decades that, as it happens,have seen a slow revolution in thekind and quantity of film musicliterature. As indicated in its title,Marks’s article was divided intothree sections. We shall return tothe topic of the state of research atthe end of this article, but first letus examine some of Marks’s ob-servations about the materials andthe literature.

The materials are more or lessa historical constant, althoughthere was a shift from the cuesheets and compilation scores ofthe silent era to predominantlyoriginal scores with the coming ofsound. We may study piano arran-gements, concert adaptations (forinstance, Sergei Prokofiev’sAlexander Nevsky Cantata, AaronCopland’s The Red Pony Suite, orMiklós Rózsa’s Spellbound Concerto),and soundtrack albums, althoughthese usually contain significantalterations of the music heard in afilm. The composer’s score, thefull score as prepared by theorchestrator, and the musicians’performing parts for recordingsessions are more accurate—although not necessarily completelyaccurate, as changes are some-times made in the recordingsessions themselves—but access isseverely limited by the owners ofthe music’s copyright. The copy-right holder is almost always theproduction company rather thanthe composer, since most com-

posers are hired by productioncompanies to provide a service–that of producing a score. So whatthen do we study?

Marks astutely points out thatthe fundamental difference betweenfilm music and other “repertoires”is that film music is not really arepertoire. Even if we had accessto all these written sources andaudio recordings, in reality, filmmusic exists only in conjunctionwith a film:

In other words, there not onlyis no repertoire of film music,there are also no “pieces offilm music” at all—onlypieces of film, with musicphotographically or electro-magnetically inscribed on aband alongside the image.The primary material of filmmusic, both for the audienceand the researcher, is not arecording or a score, but thefilm itself (p. 283).

Marks’s pitch for studying themusic in connection with the filmmay seem obvious, but it is trulyastonishing how many studies ofthe music tend to ignore com-pletely what is happening on thescreen. This may be explained, ifnot condoned, by the methodswhich the researchers have beentaught to use. Film studies aretraditionally a visual domain; inthe last decade or so, sound hasmade inroads into the field, butprimarily in terms of the voiceand, to a lesser extent, soundeffects.7 Music has been left outalmost completely. Conversely,musicology was established in an

era when absolute music—musicfor its own sake, with no extra-musical program or function—wasthe ideal, with all music measuredto that standard. It is therefore notsurprising that music written forpurposes of dramatic illustrationwould be considered almost be-neath notice; additionally,methodologies for studying suchmusic, were it to be noticed, aremarkedly underdeveloped.

One result of this schism is thepredominant assumption that thereader has little or no knowledgeof music. While the intent may beto accommodate those in filmstudies who might be intimidatedby technical musical discussion,the result is immensely frustratingto those in music and perhapscontinues to alienate and antago-nize the musicological establish-ment, which understandablyexpects some serious engagementwith the musical issues. On theother hand, it must be said thatmuch of the literature that dealsmost directly with the music tendsto ignore the visual side. Implic-itly, or even explicitly, much of themusic analysis pleads for filmmusic’s status as “real music.”This becomes most obvious in thefrequently encountered distastefor—even hatred of—popularmusic. Since the 1960s, the pop-song–based score has grownincreasingly important and maynow be deemed the dominant typeof score, at least in terms of sheernumbers. Understandably, somecomposers and fans of more “clas-sical” scores see this trend asendangering the symphonic score,but very few of them will deign toconcede that, when done well, asfor instance in John Hughes’s teencomedies The Breakfast Club (1985)and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986),a pop song score can be the mostappropriate type of music for afilm.

6In the collection Film Music I (ed. CliffordMcCarty, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.,1989), two articles address the same basic issuesas Marks: Clifford McCarty’s “Introduction: TheLiterature of Film Music” (pp. ix-xv), and H.Stephen Wright’s “The Materials of Film Music:Their Nature and Accessibility” (pp. 3-15).Although they do include some new information,

they are too brief to be of comparable value.7For instance, in the special issue “Cinema/Sound” of Yale French Studies (No. 60, 1980),half of the articles on theory and all of the casestudies are on the voice, outnumbering bytwice the number of articles in the “Music”section.

FILM MUSIC LITERATURE REVIEW 21

Marks had no way of knowing(although the premonition lurksbetween the lines) that his articlewas written at a pivotal time infilm music studies. Since the late1970s, there has been both anexplosion and an implosion in theliterature—an explosion in theamount of material, and an implo-sion in the sense that detailedwork on specific aspects of filmmusic has become increasinglymore prominent and has incor-porated elements of psychology,sociology, philosophy, semiotics,and reception and perceptionstudies.8 Yet lack of focus remainsa problem. A marked tendency totry to be all things to all peopledilutes and attenuates the impactof much that has been written,and the scattered and marginalnature of the literature has led to apattern that begins to wear uponthe serious reader: every bookseems to begin with some variantupon “of course, the movies werenever silent” and then proceeds toa capsule history of film musicfrom the beginning to the present(whatever present the author isin). I can think of no other area ofmusic literature, at least, thatseems compelled to recite itsentire history so consistently.

Rather than building a body ofliterature, most of the books seemto start from scratch, resulting in atremendous waste of energy and adiffusion of attention.

Any literature on film music isstill, in Marks’s words, “far fromeasy to come by, and this is onereason for its own neglect. Bookson film music pass speedily out ofprint, while articles lie scatteredand buried in ephemeral or out-of-reach journals” (p. 290).9 Despiteits marginality (in some measure,perhaps because of it), the writingon film music covers a widevariety in content and approach.This discussion has been dividedinto the following sections:10

1. The Silent Film Era2. General Reference Sources3. Surveys4. Biographies and Interviews5. Film Music Society News-

letters, Magazines and theInternet

6. Historical Aspects7. Theory, Aesthetics and Analysis8. Pedagogy9. Sociology and Cultural Studies

Categorization is based on theapparent intentions of the authorsas well as their intended audiences,

although certainly there are cross-currents and overlap throughout.

The Silent Film Era

Unlike any other period of filmmusic, we do not know what themusic for silent film reallysounded like because it was notrecorded but played live and indifferent configurations fromtheater to theater. Relatively fewcomplete scores were written forsilent films; the majority werepieced together from popularmusic, themes from “the classics,”and from libraries of speciallycomposed pieces indexed by moodor action, as in Giuseppe Becce’sKinothek: Neue Filmmusik11 and ErnoRapee’s Encyclopedia of Music forPictures.12 Even the scores thatwere specially composed for filmswere probably hardly ever playedas written once the film had leftthe central theaters for the hinter-lands. A prescribed score infringedupon the job of the theater musicdirector, which was to assembleand arrange the scores for filmpresentations, and in some casesthe given score was used only asfar it suited the music director andthe local set of musicians.13

More than half the literature

8Although “perception” and “reception” mayseem similar at first blush, the two methodolo-gies are quite divergent. Perception studies tendto be scientific and psychological in nature;reception studies are cultural, embracingsemiotics, aesthetics, and ideology.9I can personally attest to the difficulty of gain-ing access to these materials, as this article wasput together from a regional university in theUnited Kingdom. It was frustratingly difficulteven to find references to recent books and articles(this necessitated a trip to the British Library inLondon), and even with the most perseveringInterlibrary Loan staff, actually putting hands onsuch items was very much a hit-and-miss affair.As a result, there are a number of footnotes inwhich I state that I have been unable to see aparticular article or book; citations are includedfor the benefit of those who may have access to

them, while categorization is based on title andextrapolation from other publications by thesame author or comments by others.10Articles in general volumes, like Film Music I(ed. Clifford McCarty, New York: Garland Pub-lishing, Inc., 1989), and special issues ofperiodicals, such as Indiana Theory Review (11,no. 1-2, 1990) and Chigiana (42, no. 22, 1990),which I have been unable to see, have beendiscussed separately.11“Kinothek” is a contraction of “Kinobibliothek”– “cinema library” (see below for more extensiveinformation).12New York: Belwin, 1925; reprinted in New Yorkby Arno Press, 1970.13Gillian Anderson has reconstructed types ofmusical presentations one could expect attheaters of various sizes with differing resources(“The Presentation of Silent Films, or Music as

Anaesthesia,” Journal of Musicology 5 (1987): 247-95). Her article is an offshoot of her work as amusic librarian at the Library of Congress, wherea major rescue operation has been underway tomicrofilm old, brittle cue sheets and scores inthe collection of the Library of Congress and theMuseum of Modern Art (New York) before theydisintegrate. She ends with a rather eloquentplea for the excitement of live music with film,born of her experience of silent film screeningswith music at the Museum of Modern Art.Anderson herself is now actively reconstructingand conducting such performances. PatrickMiller’s article “Music and the Silent Film”(Perspectives of New Music 21 (1992-93): 582-84)covers much the same ground, but in a verysketchy manner.


on music for the silent film era isdirectly or indirectly connectedwith reconstructions of silent filmperformance practice14 or newlycomposed scores for silent films.15

The latter phenomenon has in-creased dramatically in recentyears, for instance in the formerEast Germany where silent filmswere broadcast on television withnewly-composed scores beginningin 1977, or in Britain on Channel4. Wolfgang Thiel, one of the com-posers working on such scores,writes of the challenges and re-wards of such work.16 Although headmits that the fragmentary filmsand variable projection rates cancreate headaches for the composer,he also argues that silent filmcomposition opens possibilities tothe composer that sound film doesnot, as the music is continuousand does not have to compete withsound effects and dialogue. Hemaintains that this revival of silentfilm is not a historicizing trend,but a popularizing one; he alsolinks the phenomenon to a generaltrend toward past musical tech-niques, exemplified by John

Williams’ neo-Romantic scores forfilms like Star Wars, which hearkenback to the scores of ErichWolfgang Korngold for suchswashbucklers as Captain Blood(1935) and The Adventures of RobinHood (1938).

When approaching the task ofwriting a score for a silent film,the well-informed composer (andThiel is amazingly well-informed,as his masterly historical surveyon the history of film music17

proves) is torn between authen-ticity and attracting modernaudiences, between the “inartistic”potpourri style of the silent periodand the more integrated tech-niques developed for the soundfilm. In the end, Thiel reports thathe opted for a combination thatallowed a historical perspective onthe original film; for instance, forFriedrich Murnau’s Nosferatu(1922), he paraphrased HansErdmann’s original themes in amodern-day style. This sort of re-working and recontextualizationhas become increasingly commonin sound films as well, for instanceElmer Bernstein’s reuse of Bernard

Herrmann’s original score for CapeFear (1962) in Martin Scorsese’s1991 remake; director CarlosSaura and choreographer AntonioGades’s fracturing of the familiaropera in their filming of Gades’flamenco ballet, Carmen (1983),with guitarist Paco de Lucia’simprovisatory interpretation ofBizet’s themes echoing the freereinterpretation of the plot; orFrançois Truffaut’s L’Histoired’Adèle H (1975), in whichMaurice Jaubert’s scores forseveral films of the 1930s arewoven into a new score rich inallusions to the earlier films.18

More historical aspects ofsilent film music performance aretaken up by David Q. Bowers,Thomas J. Mathieson, and RudyBehlmer. Bowers’s NickelodeonTheatres and Their Music19 is really ahistory of nickelodeons and theinstruments, with nothing aboutthe music itself; it is, however, anentertaining book, full of repro-ductions of complete advertise-ments for musical instruments andwonderful photographs of theaterswith long, informative captions.

14Dennis James, “Performing with Silent Film,”in Film Music I, edited by Clifford McCarty (NewYork: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989): 61-79;Joachim Lucchesi, “Filmmusik Hanns Eislers inder Akademie der Künste” (The Film Music ofHanns Eisler in the Academy of Art), Musik undGesellschaft 34 (1984): 602-603.15Ian Christie, “Sounds and Silents,” Sight andSound 3, no. 3 (March 1993): 18-21; H. Ehrler,“Viele Töne verdoppeln die stummen Bilder:Alfred und Andrej Schnittkes Filmmusik zuPudowkins Das Ende von St. Petersburg” (Manytones double the silent images: Alfred andAndrej Schnittke’s music to Pudovkin’s film, TheEnd of St. Petersburg), Neue Musikzeitung 41(December 1992-January 1993): 58; R.Wehmeier, “Endlose Klangflachen und Span-nungslosigkeit: eine Stummfilmrekonstruktionim ZDF mit neuer Musikkomposition” (Endlesssound planes and lack of tension: a silent filmreconstruction in the ZDF with a new musicalcomposition), Neue Musikzeitung 41 (December1992-January 1993): 17.16“Stummfilmmusik als künstlerische Aufgange:Ein Arbeitsbericht” (Silent film music as anartistic start: a working report), Musik undGesellschaft 33 (October 1983): 606-11. Lothar

Prox’s “Musik und Stummfilm: SchnittkesNeukomposition für einen Russischen Revolu-tionsfilm von 1927” (Music and silent film:Schnittke’s new score for a Russian Revolutionfilm from 1927), Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 154(January 1993): 53-55) ends with an interestingproposal for a perception/reception study, acomparison between a live performance in a bigroom and a television broadcast. Two otherarticles which I have not seen also deal with thisphenomenon: Wolfgang Thiel, “Gibt es eineRenaissance der Stummfilmmusik?” (Is there aRenaissance in music for silent film?), (Film undFernsehen 3 (1981): 22-26) and Lothar Prox,“Musik zu alten Filmen, Stummfilmvertonungender Fernsehanstalten” (Music to old films: Silentfilm composition for television institutions),(Musica 34 (1980): 25-31).17Filmmusik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (FilmMusic, Past and Present) (Berlin: HenschelverlagKunst und Gesellschaft, 1981), discussed below.18Annette Insdorf examines this score in somedetail in “Maurice Jaubert and François Truffaut:Musical Continuities from L’Atalante to L’Histoired’Adèle H” (Yale French Studies 60 (Fall 1980):204-18). She draws comparisons betweenTruffaut’s literary and visual allusiveness (the

quoting of scenes from other films) and hiscollage score. Although Insdorf never quitemakes the connection, Truffaut’s borrowingappears much more “literary” than musical.Water imagery is very important in the film, andmuch of the music for Adèle H comes from La Vied’un fleuve (the life of a river), a documentaryabout the Seine by Jean Lods, while in the scenesset on the island of Barbados, the music comesfrom Ile de Pâques (Easter Island). Although thestudy is not truly musical, it is a serviceableexamination of a fascinating case of inter-textuality. Intertextuality is not merely referenceor quotation a new context (film, televisionshow, advertisement, song, video, etc.), but theentire network of signification—all film, alltelevision, etc. See Roland Barthes, “From Workto Text” in Image-Music-Text, trans. Stephen Heath(London: Fontana Press, 1977): 160-61. Inpractice, it often involves an alteration or inflec-tion of the meaning of that which is referred toor quoted and, almost perforce, the reception ofthe original context. See John Fiske, TelevisionCulture (London: Routledge, 1987), especiallyChapter 7, “Intertextuality”19New York: The Vestal Press, 1986.


This book is one of the fewattempts to get at the real historyof the first decade (1895-1905) offilm, even if on a popular level.Mathieson’s “Silent Film Music andthe Theatre Organ”20 moves into thesecond decade, focusing on tech-nical aspects of the theater organand the technique and conditionsof playing for the theater organist.A first-hand account is given inBehlmer’s interview with GaylordCarter,21 one of the most in-demand organists of the silent era,who provides some welcome illus-trations of the sophisticatedmusical technique possible in thatenvironment. For instance, insteadof the horror stories one hearsabout the orchestra going off dutyin the middle of a reel, with anabrupt shift to the organist, Carterdescribes a very smooth turnover,sealing the seams with an oboesolo matched by the oboe stop onthe organ.

Those who actually wrote andcompiled the music for theatermusicians have been given increa-sing attention in recent years.Ennio Simeon has published two

articles on Giuseppe Becce,22 cer-tainly one of the most influentialfigures in silent film music aseditor of the twelve volumes ofKinothek: Neue Filmmusik, an in-dexed anthology of music.23 Beccewas also one of the authors of theAllgemeines Handbuch der Filmmusik(General Handbook of FilmMusic),24 along with Ludwig Bravand Hans Erdmann. Volume one ofthis “Handbook” was the firstpublished survey of the theory,history, and techniques of filmmusic, a trilogy of topics thatpervades many subsequent bookson film music, especially afterRoger Manvell and John Huntley’sThe Techniques of Film Music;25

volume two was the most sophis-ticated and thoroughly cross-referenced version of the Kinothekanthologies. Becce’s primarycollaborator, Hans Erdmann,26 hasundergone the sort of seriousexamination heretofore only asso-ciated with canonical Western artmusic composers such as Bach andBeethoven.27 A composer who wasan articulate and thoughtfultheorist and also one who was

successful both in silent films andin sound films, Erdmann has beenovershadowed by his more contro-versial contemporary, HannsEisler,28 but is richly deserving ofsuch a thorough examination.Ulrich Siebert has also discussedthe political, economical, andsocio-cultural aspects of filmmusic in Germany in the 1920s,establishing a clear context for theappearance of the Handbuch.

The relatively rare completescores composed29 for silent films,such as Erdmann’s score forNosferatu, have found somescholarly attention, and the mostextensive of these projects isMartin Marks’s dissertation, FilmMusic of the Silent Period, 1895-1924,30 in which he examines fivescores in historical context and inrelationship to the films for whichthey were composed. Marks’s dis-sertation is one of the fewnon-survey studies to encompassthe works of both specialist filmcomposers and concert hall com-posers,31 with five scores rangingover almost the entire silent pe-riod. They include two com-

20Indiana Theory Review 11, no. 2 (1990): 81-117.The article also includes a useful list of availablevideotapes of silent films.21“‘Tumult, Battle and Blaze’: Looking Back onthe 1920s—and Since—with Gaylord Carter, theDean of Theater Organists,” in Film Music I, ed.Clifford McCarty (New York: Garland Publish-ing, Inc., 1989): 19-59.22“A musica di Giuseppe Becce tra cinema muto esonoro” (On the music of Giuseppe Becce be-tween silent and sound films), Music in Film Fest(Vicenza, 1987): 79-90; “Art. Giuseppe Becce,”Cinegraph (Hamburg: Lieferung 10, 1988), bothunseen.23Published by Schlesinger in Berlin from 1920 to1927.24Berlin: Schlesinger, 1927.25Focal Press Library of Communication Tech-niques (London: Focal Press, 1957); secondedition revised and enlarged by Richard Arnelland Peter Day (New York: Hastings House,1975). Marks lists nine such books afterManvell & Huntley (p. 308), increased to elevenin the 1982 update.26Ulrich Eberhard Siebert, Filmmusik in Theorie undPraxis: eine Untersuchung der 20er und frühen 30er

Jahre anhand des Werkes von Hans Erdmann (Filmmusic in theory and practice: an investigation ofthe ‘20s and early ‘30s with examples from theworks of Hans Erdmann) (Frankfurt am Main: P.Lang, 1990). Two other German dissertationsinaccessible to me deal with the same period inan apparently more general manner: UlrichRügner, Filmmusik in Deutschland zwischen 1924und 1934 (Film Music in Germany between 1924and 1934) (1983) and Dietrich Stern, Musik undFilm: Aneignung der Wirklichkeit. Filmkompositionzu Beginn der Tonfilmzeit (Music and film: Appro-priation of Reality. Film composition to thebeginning of sound film) (1981).27A canon is the body of works (films, pieces ofmusic, etc.) that scholars have deemed worthy ofserious study. For the dangers of canon-build-ing, see the conclusion of this paper.28This is perhaps attributable to Eisler’s tenureas a composer in Hollywood and his associationwith Theodor Adorno.29Many so-called “complete” or “original” scoreswere in fact compilations of much the same sortas a local music director would have put to-gether; they may or may not have been moresophisticated.

30Harvard University, 1990; in book form fromOxford University Press as Music and the SilentFilm: Contexts and Case Studies, 1895-1924.31Most tend to concentrate either on the tech-nique of film accompaniment (whether playingor composing/compiling) or on the specific filmscores of a single concert hall composer. MichaelStegemann’s “Der mord als schöne Kunstbetrachtet: Camille Saint-Saëns und die Anfängeder Filmmusik” (Death Considered as Fine Art:Camille Saint-Saëns and the Beginnings of FilmMusic) (Neue Zeitschrift für Musik (October 1985):8-14) is a model of a concise historical andanalytical article, tracing the history and contextof the film and analyzing the music and its use inthe film. Rein A. Zondergeld’s comparison ofthe silent film experiments of Pietro Mascagni(Rapsodica Satanica, 1915) and Richard Strauss(Der Rosenkavalier, 1925-26) is a rare example ofan examination of more than one concert hallcomposer. “Ein sonderbar Ding: Pietro Mascagniund Richard Strauss as Filmkomponisten inFrankfurt” (An unusual thing: Pietro Mascagniand Richard Strauss as film composers in Frank-furt), Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 149 (June 1988):41-42.


pilation scores, one for the 1895Skaladonowsky Bioskop shows,Joseph Carl Breil’s partially origi-nal score for D.W. Griffiths’s 1915Birth of a Nation, and Walter Cleve-land Simon’s 1912 film An ArabianTragedy. Also examined are scoressuch as Camille Saint-Saëns’s forthe 1908 film L’Assassinat du Duc deGuise and Erik Satie’s for the 1924film Entr’acte.32

A very different sort of study isTraude Ebert-Obermeier’s pro-vocative examination of the criticalreception of Edmund Meisel’scontroversial score for SergeiEisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.33

While no one has claimed thescore is a masterpiece, it is fre-quently hailed as a landmark offilm scoring because of its powerto heighten the action of the film.In the 1920s, the film was recog-nized as a way of reaching,uniting, and inciting the masses,and Meisel’s score was consideredso effective that it was banned insome countries—not the film, justthe score! Ebert-Obermeier’sstrongly (some might say stri-dently) Marxist approach isimportant in that it considers thesocial aspects of the interactionsof film and music, an aspect oftenmuch neglected by other writers,but unwittingly points up a funda-mental paradox. Capitalism isaccused of imposing the will of an

economic elite by manipulatingthe masses; a few determine whatthe masses will like. Yet in its in-tentions to “educate” and even“incite” the masses, is the advo-cated social realism any different?As Ebert-Obermeier was writingfrom the historical perspective of1982, one would have thought shewould have addressed this issue,but she does not.

The silent film era is a separateand quite unique area of filmmusic, although conventions thatpersist in film music today may betraced back to this era. Because ofthis apparently closed quality, thestudy of music for silent films hasassumed a certain dominance inthe academic study of film music,if not in volume, then in propor-tion: the majority of writing onfilm music in general is popular,not scholarly, whereas the oppo-site is true for silent film music.As Wolfgang Thiel has pointedout, silent film has become “clas-sic,” which sets it apart from thesocial and economic aspects thatswirl around other film musics;34

this makes it easier to approach, atleast for musicology, which hasuntil recently stayed resolutelyclear of any such worldly concerns.

General Reference Sources

Reliable reference sources on

film music are among the mostneeded and least accessible publi-cations on film music. Manydifferent kinds of lists exist,though most are published bysmall and/or specialized publish-ing houses and pass very quicklyout of print. Most of the publica-tions in this category are bibliog-raphies of some sort. Some arebibliographies for specific com-posers35 or a specific era,36 but ofthe greatest importance to thescholar is Steven D. Wescott’sA Comprehensive Bibliography ofMusic for Film and Television.37

Because film music literature isscattered throughout so manydifferent kinds of journals, manyof them obscure, locating citationsentails tedious searches throughnumerous indices (a hit-and-missproposition) and working outwardfrom citations in other sources.Wescott provides an indispensablesingle citation index coveringhistory, techniques and technology,theory, aesthetics, psychology andperception, sociology and culture,and such resources as bibliogra-phies, filmographies, discogra-phies, and reference materials. Nobook, however, can contain abso-lutely everything, and in 1993Gillian Anderson published asupplement.38 However, her addi-tions are for the period 1930-1970.Wescott’s book is now over a

32Marks’s work on Entr’acte also appears in “TheWell-Furnished Film: Satie’s Score for Entr’acte,”Canadian University Music Review 4 (1983): 245-77.33“Kunst im Dienst der Revolution: Zur Musikvon Edmund Meisel für den Film PanzerkreuzerPotemkin” (Art in the service of the Revolution:On Edmund Meisel’s music for the film Battle-ship Potemkin), Musik und Gesellschaft 32(November 1982): 648-53.34“Zwischen Klang und Geräusch: Anmerkungenzur zeitgenössichschen internationalenFilmmusik” (Between sound and noise: Remarkson contemporary international film music),Musik und Gesellschaft 36 (January 1986): 27-32.35E.g., Cathe Giffuni, “A Bibliography of the FilmScores of Ralph Vaughan Williams,” Music &

Musicians International 37, no. 2 (October 1988):24-31; and S.M. Fry, “The film and televisionmusic of Henry Mancini: a selective annotatedbibliography of the literature,” The Cue Sheet 9,no. 2 (1992): 27-33.36An example, presumably, is K. Vogelsang’sFilmmusik im Dritten Reich: die Dokumentation(Film music in the Third Reich: Documentation)(Hamburg: Facta oblita, 1990) (unseen). GillianB. Anderson’s Music for silent films 1894-1929: AGuide (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress,1988) catalogues materials in the Library ofCongress, the Museum of Modern Art (NewYork), the New York Public Library, and collec-tions at the University of Minnesota, the GeorgeEastman House in Rochester, N.Y., and the

Fédération Internationale des Archives du Filmin Brussels. This volume also contains anintroductory essay by Anderson, “A WarmingFlame – The Musical Presentation of SilentFilms” (which is largely the same as her article“The Presentation of Silent Films, or Music asAnaesthesia,” discussed above) and an interest-ing addendum on “Music Played During theShooting of Silent Films,” a practice that hashitherto received little attention.37Detroit Studies in Music Bibliography, No. 54,Detroit: Information Coordinators, 1985.38“Supplement to Steven D. Wescott’s A Compre-hensive Bibliography of Music for Film andTelevision,” Music Reference Service Quarterly 2, no.1-2 (1993): 105-44.


decade old, and in recent years agreat deal of ground-breakingscholarly work has taken place.The plight of the researcher wasvividly illustrated by Anderson’scompanion article to the supple-ment,39 in which she recountedher attempts to trace the compos-ers of several popular film tunes,to locate the scores, and to com-pile a list of related secondaryliterature. The resulting red her-rings and dead ends would behumorous if the situation werenot so dire. If it is so difficult tolocate information on such promi-nent classics of film music asLeigh Harline’s “When You WishUpon a Star” from Pinocchio, PaulSimon’s “Mrs. Robinson” from TheGraduate, and John Williams’stheme from Star Wars, how muchmore difficult must it be to locatesomething only moderately pop-ular, or (horrors) truly obscure?

The soundtrack fan and collec-tor audience is better served byseveral more recent publications,including Steve Harris’s Film, Tele-vision & Stage Music on PhonographRecords: A Discography;40 Donald J.Stubblebine’s Cinema Sheet Music:A Comprehensive Listing of PublishedFilm Music from Squaw Man (1914)to Batman (1989);41 and MikePreston’s Tele-tunes: Television, Film& Show Music on Compact Disc, Cas-sette, LP & Video,42 a comprehen-

sive, cross-referenced list of musicused in a variety of contexts, in-cluding advertisements (evendeleted catalog items are includedfor reference). All these may be ofuse to researchers as well as fans,and Preston’s book (despite itsexceedingly unattractive format) isa positive boon for anyone whohas gone around for days trying toremember what that piece ofmusic is that keeps rattling aroundin the brain.

When it was published in1974, James L. Limbacher’s FilmMusic: From Violins to Video was aunique publication, a collection ofarticles tracing the history, tech-niques, and aesthetics of filmmusic prefacing a series of lists:film titles and dates, films andtheir composers, composers andtheir films, and a discography ofrecorded scores.43 While admirablein scope and intent, the bookproved to be riddled with inac-curacies. Two subsequent publi-cations updated the lists andcorrected some of the errors,44 butthey remained essentially the mostup-to-date cross-referenced lists offilms and composers until StevenC. Smith’s Film Composers Guide.45

Smith, however, targets a quitespecific audience—the productioncompany that needs to hire a filmcomposer. A secondary audience offans was anticipated, with re-

searchers tagging along in thirdplace.

This implictly ranked targetaudience is certainly telling: first,production companies who pro-vide money through jobs; then,fans who provide money by pur-chasing soundtracks and sheetmusic and movie tickets; and last,researchers who do not provideanything tangible at all. Thesethree audiences, plus the compos-ers and would-be composersthemselves, are the major ones forall publications on film music,with the researcher almost alwaystrailing in last place. In bibliogra-phies, this situation is particularlyacute. A new edition of Wescott’sBibliography is badly needed; amore prominent publisher, per-haps a university press, might go along way in improving accessibilityas well.

Surveys

Film music is gradually makinginroads into the field of musi-cology. A measure of the progressmade may be taken from thedifference in tone between thearticles on film music in the twomajor general reference works onmusic in the English language, TheNew Grove Dictionary of Music andMusicians (1980)46 and The NewGrove Dictionary of American Music(1986).47

Christopher Palmer’s article inthe earlier reference begins:

The film has become a major20th-century art form, as wellas a powerful and ubiquitousmeans of mass communica-tion, and its accompanyingmusic is not simply a subcate-gory of incidental or dramaticmusic in general. The mostcharacteristic devices andstyles of film music may beclearly based on 19th-centurydevelopments, particularly in

39“‘Perfuming the Air with Music’: The Need forFilm Music Bibliography,” Music Reference ServiceQuarterly 2, no. 1-2 (1993): 59-103.40Jefferson, NC, & London: McFarland & Com-pany, Inc., 1988.41Jefferson, NC, & London: McFarland & Com-pany, Inc., 1991.42Morecambe: Mike Preston Music, 1993.43Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. Lists of thissort had appeared before, most prominentlyClifford McCarty’s Film Composers in America: AChecklist of Their Work (Los Angeles: Valentine,1953), reprinted New York: Da Capo, 1972), butthe combination with articles was unique and, toa certain extent, odd. For an indication of theextent of the book’s unreliability, see Clifford

McCarty’s review in MLA Notes 31, no. 1(1974-75): 48-50.44James Limbacher, Keeping Score: Film Musicfrom 1972 to 1979 (Metuchen, NJ: ScarecrowPress, 1981) and James Limbacher and H.Stephen Wright, Keeping Score: Film and Televi-sion Music, 1980-1988 : with additional coverageof 1921-1979 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press,1991).45Beverly Hills, CA: Lone Eagle Publishing,c.1990. Second edition edited by VincentJacquet-Francillon, 1991.46Ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan,1980).47Ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie(London: Macmillan, 1986).


opera and programme music,but the nature of the mediumand the demands it makes onthe composer have createdspecial problems whose solu-tions are unique in bothpractical and aesthetic terms.

While everything Palmer saysmay be true, the tone is touchyand defensive, certainly unusualfor an encyclopedia article. Thearticle is divided into sections onhistory, technique, functionalmusic, realistic music, musical andanimated film, Europe, and the FarEast. De facto, Hollywood is themodel. Although Indian, Chinese,and Japanese films—often left outof even extensive surveys—areincluded, they appear in sectionswritten by another author, JohnGillett, who also provides thesection on Europe. The sectiondivisions reflect the influence ofthe tripartite Manvell and Huntleyapproach and the concomitant lackof focus. The concert hall bias isalso quite marked; the article reca-pitulates an old saw about thesocial value of film scores: “Thesilent film thus acquainted mil-lions of people with ‘classical’music, even if in modified form,and created lucrative employmentfor many performing musicians.”More disturbing, Palmer states,“In Britain film music has alwaysattracted ‘serious’ composers,”whereas Hollywood composershave been rather isolated from therest of musical life, and sometimesregarded as disreputable. Thestylistic anonymity of many Holly-wood scores is due to a scarcity ofvery talented composers, withsuch exceptions as Copland,George Antheil and VirgilThomson. But in Hollywood’sheyday the average yearly outputof films with music was about400, too many to rely on ‘serious’composers working in the studioson a casual basis.

Palmer’s appeal to logisticalnecessity does not mitigate thecondescending tone. It can only bedamaging in a publication dedi-cated to “serious” music if theauthor is perceived as not takingthe subject seriously.

By contrast, the contributionto The New Grove Dictionary ofAmerican Music by musicologistMartin Marks (Ph.D., Harvard)and musicologist/composer FredSteiner (Ph.D., University ofSouthern California)—both withmore rigorous scholarly trainingthan Palmer (MA, Cambridge inmusic and journalism)—is muchmore appropriate to the task. Thearticle starts off with a clear,matter-of-fact definition of filmmusic:

Music, whether live or insome recorded form, pre-sented in conjunction withthe exhibition of motion-picture images; the forms inwhich it is recorded includeoptical and magnetic sound-tracks on film and (increas-ingly) videotape.

The sections are likewise farmore straightforward and parallelin construction: Introduction, Theperiod of the silent film; The1930s: the advent of sound; 1940-60; The 1960s and after; Musical,animated, and documentary films.In contrast (and perhaps response)to Palmer’s critique of Americanfilm composers, Marks and Steinerremind the reader:

In the following discussion ofAmerican film music twopoints should be borne inmind: its history is compre-hensible only within thecontext of the history of thecinema itself, and there is,stylistically speaking, morethan one sort of film music.Cinema, as a phenomenon ofpopular culture, is a some-times uncomfortable mixture

of art and commerce, and itsmusic is similarly dualistic,reflecting both the cultivatedand the vernacular traditionsof American music.

Marks and Steiner are also farmore understanding about the useof popular music and compilationscores in films—although whenlisting the composers who contrib-uted to William Friedkin’s TheExorcist (1973) they includeconcert hall composers Crumb,Henze, Penderecki, and Webernbut ironically exclude pop musi-cian Mike Oldfield, whose TubularBells is the piece of music mostassociated with the film. Overall,however, the depth-to-length ratioof this article, which in my opin-ion is far too brief for a type ofmusic so pervasive and important,is astounding and laudable.

Undoubtedly the most thor-ough survey of film music yetwritten—and a truly amazing featof information collection—isWolfgang Thiel’s Filmmusik inGeschichte und Gegenwart (FilmMusic, Past and Present).48 Thesheer amount of data marshaled inthe 438 pages of this weighty littletome (unfortunately now out ofprint) is staggering, but it is veryclearly organized. Neither is thework purely historical. The firstchapter, entitled “Zur Wesen-bestimmung der Filmmusik undder fernsehdramatischen Musik”(Toward an essential determi-nation of film and dramatictelevision music), examines dif-ferent analytical approaches tofilm music: musicological (whichThiel asserts must be adapted tothe distinctive characteristics offilm music or will fail to tell usanything significant), techno-

48Berlin: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft,1981.


logical, stylistic, physiological,psychological, dramaturgical, andsociological (the conditions ofproduction in a studio, forinstance). The second chapter,“Entwurf einer internationalenGeschichte der Filmmusik”(Sketch of an international historyof film music), contains the mostthorough examination of filmmusic history ever to appear inprint, organized chronologicallyand by country. Although theinformation is briefly presented,the amount of it is breathtaking,so some omissions can be for-given, even if one must certainlyquestion the absence of BernardHerrmann from the section onHollywood in the 1940s.49 One ofthe more interesting aspects of thehistorical survey is that significantwritings on film music are in-cluded for each country and timeperiod covered. The second half ofthe book organizes the informa-tion in another way as Thielpursues film music as a genrestudy, both film music as a genreitself and the various genres offilm and their impact on filmmusic.

In short, Thiel touches onpractically every element possiblewith regard to film music. Hisapproach is Marxist, but only

lightly so. Those who do notnecessarily want social theory withtheir historical data will not be putoff by the tone, and the Germanprose style is clear and unclut-tered. A benefit of the Marxistapproach is that the culturalaspects of film are addressed,aspects that historically have beenignored by musicology and there-fore by much musicologically-oriented work in film music. Alsoto his credit, Thiel is open-mindedabout style, embracing popularstyles as well as the more classical-Romantic ones, and his obviouspenchant for the music of EnnioMorricone is refreshingly enthusi-astic in a scholarly work. Whileone can quibble with some aspectsof the book—the music examplesare usually very brief and insertedwithout much comment—theoverall impact is stunning.

Thiel also published an articlein 1986 which he called a “rhap-sodic” survey of film music andtrends in the 1970s and 1980s,50

wisely warning that he did nothave enough distance for properhistorical perspective. Nonethe-less, he makes several pertinentobservations. He notes the up-swing in the numbers of articlesand books on film music, espe-cially those of a scholarly nature;

the tendency of American publica-tions to be completely concernedwith American films, with an at-tendant nostalgia for a “goldenage” of film music in the past; apredominance of silent film musicin academia, as noted earlier; theexpansion of stylistic possibilities,from avant-garde to popular styles;the increasing use of smaller en-sembles; and the incorporation ofpre-existing music.51 One of hismost intriguing observations is ofa tendency toward stylized musicalusage, such as in Carlos Saura’sCarmen and Ettore Scola’s Le Bal(both 1983), which he regards as areaction to music video, akin tothe widescreen epics that flour-ished in the 1950s in reaction totelevision.52

In addition to the generalsurveys, there are others that aremore selective, examining thework of a few composers. Twosuch books are ChristopherPalmer’s The Composer in Holly-wood53 and William Darby and JackDu Bois’s American Film Composers,Techniques, Trends, 1915-1990.54 Asthe titles suggest, both booksfocus on mainstream Hollywoodproduction. Palmer’s book is fur-ther restricted to composers of the1930s through 1950s and lacksany real engagement with the

49Thiel is also one of the few writers to includemusicals in his consideration, although hisknowledge of Hollywood film musicals is a littletenuous as times – for instance, he considersdirectors Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen asstudents of Vincente Minnelli, whereas in fact,the three of them often collaborated, and intechnical areas, Kelly and Donen were frequentlymore adventurous than Minnelli (compare CoverGirl (1944) or Anchors Aweigh (1945) with MeetMe in St. Louis (1944) or It’s Always Fair Weather(1956) with Gigi (1958)).50“Zwischen Klang und Geräusch: Anmerkungenzur zeitgenössischen internationalen Filmmusik(Between sound and noise: Remarks on contem-porary international film music),” Musik undGesellschaft 36 (January 1986): 27-32.51A survey by Robbert van der Lek—“Filmmusik-

geschichte in systematischer Darstellung: EinEntwurf” (A systematic representation of filmmusic history: a sketch), translated from Dutchto German by Elicha Rensing, Archiv fürMusikwissenschaft 44, no. 3 (1987): 216-39—attempts to draw a similar sketch of the entirehistory of film music, but the result is tedious,based on an overly detailed chart that doesnothing to really enlighten the reader. I havebeen unable to see Hans-Christian Schmidt’sFilmmusik, Musik aktuell: Analysen, Beispiele,Kommentare 4 (Basel: Bärenreiter Kassel, 1982).52The growing influence of music video and suchdramatic hybrids as Flashdance (1983) and thetelevision series Miami Vice (1984-89) wouldsoon bring this sort of experimentation tomainstream cinema. Such youth-oriented filmsas Footloose (1984) and Top Gun (1986) are

obvious examples, but highly stylized musicalsequences may also be found in more adult fare.The period dramas Bugsy (1991) and Quiz Show(1994) both contain montage sequences whichcombine stylistic features of classic Hollywoodnightclub-hopping sequences and the moremodern music video. There are severalrecitatives and at least one aria for the leadterrorist in Die Hard (1988), as well as ballets forinvasion and vault breaking (see Robynn J.Stilwell, “‘I just put a drone under him…’:Collage and Subversion in the Score of Die Hard.”Music and Letters 78, no. 4 [November 1997]:551-80).53New York & London: Marion Boyars, 1990.54Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1990.George Burt’s The Art of Film Music, discussedunder textbooks, might also count under thiscategory.


music, which, together with theslightly purple prose, makes thebook a little too precious for thereader with a musical back-ground.55 The very first words ofthe book are:

Film music is a notoriouslydifficult subject to discuss indepth, since (like all musicaltopics) such discussion pre-supposes some knowledge ofthe musical science which theaverage student of film or theman-in-the-street cannot beexpected to possess. So I haverestricted technical talk to anabsolute minimum (p. 7).

This makes it clear that theaudience is not expected to in-clude musicians, which merelyreinforces the division he bemoansa couple of pages later:

[Film music] often seemsfated to attract uninformedand unsympathetic criticalattention whenever it attractsany at all. The root cause issurely that film music is ahybrid and as such has nevergained wholehearted accep-tance as a legitimate form ofmusical creativity (p. 9).

Darby and Du Bois are likewisedefensive in their study of thestyles and careers of fourteenmajor Hollywood composers fromMax Steiner to John Williams.

This book is largely descriptiveand quite opinionated, comingdown firmly on the side of clas-sical Hollywood scoring. Like somany authors of books of thistype, they start off with a chapter“From Silents to Sounds,” thoughtheir chapter is superior to mostand especially strong on earlysound. The authors provide onlysome simplified musical examples“so as not to intimidate non-specialist readers”; these examplesare better than nothing, I suppose,but they are almost useless forspecialist readers. The crusty toneof the prose also wears a bit thinafter a few chapters, and there aresome sexist comments whichmust not pass unremarked, par-ticularly in reference to BetteDavis films.56 They claim “Theseacting tours-de-force support plotsthat are, to put it kindly, designedto flatter women patrons by plac-ing Davis in situations where hercharacter’s concerns and drives areuppermost” (pp. 37-38). Ofcourse, they are absolutely right,but Davis films are “women’sfilms” in much the same way thatmost action and adventure filmsare “men’s films,” gratifying maledesires for competition and con-quest. Why shouldn’t women havefilms that enact their fantasies,just as men do? Particularly shock-ing is that these statements come

in a book of such recent vintage.The sexism conspires with a dis-missive attitude toward popularmusic—in particular the lack ofacknowledgment that pop songsmight contribute fundamentally toa film—to give the impression of abook out of touch with the times.

Other surveys are of a morespecific repertoire of films. RandallD. Larson’s Musique Fantastique: ASurvey of Film Music in the FantasticCinema57 is a fan-oriented survey ofmusic for fantasy, science fiction,and horror films that is nonethe-less a good source of informationfrom such inaccessible sources asliner notes for rare albums (al-though these are not alwaysproperly cited). What is moststrikingly missing from the bookis, once again, music—Larsonliterally uses phrases like “Dit-dit-da” and “da-DAA” as musicalexamples! R. Serge Denisoff andWilliam D. Romanowski’s RiskyBusiness: Rock in Film58 is perhapssecond only to Thiel’s in its com-pilation of information; the bookexamines the uses of rock music innarrative films59 by weaving to-gether plot synopses, informationabout technological advances andtheir impact, media strategies, andbusiness strategies.60 A number oftypographical errors, some confu-sion over names,61 and otherminor mistakes are distracting, but

55With the exception of Erich Wolfgang Korn-gold, all are composers for whom Palmerprovides the entries in The New Grove Dictionary ofMusic and Musicians. In addition, the sections onTiomkin and Rózsa are largely the same as thematerial in Palmer’s books on these composersand his liner notes for the RCA Classic Filmsrecordings series, conducted by CharlesGerhardt, making much of the materialredundant.56The title character in Jezebel is considered“selfish” when she appears in her red dress atthe cotillion, whereas most modern viewerswould read this gesture as a bit of rebellion onthe part of a spirited young woman stifled bysocietal constraints. While discussing Duel in the

Sun, the authors also make several remarks aboutthe character of Pearl Chavez, for instance,“Pearl’s growing admiration for Jesse who, as agentleman, represents what might save her fromher own passionate nature” (p. 242). Manymight consider a woman’s passionate nature herstrength; however, patriarchal society is terriblysuspicious of strong-willed women, especiallythose in control of their own sexuality, like PearlChavez or Carmen or Madonna.57Metuchen, NJ, & London: The Scarecrow Press,Inc., 1985. For an extensive review of the sig-nificant problems with this volume, see WilliamH. Rosar’s review in The Cue Sheet 2, no. 3(August 1985): 20-21, 27-28.58New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publi-shers, 1991.

59A small section on rock documentaries isincluded, but the authors state that “A vastmajority of “rockumentaries” are little more thanfilmed concerts, adding another sensory dimen-sion to “live” or concert recordings” (p. x).60An exploration of “synergy”—the industry termfor cross-promotional film-music deals—isdrawn heavily from an article by Denisoff andGeorge Plasketes, “Synergy in 1980s Film andMusic: Formula for Success or Industry Myth-ology?” Film History 4, no. 3 (1990): 257-76.Denisoff and Plasketes note the relative failure ofsuch ventures, despite the occasional SaturdayNight Fever (1977) or Flashdance (1983).61A particularly disappointing error is theirmisunderstanding of the name of Paul Shaffer’s


the book is still very much worth-while. The authors arguepersuasively for popular music’sinventive and creative use infilm—an uphill battle in filmmusic literature.

The most scholarly of thesespecialist surveys is by composerand musicologist Norbert JürgenSchneider, whose subject is thenew German cinema, 1960-85.62

His sophisticated approach ispartially enabled by its limitedrepertoire; yet, intriguingly,Schneider does not include othermusicologists among his intendedreadership (he mentions compos-ers, directors, editors, producers,and film fans). Schneider beginsby defining film music not as agenre or style, but as a formal andfunctional category dependentupon and influenced by othermedia, by technology, and by audi-ence reception. He is careful toinsist that film and its music aresocially and historically deter-mined; therefore one must not tryto compare Soviet film music withHollywood film music, or a silentfilm score with that of a score for a1980s action film, without seri-ously taking into consideration thesocio-historical context, as thatcontext will in large part deter-mine the product. His material isdrawn from conversations withcomposers, directors, editors,

writings on film music, reviews,and the author’s own experiencesas a composer and teacher of filmmusic, and a good part of the bookis dedicated to musical drama-turgy; it is lavishly furnished withexamples, even if they are verbalrather than musical. Schneidermanages to dig into film music asa site of complex interaction of theaural, the visual, and the culturalwithout overloading his prospec-tive audience with theoreticaljargon—no mean feat that.

Biographies and Interviews

A major part of the literatureon film music is directly concernedwith composers, largely in theform of interviews and biogra-phies, and relatively little of it is ofa scholarly nature. Although effortobviously went into including filmcomposers in The New Grove Dictio-nary of Music and Musicians and TheNew Grove Dictionary of AmericanMusic, one sometimes gets thefeeling that the results are a bitscattershot. Jerry Goldsmith,easily one of the finest and mostprolific film composers since the1960s, is not represented in TheNew Grove Dictionary of Music andMusicians, while David Raksin, oneof the most important and articu-late film composers from thestudio system of the 1940s (his

jazz-inflected monothematic scoreto the 1944 Laura is an undisputedmilestone) to the 1970s is omittedfrom both dictionaries—a trulyunforgivable oversight. Some re-dundancies also appear since thesame author is often responsiblefor the entry on a particular com-poser in both dictionaries, and theomnipresent Christopher Palmeris author or co-author of most ofthe articles on specialist compos-ers,63 leaving the two dictionarieswith essentially only one point ofview on film music.

Palmer’s dominance in the NewGrove Dictionaries is understandablein light of the fact that he wasresponsible for several of the earli-est serious biographies of filmmusic composers, those of DimitriTiomkin and Miklós Rózsa.64

Palmer also edited Rózsa’s DoubleLife: The Autobiography of MiklósRózsa.65 The tension between filmmusic and concert hall music isespecially strong in this book, asexemplified by the title. There aretwo forewords, one by AntalDoráti, the other by EugeneOrmandy; while both are, likeRózsa, Hungarians, it is hard tomiss the fact that both are alsofamous conductors, not Holly-wood celebrities.

Another film music composerwith a life in the concert hall—though largely as a conductorrather than as a composer—isAndré Previn, who has recentlybeen the subject of both a biog-raphy and an autobiography.Michael Freedland’s biographydeals actually very little withPrevin’s formative years in Holly-wood as a pianist, and later as acomposer, at MGM.66 The bookcarries a tone of snobbery againstfilm music throughout, althoughthis seems to come more fromFreedland than from Previn him-self,67 as Previn’s autobiography ofthe same year (No Minor Chords:

character in This is Spinal Tap (1984). Thecharacter they call “Artie Funkie” is actuallycalled “Artie Fufkin,” a much funnier name.62Handbuch Filmmusik: Musikdramaturgie im NeuenDeutschen Film (The Handbook of Film Music:Musical Dramaturgy in the New German Cin-ema), Kommunikation Audiovisuell: Beiträgeaus der Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film,Band 13 (München: Verlag Ölschläger, 1986).63One significant exception is the pair ofarticles on Erich Wolfgang Korngold, both byBrendan G. Carroll.64Dimitri Tiomkin: A Portrait (London: T.E.Books, 1984); and Miklós Rózsa: A Sketch of HisLife and Work (London: Breitkopf & Härtel,1975). Other books which follow more or lessthe same format are Edward Johnson’s Bernard

Herrmann: Hollywood’s Music-Dramatist (fore-word by Miklós Rózsa, Bibliographic SeriesNo. 6 (Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire: TriadPress, 1977)) and Brendan G. Carroll’s ErichWolfgang Korngold 1897-1957: His Life andWorks (3rd impression, rev., ed. KonradHopkins and Ronald van Roekel, The MusicMakers Series, vol. 1 (Paisley: Wilfion Books,1987)). Both tend to emphasize the com-posers’ non-film work (only one of the sevenworks commented upon by Carroll is a film,The Adventures of Robin Hood, and one ofKorngold’s earliest film scores at that).65New York: Hippocrene Books, 1982,66André Previn (London: Century, 1991).67For instance, Chapter 6 opens with thesentence, “André Previn was fast establishing


My Days in Hollywood) fairly brimswith the youthful enthusiasm ofthe time and is one of the moreenjoyable biographies.68 HenryMancini’s Did They Mention theMusic?69 presents a look at one offilm music’s most successful andpopular composers. Through ex-tensive taped conversations withco-author Gene Lees, Mancinidiscusses his life from childhoodto award-winning artist.

Two biographies of ErichWolfgang Korngold were pub-lished to coincide with thecentenary of his birth. JessicaDuchen is the author of ErichWolfgang Korngold.70 B.G. Carroll’sbook, The Last Prodigy: A Biographyof Erich Wolfgang Korngold,71 fromthe scholar most closely associatedwith Korngold in the literature, islikely the best biography ofKorngold we are likely to see in along time.

The most thorough, scholarlybiography on a film music com-poser to date is Steven C. Smith’sA Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life andMusic of Bernard Herrmann, an ex-traordinarily detailed account of

Herrmann’s life and works.72 Theonly thing missing which wouldmake this the definitive work onHerrmann is a serious engagementwith the music itself—there is nota single musical example in theentire book. A more balanced pic-ture of a composer and his work isgiven to us by Frederick Steiner’sground-breaking dissertation onAlfred Newman.73 Although lack-ing some of the biographicalrichness of Smith’s book (there isa notable lack of information onNewman’s education in composi-tion), Steiner’s dissertationthoroughly examines the contentand context of Newman’s music,drawing on not only Newman’slife and philosophy of film musicbut the history and conditions ofthe Hollywood in which he com-posed. A number of scores areexamined in detail, in particularWuthering Heights (1939). Steiner, acomposer in Hollywood himself(known primarily for his contribu-tions to the original televisionseries of Star Trek, about whichmore later), never quite comes to acomprehensive analysis of the

music/image relationship, but hegets closer than anyone exceptsuch literary-based analysts asClaudia Gorbman and KathrynKalinak. Alfred Newman’s long-time associate Ken Darby is theauthor of a book concerning thetrials and tribulations the com-poser encountered while scoringGeorge Stevens’s The Greatest StoryEver Told.74 This readable workpresents a rather scathing accountof the problems Newman enduredwhen the film’s director interferedand ultimately butchered thecomposer’s score for the film.

Film journalist Tony Thomasdevoted much of his life to pro-moting the understanding andappreciation of film music. Hisbook Music for the Movies recountsthe history of Hollywood filmscoring by examining the careersof major film composers. In FilmScore: The Art and Craft of MovieMusic, Thomas had composersexplain the art of film scoring intheir own words.75

Biographical sketches76 andinterviews77 are now to be foundscattered through all kinds of

himself as one of the more notable Hollywoodmusicians, which is not far short of damninghim with faint praise” (p. 74).68London & New York: Doubleday, 1991.69Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989.70London: Phaidon/Chronicle Books 1996.71New York: Amadeus Press, 1997.72Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cali-fornia Press, 1991.73The Making of an American Film Composer: A Studyof Alfred Newman’s Music in the First Decade (Ph.D.diss., University of Southern California, 1981).74Hollywood Holyland: The Filming and Scoring ofThe Greatest Story Ever Told (New Jersey:Scarecrow Press, 1992).75Music for the Movies, 2nd updated ed. (NewYork: Silman James Press, 1997) and Film Score:The Art and Craft of Movie Music (Burbank:Riverwood Press, 1991).76Two articles on Miklós Rózsa have appeared inthe periodical Filmmusik, one by Frank Heckel in1982 (8, no. 12: 12-22) and the other byHansjörg Wagner in 1984 (11 (July): 8-21) (bothunseen). Other examples include: MatthiasKeller, “Opern ohne Gesang: Der Filmkomponist

Erich Wolfgang Korngold” (Opera withoutsinging: The Film Composer, Erich WolfgangKorngold), Opera Yearbook 1993: 34-37; PaulLuttikhuis, “Erich Korngold als filmcomponist”(Erich Korngold as Film Composer), Mens enMelodie 46 (February): 82-87; and Frederic Silber,“Danny Elfman: Wunderkind of Film Music – AProfile,” Fanfare 13, no. 2 (1989): 568-73. RobertL. Doerschuk’s “Music in the Air: The Life andLegacy of Léon Theremin” (Keyboard Magazine 20,no. 2 (1 February): 48-68) is a lengthy andmoving biography of Léon Theremin, the inven-tor of the electronic instrument which carries hisname. The eerie, glissando sound of thetheremin became synonymous with such unset-tling topics as psychoanalysis (Spellbound, Rózsa,1945), alcoholism (The Lost Weekend, Rózsa,1945), and alien invasion (The Day the Earth StoodStill, Herrmann, 1951). For decades, Thereminhad been assumed dead in a Siberian prisoncamp, but it has recently become known that theelectronic engineer was dragooned by the KGBinto creating espionage devices.77Sheila Johnston, “Knowing when to Keep Quiet(Interview with Ryuichi Sakamoto),” The Indepen-

dent (9 October 1992): Education 17; T. Powis,“They Shoot; He Scores!” Canadian Composer 4,no. 1 (1993): 20-21; Steve Simels and G. Carpen-ter, “Elmer Bernstein: The Dean of AmericanMovie Music,” Stereo Review 58 (September1993): 73-75; and Les Tomkins, “John Cacavas:The Changeable World of Film Scoring,” Cre-scendo International 25 (January 1988): 20-23.Many interviews first published by Royal S.Brown in Fanfare may also be found in his bookOvertones and Undertones: Reading Film Music(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994),discussed further below. A pair of very briefarticles in Canadian Composer (Christopher Jones,“Focus on Film Music,” and Johanne Barrette,“Keeping up with Quebec’s Film Market” inCanadian Composer 4, no. 4 (1993): 10-12) areinteresting not so much for the content or thecomposers interviewed (all rather obscure), butfor the division between “Canadian” andQuébecoise composers – though both articles arein English, the French-speaking composers aretreated separately in a smaller article on the lastpage. Although there may be nothing moresinister than language difference operating here,


music periodicals, from the schol-arly to the popular to thetechnical. Interviews are certainlya valuable source of informationon composers’ intentions andtechniques—they are as close to aprimary source as many research-ers will get—but an interview isoften enlightening more for whatit reveals of the character of theinterviewees than for what it re-veals of their knowledge. Anexceptional example is an inter-view with Bernard Herrmann byLeslie T. Zador and GregoryRose;78 the iconoclastic composercomes over as crotchety, irascible,bitter, and opinionated. Any num-ber of sources will mention thesetraits of his character, but it onlycomes to life when you read hisactual words.79

The film music periodicalsSoundtrack! 80 and Film ScoreMonthly81 regularly publish inter-views with composers, along witharticles, information about CDreleases and reviews, andfilmographies and discographies.82

Interviews in German periodicalstend to be more in-depth. Wolf-gang Thiel prefaces his interviewwith Hans-Friedrich Ihme, a com-

poser who works with the DEFA-Studio für Trickfilme (animatedfilms) in Dresden, with a shortrant against the unfair stigma at-tached to film composing.83 This isnot an inappropriate prelude to aninterview with a man who wantsto move into concert music andlooks to his work in film music fornew insights and experience to putinto his concert music. JelenáPetruschanskaya weaves togetherinterviews not only with AlfredSchnittke, but with some of thedirectors with whom the composerhas worked.84 The multi-voicedresult is intriguing and enlighten-ing, and should perhaps serve as amodel of interview technique foran art form as collaborative asfilm.

Film Music Society News-letters, Magazines and theInternet

A number of film music societ-ies have their own publications,like The Film Music Society’s(formerly the Society for thePreservation of Film Music) TheCue Sheet, or The Score, publishedby the Society of Composers &

Lyricists from Los Angeles. Vari-ous newsletters are produced byfans or fan clubs of specificcomposers: The [James] Horner Let-ter,85 Legend—The Jerry GoldsmithSociety,86 and Pro Musica Sana (theMiklós Rósza Society).87 Takentogether with the soundtrack-centered magazines Film ScoreMonthly, Soundtrack!, the UK-basedMusic from the Movies,88 The NewZealand Film Music Bulletin,89 andthe German-based Scoretime!,90

these represent the most fre-quently issued type of publicationon film music, although they aredifficult to come by unless youcontact the publishers directly.Many of them contain the samekinds of information—interviewswith composers, soundtrack re-leases and reviews, names andaddresses of retail outlets and mailorder houses. They are also mod-erately to wildly irregular inpublication dates. Their greatestscholarly value undoubtedly lies inthe interviews with composers,although the reviews may be ofinterest now or in the future asindices of reception.

The phenomenally rapidgrowth of the Internet has made

the segregation is an intriguing small-scalemanifestation of the large-scale political riftbetween the two language groups in Canada.78“A Conversation with Bernard Herrmann,” inFilm Music I, ed. Clifford McCarty (New York:Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989): 209-53.79The most frequently interviewed composerrecently has been Michael Kamen: Robert L.Doerschuk, “Michael Kamen,” Keyboard Magazine19 (September 1993): 56-65, 110; Irv Lichtman,“Words & Music: Kamen Keeps Track of FilmScores vs. Singles,” Billboard 105 (6 March 1993):18; Jason Needs, “Interview: Michael Kamenwith a Vengeance,”Music from the Movies (summer1995): 7-9. and M. Meloy, “Michael Kamen:Chameleon Composer,” The Instrumentalist 46(April 1992): 44-47. Meloy’s is the mostrounded article, while Lichtman discussesKamen’s attitudes toward songs in film scores,and Doerschuk is concerned with the composi-tion of one particular score, that for The LastAction Hero. Although Kamen has composed forsuch blockbuster action films as the Die Hard and

Lethal Weapon series and Robin Hood: Prince ofThieves (1991), the interviews reveal a man whois an avowed pacifist and dislikes violence.80To subscribe, contact Luc Van de Ven. Kon.Astridlaan 171, 2800 Mechelen, Belgium.81To subscribe, contact Lukas Kendall, Film ScoreMonthly, 8503 Washington Blvd., Culver City,CA 90232.82One of the more intriguing places a film musiccomposer has appeared was in the pages of theheavy metal rock magazine, Creem (I. Lababed,“John Barry: The Man with the Golden Baton,”Creem 19 (October 1987): 30-31).83“Gedanken und Gespräch überfilmmusikalische Gestaltung,” Musik undGesellschaft 30 (October 1980): 584-89. Actors,he says, may move from stage to film withimpunity – although he might find that that isnot altogether true. Theatrical actors are oftenconsidered to be “slumming” if they make amovie, especially if it is a Hollywood movie andnot an art house film.

84“Ein Gespräch mit Alfred Schnittke: DieMöglichkeiten des Dialogs zwischen Bild undMusik im Film” (A Conversation with AlfredSchnittke: The Possibilities of a Dialog betweenImage and Music in Film), Kunst und Literature36, no. 2 (1988): 272-80.85For information, contact Mark G. So, 302Scottholm Boulevard, Syracuse, NY 13224-1732.86For information, contact Jonathan Axworthy,102 Horndean Road, Emsworth, Hants PO107TL, England.87For information, contact John Fitzpatrick, P.O.Box 666, Norwalk, CT 06852 in the UnitedStates, or Alan Hamer, 86 Bow Lane, Finchley,London, N12 0JP, England, in Europe.88For information, contact Music from the Movies,The Garden Flat, 21 Upper Belgrave Road,Cliffton, Bristol BS8 2XQ.89For information, contact Colin A. Adamson, 35Jenkin Street, Invercargill, New Zealand.90For information, contact Jordan Jurtschak,Scheurenstr. 59, 40215, Duesseldorf, Germany.


information accessible globally ina rapid and efficient manner. Anumber of websites, discussionlists, and newsgroups are devotedto film music. The SoundtrackNetwebsite offers information andreviews, as well as numerous linksto other Internet sites that dealwith film music, soundtrackrecordings, individual film com-posers, and music societies forfilm music professionals. The FilmScore Monthly website featuresdaily news and also offers links tomany World Wide Web film musicsites. Interviews and reviews arefeatured on the British site FilmMusic on the Web. A Usenetnewsgroup called rec.music.moviesoffers people interested in filmmusic a place to post opinions andtopics for discussion. The discus-sion group Filmus-L is maintainedby H. Stephen Wright. After join-ing the list, subscribers poste-mail that is distributed to all listmembers. Stephen Deutsch runs asimilar British discussion listcalled Music and Moving Pictures.The Film Music Pro e-mail discus-sion list was founded by MarkNortham specifically for profes-sional composers. Informationabout this discussion list as wellas Film Music Magazine are availableat the CinemaTrax website. TheInternet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com) is also a quick

way of finding out details of whoscored what film as well as somebasic biographical data and furtherlinks.

Historical Aspects

One of the more prominenttrends of the past fifteen years hasbeen toward focused studies ofparticular historical aspects of filmmusic. While these studies tend tobe short and scattered, they are, Ibelieve, representative of a verypositive trend, as they turn awayfrom yet another surface skim-ming of the history of film music.The general shape of that history,repeated ad nauseam without criti-cal inquiry, is in danger of beingset in stone before we are trulysure of the facts. Scholars are nowbeginning to fill in the details.

A number of these historicalarticles deal with aspects of work-ing on film music, many of themby authors who were themselvesinvolved in the process. Easily themost entertaining is DavidRaksin’s “Holding a NineteenthCentury Pedal at Twentieth Cen-tury Fox,” which provides asometimes hilarious first-personperspective on the operation of amusic department under the stu-dio system in the 1930s.91 Ofparticular interest is the informa-tion on the “assembly-line”

process of scoring films underenormous time constraints. In aninterview with Peggy Sherry,Raksin also relates his experiencesof developing a film score from thesongs written for the Kurt Weill/Ira Gershwin musical Where Do WeGo from Here? (1945).92 Althoughthe interview does not go into thedetail one might like, it is a rareexample of a discussion of a verymuch neglected topic—the musicin musicals that is not performedon screen (i.e., songs anddances).93

Then there are archival studiessuch as William Penn’s researchinto “The Music for David O.Selznick’s Production No. 103[Duel in the Sun]”94 and Richard H.Bush’s exploration of the trackingpractices common in scoring suchserials as Flash Gordon and BuckRogers.95 “Tracking” is the processof scoring a film by using musicavailable in music libraries, usu-ally the studio’s own library; sinceno new recording was required,this was a cost-saving (if the re-cording was already owned by thestudio, free) and fast way of pro-viding music for these low-budget,high-output films. Not surpris-ingly, the musicians’ union put astop to such practices—or at leastdemanded that a re-use fee bepaid—in the early 1940s.96

Fred Steiner’s survey, “What

91Film Music 1, ed. Clifford McCarty (New York:Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989).92“David Raksin remembers Weill, Where Do WeGo from Here?, and ‘developing’ film music in the1940s,” Kurt Weill Newsletter 10, no. 2 (1992): 6-9. The interview is culled from a longer one thatis part of the Oral History Collection at theWeill-Lenya Research Center.93Another area of film music that receives onlyoccasional attention is that of animated sound:Richard S. James, “Avant-Garde Sound-on-FilmTechniques and Their Relationship to Electro-Acoustic Music,” Musical Quarterly 72, no. 1(1986): 74-89; David Keane, “The Birth ofElectronic Music in Canada,” an unexpectedly

poignant history of Canadian sound pioneers inStudies in Music from the University of WesternOntario 9 (1984): 55-78; and David Kershaw,“Music and Image on Film and Video: An Abso-lute Alternative,” in Companion to ContemporaryMusical Thought, ed. John Paynter, Tim Howell,Richard Orton, and Peter Seymour (London:Routledge, 1992), I: 466-99.94Perspectives on Music: Essays on Collections at theHumanities Research Center, ed. Dave Oliphant andThomas Zigal (Austin: Humanities ResearchCenter, the University of Texas at Austin, 1985).95“The Music of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers,” inFilm Music 1, ed. Clifford McCarty (New York:Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989).

96Tracking is also at issue in Fred Steiner’s“Keeping Score of the Scores: Music for StarTrek,” (Library of Congress Quarterly 40, no. 1: 4-15) and William H. Rosar’s “Music of theMonsters: Universal Pictures’ Horror Film Scoresof the Thirties” (Library of Congress Quarterly 40,no. 3 (1983): 390-421). Steiner speaks fromfirst-hand experience, as one of the composerswho worked on Star Trek, whereas Rosar’s articleis more historical and aesthetic, dealing particu-larly with the tension between distrust of“unexplained” music in early sound films andthe evocative power of music.


Were Musicians Saying AboutMovie Music During the First De-cade of Sound? A Symposium ofSelected Writings,”97 examinesEnglish language sources duringthe transition from silents tosounds. Not surprisingly, Steinerfinds that practically nothing ap-pears in the scholarly literature,but such periodicals as ModernMusic, Sight and Sound, World FilmNews, and Melos provide discussionof what Steiner identifies as thetwo main issues: music’s role as apsychological and emotional ele-ment equal to other elements infilm, and the need to develop anew form and style.

The experiences of concert hallcomposers with film are traced bypsychomusicologist William H.Rosar,98 and Christopher Palmercontributes two articles dealingwith the relationship betweenSergei Prokofiev and SergeiEisenstein. The first of Palmer’sarticles engages in a little debunk-ing of the usual tales of completelysmooth relations between com-poser and director, as Eisensteinwas not above moving bits of thescore around without checkingwith Prokofiev. This article wasoccasioned by a reconstruction andshowing of Alexander Nevsky inLondon in July 1989 with VladimirAshkenazy and the Royal Philhar-monic playing live to the film.99 In

the second article, Palmer takes acloser look at the production ifIvan the Terrible, both in its politi-cal and musical aspects.100 This iscertainly the strongest of all ofPalmer’s contributions to the lit-erature, and a fine example of how,even in a brief article, musical andcultural aspects can be profitablycombined.

Theory, Aesthetics, andAnalysis

As discussed earlier, the inter-mingling of theory, aesthetics, andanalysis has been a feature of mostof the serious examinations of filmmusic since Erdmann, Becce, andBrav’s Allgemeines Handbuch in1927, although over the years theelements have gradually mutatedfrom the practical (theory, history,techniques) to the analytical(theory, aesthetics, analysis). Inmany publications today, thesethree elements still underpin thestructure, although with varyingemphases and in a subtler, moreinterpenetrating fashion than inprevious eras.

The most wide-ranging andthorough effort was (perhaps ofnecessity) the work of two people,musicologist-psychologist Helgade la Motte-Haber and art histo-rian-music sociologist HansEmons. Their intended audience

for Filmmusik: Eine systematischeBeschreibung (Film Music: A Sys-tematic Description)101 is thefilm-lover, although the bookwould seem rather sophisticatedfor all but the most academic offilm-lovers. Emons and de laMotte-Haber include particularlystrong sections on musical struc-tures in abstract films102 and“Music and the Spectator.” Theirapproach is theoretically informed,but essentially practical: They areamong the few who dare to pointout that trying to understand whymusic is in film develops into anendless regress of speculation,with one guess resting upon an-other. Therefore, they argue, it isbest not to try to force film musictheory into the Procrustean bed ofpsychology or linguistics but tomeet it on its own ground anddescribe what the music does forthe image, the action, and theviewer.103

Claudia Gorbman’s UnheardMelodies: Narrative Film Music, un-doubtedly the most important andinfluential book yet written onfilm music, is more narrowly fo-cused: Gorbman’s central concern(announced by the title) is withmusic’s often imperceptible contri-bution to the cinematicnarrative.104 In the first part, wefind in one place a clear presenta-tion of many of the theories about

97Film Music 1, ed. Clifford McCarty (New York:Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989).98“Stravinsky and MGM,” in Film Music 1, ed.Clifford McCarty (New York: Garland Publish-ing, Inc., 1989). Rosar investigates Stravinsky’sdealings with MGM from sources other thanStravinsky’s often highly selective writings. Asimilar tale is spun by M. Steinberg in “CelluloidSchoenberg: Cinematic Imagery from theViennese Master” (Symphony 44, no. 1 (1993): 5-6), albeit in a much less scholarly way.99“Prokofiev and Eisenstein,” Music and MusiciansInternational (November 1989): 6-10. As it was asound film, the producers of the event werefaced with the problem of dialogue; in the event,

the soundtrack was faded down and the subtitlesshown below the screen, rather than on it. Thiswould, of course, further distract the audiencefrom the original unity of the film, and Palmerponders the artistic permissibility about this typeof presentation. Yet at the end of the very sameparagraph, he speculates about a Nevsky in fullTechnicolor on the wide screen! (p. 10)100“Prokofiev, Eisenstein and Ivan,” Musical Times132 (April 1991): 179-81.101Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1980.102David Bordwell also deals with this phenom-enon in “The Musical Analogy,” Yale FrenchStudies 60 (Fall 1980): 141-56.103De la Motte-Haber has argued similarly in

“Wirkungen der Filmmusik auf den Zuschauer”(The Effect of Film Music on the Viewer/Specta-tor), Musica 34, no. 1 (1980): 12-17.104Bloomington: University of Indiana Press,1987. Parts of Gorbman’s book had previouslybeen published in various articles, including anearlier version of the first chapter in “NarrativeFilm Music” (Yale French Studies 60 (Fall 1980):183-203); and “The Drama’s Melos: Max Steinerand Mildred Pierce” (The Velvet Light Trap 19(1982): 35-39). Richard Littlefield’s review ofthis book in the Indiana Theory Review (11, no. 2(1990): 65-73) is good in both senses: it is afavorable review and Littlefield’s slight criticismsare well-considered.


film music, but in the endGorbman does not commit to anyone theory; while many may befrustrated by this apparent lack ofscholarly rigor, I feel this is a wisedecision. As de la Motte-Haberand Emons argue, by the latetwentieth century, we have be-come so deeply ingrained in theculture of cinema that an objectivetheory of film music is patentlyimpossible.105 Theories based onpsychology are often particularlyprecarious; one must accept thetenets of the psychological theorybefore even beginning to approachthe music. Music surely exists infilm for many reasons, and theo-ries that try to pin down just onereason are of necessity doomed tofailure.

The representation of musicitself in the second part of UnheardMelodies is slightly disconcerting.The blurb on the jacket declaresthat the book “presuppos[es] verylittle musical expertise in itsreader, [but] it will neverthelessalso interest musicians.” Thisseems to imply that musical exper-tise is not important inunderstanding film music, andconversely that musicians are in-terested only in the notatedscore—an undercurrent through-out most of film music literature.

Musical examples in some chap-ters are in the body of the text,whereas others are relegated tonotes at the back of the book, giv-ing an uncertain signal as to howimportant the actual sound is.Although the stated intention is tobring film studies and musicologycloser together, this mixed mes-sage risks driving a wedge betweenthem by shortchanging both.

Explicit musical discussion ismore to the fore in KathrynKalinak’s Settling the Score: Musicand the Classical Hollywood Film.106

Like Gorbman, Kalinak is implic-itly fighting the film criticism biasagainst music, but she tries tobring music more actively to thecenter of the argument. The firstchapter is an introduction to musi-cal terms; while for a musicianthis chapter may seem danger-ously simplistic, it is probablyuseful to those who are interestedin music but have no training.Kalinak then proceeds to outlinesome history and theory of filmmusic, and finally to analyze anumber of films from the classicalHollywood period as well as morerecent films that demonstrate thepersistence of the classical Holly-wood model. She uses astraightforward musical semiotics,unencumbered by unnecessary

theoretical constructs, in clear,convincing readings of films andtheir music. Musical examplesrange from single-line motivictranscriptions to reproductions ofpages from original scores and,most intriguingly, graphics thatdemonstrate the interaction ofmusical gesture and on-screenaction/dialogue. Kalinak only usessuch an example once (p. 95), butthis kind of figure, though notmusically specific, if used properlycan tell us more about the workingof music in film than an extractfrom a full orchestral score.

The most recent of the generalvolumes, Royal S. Brown’s Over-tones and Undertones: Reading FilmMusic,107 is a supremely frustratingbook, although it has many finepoints to recommend it. In hishistorical chapter, Brown does notmerely recapitulate what so manyothers have said but instead findsnew paths and makes some subtleobservations about reception andaesthetics; he does not concentrateon the classical Hollywood film,nor does he replace that canonwith one of European art films.Brown is interested in all sorts offilms and all sorts of musical pro-cedures within films—in onechapter, he traces the use ofBeethoven quartets in a number offilms, and in the next he discussesHead, a film starring the televisionrock group The Monkees. Hisreadings of films are generallyintriguing, and Brown is even sen-sitive to nuances of gender and thepresence of the author in an analy-sis.108

However, Brown—who explic-itly does not presuppose anymusical knowledge—makes state-ments that may sound perfectlyplausible or even quite profoundto someone with little or no musi-cal knowledge but which are infact either bone-numbingly obvi-

105Scott Lipscomb’s psychomusicological researchwould seem to bear this out. When he performedan experiment in which subjects were asked torate the “fit” of film clips with musical extracts,the “right” music (the music actually composedfor the scene) invariably rated highest. (“Percep-tual judgment of the symbiosis between musicaland visual components in film” Master’s thesis:University of California at Los Angeles, 1990.)106Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992.107Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.Most sections of this book have been previouslypublished as articles (which probably accountsfor the rather disjointed feeling of much of thebook).108This is in sharp contrast to Darby and DuBois,whose prose is shot through with sexism (seeabove), or Graham Bruce (see below) whodescribes the opening shots of Vertigo as

“allow[ing] the spectator to experience thevertigo of the title by sucking him into adarkness as if into quicksand, a darknessassociated with a drive toward the female”(p. 140). Bruce makes no comment on thisexplicitly male-constructed gaze, and noacknowledgement that the viewer (or thereader) might possibly be female. Yet whenBrown notes that Claudia Gorbman hadpicked a film with a female hero (MildredPierce) to illustrate classical Hollywood prac-tice while he had chosen a film with a malehero (The Sea Hawk – although obviously thereare far more films with male heroes thanfemale!), he says, “Although I feel that Ipicked The Sea Hawk because of the quality ofboth its music and the film/music interaction,the privileged viewpoint seems inescapable!”(p. 359, n. 11).


ous or simply wrong. This is mostprominent in one of Brown’s mostinfluential arguments, his linkingof the minor-major seventh chordwith irrationality in BernardHerrmann’s scores for Hitchcockfilms. A great deal of weight is puton the need of this chord to re-solve, which, after Debussy andjazz, is not as intense a need asBrown would lead the reader tobelieve; but more dangerouslystill, Brown links the minor-majorseventh chord to an augmentedchord that also appears in thescore. On paper, this argumentmakes sense. However, the inter-vallic similarity will simply not beheard as Brown describes; it isvirtually impossible to hear anaugmented chord as a rootlessminor-major seventh chord, espe-cially over a gap between cues—ittakes a great deal of establishingcontext for the ear to accept anytriad (even an augmented one) asa rootless version of a more un-stable harmonic construct, and ifthere is a gap of even a few sec-onds between cues withintervening sound effects, dia-logue, or even intense onscreenaction, the ear’s slate will bewiped clean. Yet, if one is able toignore the music in this book aboutfilm music, it is a refreshinglybroad-minded and wide-rangingpiece of work—it is up to indi-viduals, perhaps, to decide howmuch musical inaccuracy they canswallow.

Among articles, Jean-RémyJulien’s “Éléments méthodolo-giques pour une typologie de la

musique de film” (Methodologicalelements for a typology of filmmusic)109 seems a peculiar productof 1980, with its recapitulation oflong-established categories. Thedivision between source music—“musiques justifiées ou légitiméespar l’image” (music justified orlegitimized by the image)—andunderscore—“musiqued’accompagnement” (musicalaccompaniment)—is nothing new,nor is the discussion of differenttypes of source music—mechanicalmusic (radio, record player, etc.),location music (music in a café,for instance), or musical perfor-mance (like that of a saloonpiano-player in a Western). Juliendivides underscore into five types:traveling music, music for psycho-logical situations, music forevents/catastrophes (“les acci-dents du scenario”), leisure music(which would seem likely to over-lap with source music of varioustypes), and a rather vague categorycalled “les musiques du regard,”which seems to represent some-thing along the lines of charactersketches of people or places. De-spite an interesting digression onmusic for psychological states—those which are easily evoked bymusic (love, tension, tenderness)and those which are more difficult(hate, fury, happiness)—Julien’sidiosyncratic typology is onlyslightly more sophisticated thanthose of Erno Rapee, whom Juliencites near the end of his text, andJulien’s system, in practice, seemsso flexible that overlaps betweencategories begin to invalidate

categories at all. Why would suchan article be written as late as1980? The answer becomes appar-ent in the last few paragraphs, asJulien refutes a dismissive state-ment by French film theoristChristian Metz, who reduces filmmusic to “un système quelque peupuéril d’équivalences pléonas-tiques” (a system of somewhatpuerile, pleonastic equivalences).Metz’s statement was published in1977 in Le signifiant imaginaire (TheImaginary Signifier),110 one of hismost influential works. Julien’sarticle is clearly a response toMetz, but it is a shame that thearticle is neither particularly inno-vative nor at least a morethorough overview of film theoryand aesthetics.

Some of the most intriguingtheoretical/aesthetic scholarshipdoes not deal with music itself butwith its placement in a film. LucyFisher’s “René Clair, Le Million,and the Coming of Sound” is par-ticularly good, focused on onefilmmaker’s resistance to the newtechnology and the inventiveusages of music resulting from hisreluctance to give free rein to thevoice.111 In Strains of Utopia: Gender,Nostalgia, and Hollywood FilmMusic,112 Caryl Flinn emphasizesthe influence of Romantic ideologyon the construction of what musicis and its utopian functions, high-lighting “the ways in which musichas operated in the critical dis-course surrounding Hollywoodfilm” (p. 12). This sort of histori-cal investigation of the culturalimplications behind theory can befascinating,113 but particularly dis-appointing in Flinn’s work is thevery low level of actual musicalcomprehension. Throughout, sherelies on the words of others(Leonard Meyer, Gustav Mahler,Roland Barthes—good words, butnot her own) to make even simple

109Revue de Musicologie 106, no. 2 (1980): 179-202.110Paris: U.G.E.111Cinema Journal 21, no. 2 (1982): 34-50.112Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.“Male nostalgia and Hollywood film music: theterror of the feminine,” published in the Cana-dian University Music Review [10, no. 2 (1990):

19-26], contains most of the actual analysisthat Flinn undertakes in her final chapter,particularly that on the film noir classic Detour.113See also Philip Rosen’s “Adorno and FilmMusic: Theoretical Notes on Composing for theFilms,” Yale French Studies 60 (Fall 1980): 157-82.


points about music, and even herobservations about musical place-ment sometimes seem naïve andhistorically uninformed.114

Flinn’s musical examples arealmost all source music, a tackalso taken by Irene Kahn Atkins inSource Music in Motion Pictures.115

Atkins limits her scope to diegetic,or source, music because “The factthat source music usually is justi-fied makes its functions morereadily discernible than those ofother film music” (pp. 13-14). Thevery fact that Atkins turns awayfrom background scoring becauseit has not been properly explainedsignals the limitations of herapproach. This is amplified byanother stated purpose of thebook, which is to root out “musi-cal material that could make aworthwhile addition to concert orrecital repertoire” (p. 17). It isalmost as if she wants to avoidtrying to understand film music asfilm music, although in itself thebook is a fine study of sourcemusic.

The aesthetic tension betweenfilm and the concert hall is addres-sed by Eddy Lawrence Manson116

and, somewhat more obliquely, byAlfred W. Cochran, whose biastoward the aesthetics of absolute

music is especially evident in anarticle bent on proving the “qual-ity” of film music.117 Right at thebeginning, Cochran comes outwith a series of questions:

Does the subject merit atten-tion? What can be gainedfrom this research? Has itrelevance to other scholarlyinquiries in music? It isfitting that film musicscholarship addresses thesehurdles and surmounts them,for if it cannot overcome thechallenges they pose, schol-arly interest in cinema musicshould be directed elsewhere(p. 65).

He is apparently saying thatunless film music qualifies as “art”it is unworthy of attention, or thatstudy film music is only appro-priate if it helps us understandmusic (presumably art music).Cochran is at pains to point outthat his work has been on AaronCopland, Gail Kubik, and LeithStevens, “none of them traditionalfilm composers. Had my researchfocused on composers less able, nodoubt my conclusion about filmscoring and film music might bedifferent” (p. 66). Yet if they areatypical composers, what can hetruly hope to tell us about film

music? Film music is one of themost frequently encountered typesof music in the world—on thatbasis alone, it merits scholarlyattention.

In Music, Film & Art, philoso-pher Haig Khatchadourian neverconnects music and film, but in-stead draws comparisons betweenthe two.118 However, many of hiscomparisons and assumptionsseem quite simplistic. Forinstance, his definition of “cine-matic”—a film in which the bulkof the film’s meaning is conveyedin the visual—is based merely onthe fact that films were “silent”first (pp. 133-34); by this defini-tion, something as profoundlycinematic as Fantasia would notcount. Khatchadourian seemsintent on keeping the arts in theirown prescribed boxes, and iscorrespondingly condescendingabout “mere entertainment.”119

Samuel Chell and DavidHuckvale both mix aesthetics withanalysis, but to very different ef-fect. Chell uses Hugo Friedhofer’sscore for The Best Years of Our Livesas the focus of a discussion ofmusic and emotion.120 Unfortu-nately, like so many articles onfilm music, the author’s engage-ment with the music seems

114This is especially obvious when she is deal-ingwith musicals. For instance, she interprets JudyGarland’s performance of “Have Yourself a MerryLittle Christmas” in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)as “clear and uncomplicated” (p. 112), whereasthe song is actually deeply ironic; and she callsthe casting of Gene Kelly in the “non-dancing,sinister role of bad guy Robert” in the near-noirChristmas Holiday (1944) “bizarre” when, in fact,Kelly was often cast as an anti-hero in musicalsand as charming weaklings in dramas (themommy-fixated, presumably homosexual Robert– a 1940s Hollywood-brand Freudianism—is nottoo far removed from the vacillating, tear-pronelawyer Vito in Pilot No. 5 (1942) or the smart-mouthed cabbie Victor who breaks under Nazitorture in The Cross of Lorraine (1943)). Flinnalso seems to accept without criticismEisenstein’s infamous pictorial/notationalcorrespondence from Alexander Nevsky. Even if

not a musician, surely she would have read themany criticisms of it.115East Brunswick, NJ: Associated UniversityPresses, Inc., 1983.116“The Film Composer in Concert and theConcert Composer in Film,” in Film Music I, ed.Clifford McCarty (New York: Garland Publish-ing, Inc., 1989).117“The Spear of Cephalus: Observations on FilmMusic Analysis,” Indiana Theory Review 11, no. 1-2 (1990): 65-80.118New York: Gordon & Breach Science Publish-ers, Inc., 1985.119Some of the articles on the aesthetics of filmmusic are so brief that they tell us practicallynothing: Richard Arnell, “Composing for Ani-mated Films,” Royal College of Music Newsletter80, no. 1 (1984): 19-20; Laurence Green, “TheImpact of Music on Film,” Contemporary Review260, no. 1515 (1992): 214-16; R.F. Sun, “The

Esthetics of Film Music,” College Music Symposium19, no. 1 (1979): 216-20. The German volumeMusikpädagogische Forschung (Band 3, (1982)contains articles by its editor, Klaus-Ernst Behne(“Musik-Kommunikation oder Geste?” (Music –Communication or Gesture?), pp. 125-43),Hans-Christian Schmidt (“ohne durch dieordnende Instanz des Intellekts zu gehen.Reflexe auf die vermutete Wirkung von Musik imSpielfilm” (... without going through the organi-zing authority of the intellect. Reflections on theassumed effect of music in film), pp. 164-79),and Helga de la Motte-Haber (“Musik als erlebteGefühl – Ausdruck als Sinnkategorie von Musik”(Music as Experienced Feeling–Expression as aSensory Category of Music), pp. 11-13), but Ihave been unable to see it.120“Music and Emotion in the Classical HollywoodFilm Score: The Case of The Best Years of OurLives,” Film Criticism 8, no. 2 (Winter 1984): 27-38.


tentative and unstable, and hefrequently contradicts himself. Thestrongest part of Chell’s article hasnothing directly to do with whathe says he is investigating butwith the concept of music asstructuring time. In his study ofthe music of the Hammer horrorfilms, David Huckvale argues con-vincingly that “In attempting todiscover the broad cultural impli-cations of film music upon asociety it is necessary to explorehighly popular and often standard-ised film products” (p. 1).121

Drawing on the theories ofTheodor Adorno and the analyticaltechniques of Philip Tagg,122 thisconcise, focused argument seemsfar more profitable than either airytheorizing with no real musicalcontent, such as Chell’s, or amerely musical analysis that nevertakes the visual element intoaccount.

Unfortunately, this latter ten-dency flaws what must surelystand as the most rigorous musicalanalysis of film music, Alfred W.Cochran’s doctoral dissertation,Style, Structure, and Tonal Organiza-tion in the Early Film Scores of AaronCopland.123 Cochran promises thathis analysis is “geared to explorevisual/musical relationships andprovide explanation of the basicmusical functions and interactionspresent in the scores” (p. x), yethis discussion of the relationship

between pictures and soundsamounts to one sentence whendiscussing The City (1939): “[Themusic’s] rhythmic displacementcomplements the hesitancy andindecision which the “Jay-walkers”display on-screen while crossingthe street” (p. 71). At anotherpoint, Cochran describes the mu-sic for the fire engine as beingpictorially conceived (p. 60), yettells us nothing about the picture,or even what prompts him to saythat the music is “pictorially con-ceived.” While Cochran’s musicalanalysis is thorough, one mustquestion whether Schenkeriananalysis, based on voice-leading, isreally appropriate for the disconti-nuities of film music, broken up asit is into many small cues sepa-rated by silence.124

Claudia Widgery’s dissertationThe Kinetic and Temporal Interactionof Music and Film: Three Documenta-ries of 1930’s America125 is a perfectfoil for Cochran’s, and they evenhave the film The City (with itsAaron Copland score) in common.What Cochran promises, Widgerydelivers: a detailed and sophisti-cated study of the relationship ofvisual image and music. Herpurpose is “to examine some ofthe ways in which two sharedparameters of music and film—temporality and motion, orkinesis—interact in combina-tion.”126 In addition to The City,

Widgery examines The River (VirgilThomson) and Valley Town (MarcBlitzstein), all documentaries, butdocumentaries with a socio-politi-cal point of view. After a verystrong theoretical first section,which draws on a number ofsources (particularly French andRussian) that no other author hasmentioned, Widgery takes a dif-ferent approach with each film. InThe River, she is concerned withtemporal perspective: how theperceived articulation of time inmusic, from an individual phraseto the length of an entire filmscore, influences perception of thefilm’s temporal structure. In TheCity, the focus is musical gestureand empathic motion: how thetempo and type of rhythm of themusic establish motion appropri-ate to the action and the physicalidentification thus aroused in theviewer. Valley Town provides achance to examine the kineticinterplay of visual and auditoryrhythm: how the rhythmic pat-terns of the music work with thefilm’s visual rhythms (on-screenmotion, camera motion, and cut-ting patterns).

This attention to the kineticelement of film is sorely needed,but is yet another area where themusical language is notably insuf-ficient on its own.127 AlthoughWidgery is dealing with thepolitics of persuasion in these

121“Twins of Evil: An Investigation into the Aes-thetics of Film Music,” Popular Music 9, no. 1(1990): 1-35.122“Analysing Popular Music: Theory, Methodand Practice,” Popular Music 2 (1982): 37-67.123Catholic University, Washington, DC, 1986.Cochran was able to examine the original manu-scripts of the first two, and the copyrightregistration score and some sketches of OurTown.124Cochran does address this point once, but at adifferent level, defending Copland from a moviecritic who heard “Hearts and Flowers” music in asequence in Of Mice and Men (the shooting of

Candy’s dog): [The interruption in the music]allows the polarity of the outside voices and theharmony to assume greater importance. Thusthe melody is created not only by the top line,but by the interaction of the other voices, andthe chord flow. It is a subtle touch which avoidsthe overt sentimentality of a single, drawn-outmelodic line (p. 160). However, he never reallyaddresses the issue of interruptions between cues,and one wonders whether he would havebrought up this instance had he not felt com-pelled to defend Copland against the critic.125University of Maryland, College Park, 1990.126From page 3. While Widgery’s stated “ulti-

mate goal” is “facilitating a more resourceful useof music in future filmmaking,” her work ismore useful as a model of audio/visual analysis.Any intention of “improving” film music throughscholarly investigation is probably doomed tofailure, and the author runs the risk of lookingfoolish to those who accept and even admirewhat it is the author hopes to improve.127This insufficiency of musical/kinetic languageis not just evident in film music studies, but alsodance. See Roger Shattuck, “The Devil’s Dance:Stravinsky’s Corporal Imagination,” in Confront-ing Stravinsky: Man, Modernist, and Musician, ed.Jann Pasler (Berkeley: University of California


rhetorical documentaries from the1930s, much of her approachcould profitably be transferred toother sorts of films. After all, filmis more than images, words, andmusic: movies move. Yet ideallymovement should be introducedinto a wider and deeper analysis ofthe film as a whole. Widgery flirtswith an interpretive analysisthroughout the dissertation, butnever pursues the concept of signi-fication with any consistency; inher conclusion we find an ap-proach toward a consideration ofreception:

Ultimately, the collaborationof greatest importance wasnot that of the filmmakers,writers, or composers per se;rather, it was that of theimages, words and musicthemselves, for it is in theway they combine that thealchemy of provocative per-suasion lies (p. 388).

Here, she obliquely questionsthe principles of authorship; whileit may be that she is giving undueagency to the “images, words andmusic themselves”—of coursethey were created by filmmakers,writers, and composers—her

statement could also lead to con-sideration of participation by thereceivers (viewers/hearers) of afilm in creating meanings from theimages, words, and music they aregiven.

A series of analytical bookscluster around the work of AlfredHitchcock, seemingly a remnant ofthe auteur theories that oncedominated film studies.128

Elisabeth Weis’s The Silent Scream:Alfred Hitchcock’s Sound Track129 isnot about film music in itself butabout the entire soundworld of afilm: sound effects, dialogue, andmusic, especially source music.130

Although some of her readings area bit naïve, especially musically,Weis takes more risks and actuallysays something deeper about theway film works than most haveattempted, as when she observesthe changing meanings of the song“Lisa” as it is “composed” in suc-cessive scenes by a character inRear Window, or the centrality ofmusic and the body in the filmYoung and Innocent, or sound (auralintrusion) as a metaphor for apenetration of the psyche in suchsingle-set films as Rear Windowand Rope.

Josef Kloppenburg’s study ofSpellbound must certainly stand asthe most thorough analysis of asingle film and its music to date.131

Kloppenburg approaches the filmfrom a series of different angles(dramaturgical, psychological,filmic, gender-critical, and musi-cal). He examines the motives forboth their musical and psycho-logical/semantic qualities, anddoes not shy away from interpreta-tion: for instance, the modalquality of the music accompanyingthe opening apologia for psycho-analysis is read as archaizing,making a “sacred place” out of thesanitarium seen on screen. Be-cause Kloppenburg’s approach isto take repeated passes at the film,each from a different angle, theresult is not as integrated as itcould be, but it is an admirablywell-rounded and convincing pieceof work.

Graham Bruce also concen-trates on Hitchcock films, butthrough the work of composerBernard Herrmann.132 Despite thebook’s strengths—an explorationof Herrmann’s dramatic style, andthe introduction of timbre withinthe musical discussion—its weak-nesses render it unsatisfactory.

Press, 1986); my “Stravinsky and Balanchine: AMusico-Choreographic Analysis of Agon” (Ph.D.diss., University of Michigan, 1994) also at-tempts to come to grips with the interactiveanalysis of movement and music.128The concept of the auteur also seems to drivethe film music theory of Sergio Miceli (La Musicanel Film: Arte e artigianato Fiesole (Firenze:Discanto, Distribuzione La Nuova Italia, 1981)).Although I have been unable to see this book, inhis master’s thesis Science Fiction Film Music afterStar Wars (1978) (Loyola University, 1990),Martin A.F. Voill draws heavily on Miceli. Ac-cording to Voill, Miceli conceives film as aGesamtkunstwerk created by an auteur, and under-score may be “acritico” (non-critical), in whichthe director’s interpretation is imposed throughthe music, or “critico” (critical) in which specta-tors are left to their own interpretation. Theauteur approach also informs Ulrich Etscheit’sbrief but cogent article on music in the films andnovels of Pier Paolo Pasolini (“Ich habe die Oper

mein ganzes Leben gehaßt: Zur Rezeption vonMusik im literarischen und filmischen SchaffenPier Paolo Pasolinis” (I have hated opera mywhole life; on the reception of music in theliterary and film work of Pier Paolo Pasolini),Musica 42, no. 3 (1988): 246-54).129Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UniversityPress, 1982.130French sound theorist Michel Chion’s ap-proach is similar to Weis’s but far moresophisticated and an exciting adjunct to filmmusic literature. Even though he deals relativelylittle with music as music, Chion provides anintriguing analytical framework for consideringthe sound of music in film, in places akin to thework of Claudia Widgery, but more broad-ranging. An English edition and translation ofhis work by Claudia Gorbman may be found inthe volume Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, with aforeword by Walter Murch (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1994).131Die dramaturgische Funktion der Musik in Filmen

Alfred Hitchcocks (The dramaturgical function ofmusic in the films of Alfred Hitchcock),München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1986.132Bernard Herrmann: Music and Narrative (AnnArbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1985). Theconcept of composer as auteur also informsRobbert van der Lek’s monograph Diegetic Musicin Opera and Film: A Similarity between Two Genresof Drama Analysed in Works by Erich WolfgangKorngold (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991). Thisbook, unfortunately, may not be worth the effortit takes to read it. The prose style is remarkablydifficult, which cannot be completely excused bythe fact that English is not the author’s firstlanguage, and a general lack of focus is exacer-bated by van der Lek’s tendency to overtheorize,to obsessively organize, or lose himself in trivialdetail. Yet several issues are brought up thendismissed as “falling outside the scope of thisstudy”, including “what is a serenade?” – some-thing surely relevant to the “Romeo and Juliet”opera scene in the film Give Us This Night.


Although he chides ChristopherPalmer for impressionistic descrip-tion rather than analysis, Bruce isonly marginally better. As with hismentor, Royal S. Brown, Bruce’smusical naïveté is presented withsuch authority that those who donot know music could easily befooled into believing what he says.In a particularly egregious mo-ment, Bruce states that in one cuefrom Marnie there are three succes-sive chords “each in a differentkey” (p. 124). This is impossible.The chords may be distantly re-lated, but they cannot be each in adifferent key—it is a sequence ofchords that establishes a key; asingle chord cannot exist in a keywithout the context of at least amelody.

Herrmann is better served inHanjörg Pauli’s much brieferanalysis of the score to CitizenKane.133 Pauli traces the use ofmusic in helping to temporallystructure the complex, non-linearnarrative style, and he also in-cludes leitmotivic analysis withreference to derivations of themotives from the requiem se-quence Dies Irae.

More thoroughgoing film/musical semiotic analysis may be

found in the work of KathrynKalinak and Steven D. Wescott.Kalinak’s “The Fallen Woman andthe Virtuous Wife: Musical Stereo-types in The Informer, Gone with theWind, and Laura”134 is an excellentshort article on the characteriza-tion of women in the classicalHollywood film. Kalinak draws onboth musical and visual symbolsand is particularly telling in trac-ing the changes in the music forScarlett O’Hara as the characterchanges: the further she movesfrom traditional, passive femalerole toward the strong head of thefamily and the business, the morethe character is scored with sharprhythms and chromatic harmo-nies—the musical symbols of thewhore. Some of the same issuesare taken up in Kalinak’s “MaxSteiner and the Classical Holly-wood Film Score: An Analysis ofThe Informer” which appearedalongside Wescott’s “MiklósRósza’s Ben-Hur: The Musical-Dramatic Function of theHollywood Leitmotiv” in the gen-eral volume Film Music 1.135 Boththese articles are concerned withthe leitmotiv technique and howthe music shapes our perception ofthe characters and the story; they

are solid examples of how filmanalysis and musical analysis canbe combined to give us real insightinto the working of a film on itsaudience. Yet, somewhat disturb-ingly, in his review of the FilmMusic 1 volume,136 Ronald Rodmansays:

For the music theory disci-pline, another issue looms:Despite Kalinak’s andWescott’s informative analy-ses, can one develop ananalytical methodology thatrelies less on narrative andthe tracking of leitmotifs andmore on the overall musicalprocesses? (p. 179)

One could agree with Rodmanthat the mere “tracking” ofleitmotifs can be mechanical, butneither of these articles is con-cerned with merely trackingleitmotifs. And why would onewant to rely less on narrative inanalyzing a piece of music for anarrative film? It seems to me thatwould be of primary importance—nearly all the “information” thatRodman praises is inextricablylinked with narrative. And, finally,do we have to assume an overallmusical process in film music?Film music is by nature fragmen-tary. It comes and goes, enteringand exiting, and perhaps withsome closed narrative structuresan organicist approach is desir-able. But in more ambiguouscases, a less process-oriented tech-nique might be preferable. Invaluing such a score, should wenot consider it more—not less—successful because it is moreappropriate to its cinematic con-text?

Pedagogy

There are two audiences forthe teaching of film music: those

133“Bernard Herrmanns Musik zu Citizen Kane,”Dissonance 26 (November 1990): 12-18. Otherapparently analytical articles which I have beenunable to see include: Alfred W. Cochran, “LeithStevens and the Jazz Film Score: The Wild Oneand Private Hell 36,” Jazz Research Papers 10(1990): 24-31; S.M. Fry, “The Music for The PinkPanther: A Study in Lyrical Timelessness,” The CueSheet 9, no. 2 (1992): 14-23; Hedemarie Strauch,“Der Einfluß von Musik auf die filmischeWahrnehmung am Beispiel von L. Buñuel’s UnChien Andalou” (The influence of music onperception of film, with the example of L.Buñel’s Un Chien Andalou), MusikpädagogischeForschung, ed. Karl-Ernst Behne, Band 1 (1980):112-26; Dietrich Hahne, Komposition und Film:Projekt nach Motiven aus Camus “Der Abtrünnige”für Chor, Orchester und Spielfilm (Composition andFilm: Project after Motives from Camus’s “TheRebel,” for choir, orchestra and film), Folkwang-Texte III: Beiträge zu Musik, Theater, Tanz, ed.

Josef Fellsches, Band 5 (Essen: Die blaueEule, 1992). Through the vagaries of Interli-brary Loan, one article that I have seen isPekka Jalkanen’s “Musical Character Spot-ting: the Leitmotiv in Finnish Film Music,”Finnish Music Quarterly no. 3 (1993): 51-56,which contains a specialized history ofFinnish film music (although Finnish filmhistory seems to be pretty much the same aseveryone else’s), and a sketch of leitmotivicpractices adapted and adopted not only bycomposers in traditional styles, but also bythose composing electronic, jazz, and rockscores.134Film Reader 5 (1982): 76-82.135Ed. Clifford McCarty (New York: GarlandPublishing, Inc., 1989). Kalinak’s article(much of which subsequently appears in herbook Settling the Score) appears on pp. 123-142, Wescott’s on pp. 183-207.


who create films and music, andthose who study them. The publi-cations that target the former areperhaps the oldest type of filmmusic literature; those that targetthe latter are the newest.

Manuals and textbooks writtenfor those in the film business tendto reflect the general schism infilm music studies between thefilmmaker, who is assumed tohave no knowledge of music, andthe composer, who is assumed tohave rather more knowledge offilm. A few books aim to draw thetwo sides together, and amongthese a model was Marlin Skiles’sMusic Scoring for TV and MotionPictures,137 the most recent book atthe time of Martin Marks’s litera-ture review. Skiles, whose owncareer as a film and televisioncomposer spanned 40 years (1932-1972) and included teaching filmmusic at San Diego State Univer-sity in California, covers the basictechnical requirements for thecomposer, plus tips on variouskinds of writing and practical in-formation such as copyright andunions. For the filmmaker, he pro-vides very basic musicalinformation.138

For nearly two decades,Skiles’s manual was the only oneaimed at both filmmakers andcomposers.139 George Burt’s The

Art of Film Music140 is a quite differ-ent kind of book. It goes beyondthe basics to actually talk aboutthe relationship of the film andthe music. Burt also has an inge-nious solution to a perennialproblem of film music literature,the disparity in the musical knowl-edge of the audience. Technicalmusical descriptions are put initalics and brackets so that thosewho don’t understand music canskip over them without losingcontinuity; the musical examplesthemselves are very nicely pro-duced and appropriately chosen.141

Despite this, Burt seems to losefocus from time to time, and somepeculiar lapses of logic flaw someof his arguments. For instance,while discussing director SergeiEisenstein’s theories of the contra-puntal relationship between imageand music, Burt slides off on atangent about musical contrapun-tal forms that has nothing to dowith his central argument. Yet,even with these drawbacks, this iseasily the most sophisticated bookto be aimed at an audience of film-makers. Burt does not condescend.

Music in Film & Video Produc-tions142 by music editor Dan Carlin,Sr., and Getting the Best Score forYour Film143 by David A. Bell bothtarget the filmmaker. They dealwith the history and function of

film music, choosing a composerand then communicating with thecomposer once chosen, the variousstages of producing music andfitting it to a film, and the legaland business aspects. I have notseen Bell’s book, but Carlin’s isbrief, clear, informative, and gener-ally user-friendly. It is also one ofthe few which intimates that someof the people involved might actu-ally be female, and a light sense ofhumor pervades the book.Throughout, Carlin advocateshaving fun with the process—which, admittedly, is probablyeasier for the producer and thedirector than the poor composeron a six-week deadline!

A small flurry of publicationsappeared around 1990 which weredirected at the composer. Germancomposer Norbert JürgenSchneider’s brief but insightfuland remarkably comprehensivearticle, “Was macht eigentlich einFilmkomponist?” (What does afilm composer actually do?),144

deals with the everyday stuff ofthe film composer and includesdaily extracts from his diary trac-ing business meetings, recordingsessions, and composition.Schneider also sketches out thebasic knowledge required of thecomposer, musical, cinematic, andtechnological; he especiallystresses the need to keep abreastof technological advances, statingthat “the days of the note-writingfilm composer belong to the past”(p. 79). Certainly a good place tostart for the composer trying tofollow that advice is composerJeffrey Rona’s manual Synchroniza-tion: From Reel to Reel—A CompleteGuide for the Synchronization of Au-dio, Film & Video,145 concerning thetechnical matters of actually fittingmusic to film. The book is fur-nished with useful diagrams andcharts and is easy to follow, even

136Indiana Theory Review 11, no. 1-2 (1990):173-79137Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Tab Books, 1976.138Unfortunately, there are some slight butirritating historical inaccuracies: for instance,Skiles states that “The early use of [the harp-sichord] by Bach, Haydn, and Mozart was forsolo purposes,” (p. 73) when in fact, even aslate as Mozart, the primary purpose of theharpsichord was as a continuo instrument,supporting every sort of ensemble from thetrio sonata to the orchestra.139Andrea Grey’s Music for Film (Sydney:Resources United, Australian Film Televisionand Radio School, 1985) is not very detailed orinformative; neither is it particularly accessible.

140Boston: Northeastern University Press.Much of Chapter 4 had previously appeared inthe article “East of Eden: Climactic Scene,”Indiana Theory Review 11, no. 1-2 (1990): 145-64.141One niggle is that the rubrics indicatingdialogue, action, camera action (all veryvaluable information) are all at the same level,undifferentiated, demanding a certain amountof sifting.142Boston & London: Focal Press, 1991.143Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1994.144Musica 46, no. 2 (1992): 79-82.145Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard PublishingCorporation, 1990.


for the technologically unin-formed; the breezy, practical toneis actually enjoyable—a real rarityin technical writing.

For a more comprehensiveintroduction to film composition,it is difficult to imagine a betterbook than Fred Karlin andRayburn Wright’s On the Track: AGuide to Contemporary Film Scor-ing.146 This extraordinary textbookdeals with traditional film-scoringmethods, current practice withmodern technology, and songscores. The authors interviewednumerous technical, creative, andexecutive personnel and selectedabout 150 films easily available onvideo as primary study materials.The book is not only incrediblycomprehensive, but it is eminentlyreadable and easily the most beau-tiful book of any kind produced onfilm music, with a large textbookformat, a clean, elegant layout andtypeface, and many music ex-amples. But perhaps the mostimpressive thing about the book isits down-to-earth tone. The firstparagraph of the introductiondeals with the necessity of stressmanagement, and during a discus-sion about dealing with thedirector and producer, the follow-ing sage advice is given: “One finalserious word of caution: if an ex-

perience becomes so intense thatyou are either driven to drink orstart smoking again—walk” (p.17).147

Fred Karlin, the co-author ofOn the Track, is himself a seasonedfilm and television composer whoteaches film music in the Univer-sity of Southern California’sScoring for Motion Pictures andTelevision Program. He has alsorecently produced Listening to Mov-ies: The Film Lover’s Guide to FilmMusic148 the first textbook aimedoutside the film industry; it is a“music appreciation” text for a layaudience. This is perhaps not assuccessful a book as On the Track,but primarily because its focus isbroader. As an overview of techni-cal, historical, commercial, andmusical aspects, it is certainly anadmirable effort and part of a gen-eral upswing in the drive to teachfilm music to a wider audience.149

The pedagogy of film music isrelatively recent phenomenon, butone gathering momentum that willprobably only be aided by Karlin’sListening to Movies. A consistentfeature of this particularly circum-scribed area of the literature is theimplicit plea for film music to betaken seriously. Articles began toappear in German periodicals inthe early 1980s, generally aimed at

teaching adolescents.150 Americanpublications were about ten yearsbehind and aimed at serious stu-dents of film. William Penn’s“Music and Image: A PedagogicalApproach”151 is one of three ar-ticles on the teaching of filmmusic in the special film musicissue of Indiana Theory Review. Pennsuggests various techniques ofexploring affect; this is a usefulexercise, but he does not carry thediscussion past labeling. A morerigorous musical approach is advo-cated by David Neumeyer,152 whofeels that analysis of film musiccan improve our approaches to andunderstanding of concert and stagemusic as well:

Film places music in a newaesthetic environment thatoffers new opportunities totest theories of musical lis-tening, hierarchical structure,or formal and tonal organiza-tion. It may also nudge musicscholars into confrontingmore systematically and regu-larly some (admittedlycomplex) problems ofintertextuality—which begin,of course, with the relation-ship of the film score to theother elements of the film—as well as the impact of socialand ideological constraints onboth compositional designand aesthetic judgments. If

146New York: Schirmer, 1989.147The only odd note in the book is struck in thechapter on songs: although the book is aimed atcomposers, the emphasis here is on the lyrics,recapitulating the notion propagated by rockcritics and those who oppose pop soundtracksthat the only meaning in songs resides in thelyrics. Certainly, the presence of lyrics shifts theattention of most viewers from the backgroundlevel of the instrumental underscore to the lyricsof the song (songs almost invariably take theforeground anyway), but melodies and harmonydo contribute in an unmeasurable but immeasur-able way to the meaning of a song. To take anexample that surely everyone knows, the shapeof the melody “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”

(lyrics by E.Y. Harburg, music by Harold Arlen,from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz) is an arch,reflecting the rainbow, and the end of the phrase“once in a lullaby” has a rocking shape that onecould easily imagine in a lullaby. This generalshape is detailed by wide appoggiatura leaps onthe words “somewhere,” “way up,” and “there’sa,” conveying a sense of yearning as well as themore literal height of “way up.” Obviously onecannot teach someone to write a great song inquite the same way as one can teach how toconstruct a motive, a theme, or a transition, butto ignore the evocative power present in a well-shaped melody or harmonic structure is aregrettable drawback to an otherwise verythorough and sensitive book.

148New York: Schirmer, 1994.149This effort to promote the teaching of filmmusic has even reached the Education page ofthe British newspaper The Guardian (KathrynWillgress, “Film scores” (1993): 16-17).150Hans-Christian Schmidt, “Didaktik derFilmmusik” (The Didactic of Film Music), Musikund Bildung 3 (1980): 158-61; Stefan Gies,“Musik im Film: Manipulation oder dramatischesMittel?” (Music in film: Manipulation or dra-matic means?), Musik und Bildung 18 (September1986): 762-70.151Indiana Theory Review 11, no. 1-2 (1990): 47-63.152“Film Music Analysis and Pedagogy,” IndianaTheory Review 11, no 1-2 (1990): 1-27.


our mainly formalistic, proce-dure-oriented analyticmethods have greatly im-proved our understanding ofthe absolute or concert musicrepertoire, they have alsoimpoverished the possiblecontexts for musical analysisand therefore close criticaldiscussion of music in gen-eral. Serious reinterpretationis required to make these[analytical] tools fit for use inan art where authorship isoften in doubt,153 where con-texts constantly point outsidethe musical materials andtheir “internal” processes,and where music is rarelycontinuous and is only oneelement—usually a subservi-ent one—among several. Still,one might reasonably sup-pose that recentphenomenological models formusical analysis, the revivi-fied expressivist-hermeneuticmodel, and a musicalsemiotics could all find themedium congenial (pp. 14,16, 27).

Neumeyer does not seem to beadvocating a true interdisciplinaryanalysis, but simply a more rigor-ous musical analysis with an eyetoward film.

The third article comes fromKathryn Kalinak, who outlines athree-week module to be insertedinto an introductory film studiescourse.154 In relating her own ex-perience as a film student, Kalinak

attacks the neglect of music infilm studies: “Music is one of themost basic elements of the cine-matic apparatus, but the vastmajority of film students, under-graduate and graduate, willcomplete their degrees withoutever formally studying it” (p. 30).Her course plan is clear, to-the-point, and covers both classicalscoring techniques and alternativemodels for scoring, with an intro-duction that includes clips fromBladerunner and Batman as well assuch classics as Citizen Kane andAlexander Nevsky. She also givesoptions for abridging and expand-ing the syllabus, gives a detailedrationale for her choices, and pro-vides a series of study questions.155

In a single lesson plan, EvaRieger constructs an entire mini-course in the use of music inclassic Hollywood films aroundCasablanca.156 In addition to cover-ing the functions of the music andtracing the leitmotiv of “As TimeGoes By,” she touches upon sev-eral cultural elements to bring intothe discussion—the “utopian”function of this leitmotiv and itsassociation with an irretrievabletime and a place (Rick and Ilsa’slove idyll in Paris before the Ger-man occupation); the ideologicalstances of the “Marseillaise” and“Die Wacht am Rhein” for thescene in which the two songs are

set against each other in Rick’sbar; and the patriarchal virgin/whore juxtaposition of Ilsa andYvonne.

Sociology and CulturalStudies

In the last two decades,sociological and cultural/anthro-pological studies of film musichave, if not exploded, then at leastrisen from practically nothing to asmall but significant number.Somewhat perforce, by nature ofthe disciplines, sociologicalstudies tend to concentrate onproduction and cultural studies onreception.

Robert R. Faulkner’s HollywoodStudio Musicians: Their Work andCareers in the Recording Industry157

was the first serious sociologicalstudy in the field, and Faulknerfollowed this impressive workwith another, a study of forty filmcomposers in Hollywood duringthe 1970s.158 In addition toconventional issues of career de-velopment and the social structurein the film industry, Faulknermoves to the subjective experienceof working as a film music com-poser. The precarious plight of thefilm composer is compounded bysex discrimination, as is shown inLeslie N. Andersen’s study offemale composers.159

153My one reservation about Neumeyer’s excel-lent argument for the serious study of film musicand its implications for other kinds of musicalresearch is this apparent concern with author-ship. Is it truly necessary for an author to beidentifiable to analyze the result? Or, on adifferent tack, does a multiplicity of authorssomehow reduce the worth of a piece of musicsimply because it is not by one person (a rem-nant of the “great man” theory of musichistory)? Does perhaps unfair attribution actu-ally devalue the music?154“Music to My Ears: A Structural Approach toTeaching the Soundtrack,” Indiana Theory Review11, no. 1-2 (1990): 29-45.

155Royal S. Brown’s Overtones and Undertones:Reading Film Music includes an appendix called“How to Hear a Movie”; it is a cross between anoutline for the book (discussed above) and asyllabus for a film music course. The outline hasan admirable breadth, but is possibly too de-tailed and idiosyncratic for practical use.156“‘Spiel’ es, Sam!’ Filmmusikanalyse imMusikunterricht dargestellt am SpielfilmCasablanca” (“Play it, Sam!”: Film music analysisin a music lesson represented by the filmCasablanca), Musik und Bildung 18 (September1986): 771-78.157Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971. Preston J.Hubbard has also dealt with movie musicians,

but his is a more descriptive historical survey ofthe impact of the coming of sound on workingmusicians (“Synchronized Sound and Movie-House Musicians, 1926-29,” American Music 3,no. 4 (1985): 429-41).158Music on Demand: Composers and Careers in theHollywood Film Industry (New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction Books, 1983).159“Women Film and Television Composers in theUnited States,” in The Musical Woman: An Interna-tional Perspective, vol. 3, 1986-1990, ed. JudithLang Zaimont (New York: Greenwood Press,1991). Even though it is certainly unintentional,and surely because Nan Schwartz is one of themost prominent composers in the article, it is


Studies of gender and feministcriticism frequently draw on thehighly stylized genres of themusical and film noir. EdwardBaron Turk investigates the powerof the trained soprano and thethreat to patriarchal containmentthat it represents, especially in awoman as attractive as JeanetteMacDonald;160 while Turk continu-ally threatens to over-theorize hissubject in a welter of Freudianismthat may not be palatable to many,his basic premise is convincinglyargued.161 Adrienne L. McLean, onthe other hand, is concerned withthe voice and body of the womanin film noir. She takes such femi-nist film scholars as Lucy Fischer,Laura Mulvey, and Kaja Silvermanto task for “repudiating the crea-tive female presence in classicalHollywood cinema that is not adesignated directorial presence”(pp. 8-9).162

Other issues of minority, spe-cifically ethnicity, have also beenaddressed. Gloria J. Gibson’s dis-sertation, The Cultural Significanceof Music to the Black IndependentFilmmaker,163 is a very organized

investigation; although she dis-cusses music only in general termsor in terms of lyrics, Gibson looksfor uses of music in black cinemawhich might be unusual or evenunique. Frequently, Gibson found,music was an integral part of thecreative process as well as the endproduct. Several of the filmmakersto whom she spoke were structur-ally influenced by the music theylistened to during writing anddirecting, from Beethoven’s NinthSymphony to free jazz. Gibson alsofinds certain cinematic analoguesto African-rooted musical pro-cesses such as antiphony,repetition, and the layering ofsound and image.164

A very different kind ofcultural analysis is undertaken byJeremy Tambling in Opera, Ideology& Film,165 a study of opera on film,particular in the context of British“culturalism”—the policy offostering high art through govern-ment support. Overall, the bookseems overwritten and the theory,drawn largely from Walter Benja-min and Frederic Jameson, a bitundigested; however, even if a bit

heavy going, the analyses are in-triguing, especially as Tamblingargues that opera might well needthe “disruptive” influence of filmif is to have any relevance totoday’s society. A good companionto Tambling’s book would beGisela Schubert’s article on theHollywood musical, specificallythe so-called “biopic” (a fictional-ized account of a composer’slife).166 Schubert examinesHollywood’s approach to “great”music: the attempts at populariz-ing and democratizing “great”music, and the self-conscious alli-ance of composers such as GeorgeGershwin and Jerome Kern with aEuropean tradition of “great”music rather than seeking recogni-tion on their own merits.

Studies that deal with popularmusic in films will almost alwayshave a cultural element. This ispositive in that, ideally, all studiesof film music (or any kind of music,for that matter) should considercultural context; it is negative,however, in that it perpetuates themyth that popular music has onlycultural significance and no musi-

difficult not to notice that the only photographof a composer is of the undeniably pretty, blondeSchwartz (p. 360), subtly reflecting the sort ofpatriarchal values that the female composersencounter in their careers. A delicate questionarises – is it easier or harder for a pretty womanto make it in film composition?160“Deriding the Voice of Jeanette MacDonald:Notes on Psychoanalysis and the American FilmMusical,” Camera Obscura: A Journal of Feminismand Film Theory 25-26: 225-49.161Reinforcing Turk’s argument, rock singers PatBenatar and Ann Wilson (Heart), both beautifulwomen with very powerful soprano voiceschallenged patriarchal standards in much thesame way during the 1970s. They were neitherpassive pop sirens like Olivia Newton-John andStevie Nicks, nor blues shouters like Janis Joplinand Tina Turner, but wielded a distinctly femi-nine weapon in the trained soprano voice.162“’It’s only that I do what I love and love what Ido’: Film Noir and the Musical Woman,” CinemaJournal 33, no. 1 (Fall 1993): 3-16. She proposesa theoretical positioning of the sometimesseemingly extraneous musical set pieces in film

noir as moments connecting the singer and theaudience through the voice.163Indiana University, 1987.164Rosa Linda Fregoso’s The Bronze Screen: Chicanaand Chicano Film Culture (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1993) is an intriguinglyoblique revelation of a similar phenomenon.Fregoso is not actually interested in music at all– ironically, as almost all the films she discussesare intimately bound up with music. La Bamba isa partly fictionalized biography of rock musicianRichie Valens; Born in East L.A. is based on aCheech Marin parody of Bruce Springsteen’s“Born in the U.S.A.,” blown up into a comedy ofcultures in collision; The Ballad of Gregorio Cortezis based on a Texan corrido which also forms thebasis for the synthesizer score; Zoot Suit is amusical; and American Me, a film which rangesover nearly fifty years, is temporally structuredby the use of popular music. In an especiallymemorable moment from American Me, time,space, and experience are collapsed in one edit.A young gang leader struts onto a 1950s reformschool playground to the strains of Bobby Day’s“Rockin’ Robin”; a handball game is in progress.

The camera follows the arc of the handball, andas it hits the wall, the music responds with thegunshot opening of Junior Walker’s “Shotgun,”placing the action at least ten years later. As thecamera tracks the flight of the ball from the wall,we see the yard of Folsom Prison and the now-adult gang leader. The styles of the songs reflectmore than just the passage of time; the youthful,relatively innocent cockiness of the boy is mir-rored by the cheerful bounce of “Rockin’ Robin,”and his hardened maturity and confidencehighlighted by the slower, more sexually aware“Shotgun.” The very fact that Fregoso does notseem to notice this intense musical structuringin the films she examines, and the manner inwhich she talks around the music without everaddressing it directly, are testament to a cin-ematic culture in which music functions muchdifferently that in “mainstream” film.165Manchester: Manchester University Press,1987.166“Hollywoods ‘grosse’ Musik (Beobachtungenon Musical-Filmen)” (Hollywood’s ‘great’ Music(Observations on Film Musicals)), Musiktheorie 8,no. 1 (1993): 57-68.


cal value. While it is true thatfrequently films are filled with popsongs for commercial reasons,there are also examples where thepop song is more powerful than aconventional film underscore, andI would argue that these are morecommon than the bulk of filmmusic literature would lead one tobelieve. Sometimes a popular songwith extra-filmic associations isessential. In Witness, the barnscene between Harrison Ford andKelly McGillis sparked by SamCooke’s “(What a) WonderfulWorld” requires a song that willevoke a relatively innocent anduncomplicated cultural past (theearly 1960s) as well as providing aclear generation identification anda light-heartedness for Ford’scharacter that is otherwise miss-ing.167 Even “background” usagesmay draw on the audience’sknowledge of a pop song; PhilCollins’s “In the Air Tonight” addstension and the thrill of danger toRebecca de Mornay and TomCruise’s liaison on a train in RiskyBusiness (1983), not merely be-

cause of its intrinsic musical val-ues but because the audience willmost likely anticipate the thunder-ous drum fill.168

An article that, while not initself exceptional, points the wayto the sort of work which can bedone on a song score is “Abstractfor ‘Let It Bleed,’ the Music ofGoodfellas” by R. Condren.169 Ab-stract is a good term for thisarticle, as it is very brief and re-mains at a surface level, butCondren does demonstrate howpopular songs can evoke not onlytime and place but also emotionaland psychological motivations.Douglas W. Reitinger’s “Paint ItBlack: Rock Music and VietnamWar Film”170 is more substantiallywritten (though overall with lesscontent), but articles likeReitinger’s and Condren’s doshow that intelligent use of popu-lar music is not only possible butthat it has been done over andover again.171

Several authors have under-taken the daunting task ofsurveying a particular type of

music in film, paying attention tothe cultural values attached to themusic. Charles Berg’s “CinemaSings the Blues” was one of thefirst such articles; it examines thehistory of jazz in film as well asthe parallels between jazz andfilm—both are four-letter words,he points out somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and both were outcastarts that are now recognized aslegitimate.172 Neil V. Rosenberg’sfine article on bluegrasssoundtracks has a nicely limitedrepertoire, which allows his thor-ough investigation,173 but AlisonArnold tackles one of the mostprevalent (in terms of sheer quan-tity) and eclectic forms of filmmusic in the world in her articleon the Indian film song.174

Arnold’s article, together withPeter Manuel’s more historicalaccount in the same volume of thejournal Popular Music,175 gives theonly information on the subjecteasily accessible to Western schol-ars, and Arnold covers—if onlyvery briefly – such topics as musi-cal structure, vocal style, the

167A similar function is filled by the pop songs inTruly, Madly, Deeply (1991), which specificallyplace the central characters as middle-class, well-educated, liberal North Londoners in their latethirties. The lyrics of these songs (in somecases, even lyrics that are not actually heard inthe film) also connect with a network of visualand verbal imagery throughout the film: RobynnStilwell, “Symbol, Narrative and the Musics ofTruly, Madly Deeply,” Screen 38, no. 1 (Spring1997): 60-75.168In Risky Business (their book’s title played onthe film’s), Denisoff and Romanowski maintainthat Collins’s passionate vocal for the title songfrom Against All Odds (1984) sells the relation-ship between Jeff Bridges and Rachel Ward in away that the actors do not. This “fixing” of aweak element in a film has long been consideredby movie producers and directors a function ofthe orchestral background score.169Popular Music and Society 15, no. 3 (1991): 131-36.170Journal of American Culture 15, no. 3 (Fall1992): 53-59.171Reitinger also proves that snobbery is not thesole province of those who prefer the classical

Hollywood symphonic score; there is a slightlynasty tinge of rock elitism throughout. In “TheRules and the Use of Specific Models in MusicalSatire” [Indiana Theory Review 11, no. 1-2 (1990);119-44], John Covach puts both film music andpopular music studies at risk; he is in mortaldanger of working something simple to death.For all his philosophical references toSchopenhauer, Covach basically tells us thatparody is funny because we recognize elementsin the parody. Covach’s comparison of harmonicstructures is not particularly fruitful, because inthe style which he is studying, the harmoniclanguage is so simple and stereotyped; the onlytruly salient point made is the harmonic pun onThe Beatles’ “Help!” created in The Rutles’“Ouch!” by starting a fifth too far away from thedominant (p. 137). Instrumentation and rhythmwould be more appropriate points of study, butCovach makes only slight reference to these. Healso interprets the interpolation of theBoccherini minuet in Spinal’s Tap’s “HeavyDuty” as being “‘incongruous’ between thedialect of classic music and the dialect of heavymetal”; but as Robert Walser has shown, these“dialects” are actually very close (see Running

with the Devil: Power, Gender and Madness in HeavyMetal Music (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press,1993)). What makes the Boccherini quotationhumorous is not the classical borrowing, but thefact that it is something so simple and melodic.Many heavy metal guitarists borrow liberallyfrom the passagework of such Baroque compos-ers as Bach and Vivaldi to display their virtuosity,but Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel (ChristopherGuest) is too dim to know from whom to bor-row.172Cinema Journal 17, no. 2 (1978): 1-12.173“Image and Stereotype: Bluegrass SoundTracks,” American Music 1, no. 3 (1983): 1-22.174“Popular Film Song in India: A Case of Mass-Market Musical Eclecticism,” Popular Music 7, no.2 (1988): 177-88.175“Popular Music in India: 1901-86” (pp. 157-76) is almost exclusively about film music,which until quite recently dominated the produc-tion of popular music in India, as almost everyIndian film had the requisite “six songs andthree dances” (p. 163). Between 1931 and 1954,only two commercial Indian films had no songs(p. 160).


relationship of traditional musicsand film song, conditions of pro-duction, and piracy.

* * * * *

In 1979, Martin Marks endedhis article with three tasks for thefield of film music studies:

(1) To find the materials(films, scores, literature,and so on);

(2) To make the materialsavailable for research (atthe proper facilities, incatalogues and editions);

(3) To devise methods ofanalyzing the materialsso that scholars cancome to an understand-ing of film music both

(a) in its own terms –that is, the functionof music within theaudiovisual whole,and

(b) in its social context –that is, the history ofthis music and itsrelationship to otherkinds of music pastand present. (p. 314)

The conditions underlying thefirst two tasks have not changedsignificantly. Primary written ma-terials such as scores and parts arestill largely inaccessible and arelikely to remain so for some timedue to issues of ownership andcopyright. General references arestill sorely needed, and many ofthose we do have are incompleteor inaccurate. Scholarly literatureis still scattered, but it is becom-ing more abundant; with theincreasing number of special is-sues on film music in musicperiodicals and the establishmentof this journal dedicated to filmmusic, the situation can only im-prove. Rapid technologicaldevelopments have revolutionizedaccess to information, as well as to

the films themselves. Marks’sproposed “web” archive, by whichscattered collections could beunited, is now quite feasiblethrough on-line systems, and onecould hope that an index of booksand articles and perhaps a listingof major libraries that hold themwould be included in such aproject. And thanks to videotape,laser discs, and DVD, access tomost films is easy.

Working from video, as mostof us are obliged to do, may in factbe a boon to fulfilling part “a” ofMarks’s third task, that of study-ing the music in the context of theaudio-visual whole. If we areforced to transcribe, we have nochoice but to be aware of how themusic fits into the rest of thesoundtrack of the film (unlessyour laser disc or DVD allows youto switch between various chan-nels—music, effects, dialogue,etc.—which might in this contextbe described as “cheating”). Wewill also absorb the visual ele-ments along with the sound. Thatis not to say that a directed visualinterpretation of the film becomessuperfluous, but that a connectionbetween the music and what ishappening on the screen becomesintimately linked in our thoughtprocesses—something which sim-ply will not occur if we only studyscores.

Controversial as it may be tosuggest, I believe it is easier formusicians to grasp the principlesof film than for film scholars toconfront music, because of ourculture’s visual prejudices (whichwriters on film music continuallyprotest). Unfair or not, visual lan-guage is far more highly developedin our society than is the languageof sound; therefore, it is easier tolearn the visually-oriented theo-retical language, especially later inlife. Most musicians start learning

their profession as small children,whereas film studies are generallyfirst encountered at the universitylevel, usually in connection withsome verbally-centered study—English, comparative literature,speech, drama, communicationsand media, or, only rarely, art his-tory. As with any language, theearlier one starts, the more swiftlyand profoundly one learns. Musi-cians will be more adaptive tolearning film later on, as they al-ready have at least some basis inthe language, if only from watch-ing movies. Music, so completelynon-visual except in the highlyarcane “secret code” that is musi-cal notation, and so rarely verballyarticulated in film, must seem anunfathomable mystery to a non-musician. However, it must also besaid that some musicians may be“blinded” by their technicalknowledge into assuming thatthey understand a piece of filmmusic simply because they are ableto parse its musical grammar. Atruly integrated approach to theanalysis of film music is still un-common, although it is certainly amore prevalent aim among authorstoday than in 1979.

The sort of cultural analysisimplied in part (b) of Marks’sthird task is beginning to be ad-dressed, but several recurrentstrains in the literature maystrangle such approaches. Theseinclude the seemingly inexorableformation of canons, the resis-tance of scholars (as well ascomposers and fans) to the use ofmusic not specifically composedfor film and to popular music, anda tendency toward theory ratherthan analysis and interpretation.

Canon formation is probablythe most constrictive to a broaderapproach to film music, as itmight bring film music into thenarrow confines of traditional


musicology rather than allowingfilm music to help open up musi-cology to issues outside ofabsolute music. A canon of filmmusic is forming whether we wantone or not; David Neumeyer hasargued that:

The formation of a film-musiccanon, by some device oranother, seems inevitable, iffor no other reason than thata composer’s work becomesmore fashionable (or falls outof fashion) and writers makechoices about the films andscores they prefer to discuss –and other writers respond tothose discussions. Finally,one can hope that the processmay tell us something aboutthe formation of other musi-cal canons, including that ofEuropean concert/stage mas-terworks.177

This is an admirable hope, but,I suspect, a little utopian. If canonformation were merely the win-nowing process that produced thescores that scholars wanted todiscuss, it would be a harmlessphenomenon; and if observing theprocess tells us something aboutthe formation of canons, it wouldbe merely a laboratory experiment.But in musicology, canon forma-tion has a more insidious nature;it is a process of valuation bysometimes unstated criteria thatoften excludes items that may fallshort by those criteria, eventhough they have other qualitiesthat are of significance and worth.Canons are particularly hard onmusic that has the misfortune to

be widely popular; the tendency isto dismiss such music as appealingto some lowest common denomi-nator and thus being, according toone of these unstated criteria,“inferior.”

Two parallel canons of filmmusic are forming, one Americanand “classical,” one European andavant-garde. The majority of thewriting on film music, especiallythe writing of real scholarly value,has been dedicated to either silentfilm music or scores of the 1930sand 1940s both from Hollywoodand from Europe. Much of this isfine work and not to be faulted forits subject matter, but films since1960 are almost completely ig-nored. Newer European films aregenerally much better served thanHollywood fare, and the one areaof mainstream American produc-tion in recent years that hasreceived the most attention is theuse of popular music in film, eventhough many who work in the“canonical” areas of film musicstudies would not consider this tobe proper territory.

Some do take exception to thecategorical rejection of popularmusic as valid film music. In herbrief afterword to Unheard Melodies,Claudia Gorbman draws threads ofcontinuity between the use ofpopular music in modern filmsand classical Hollywood practice,including musicals—another vastarea of film music that is more orless ignored in the literature.Frederic Silber’s well-consideredrant argues that popular music canadd to the film’s content as well as

its coffers, and asserts that it isnot enough “to grudgingly accept afilm score that embraces contem-porary music simply because itworks well within the film, as ifsuch music were not worthyenough to be discussed criti-cally.”178

Josef Kloppenburg likewiseargues for the symbolic richness ofmusic with extra-filmic associa-tions, whether it be popular or“art” music, and his lengthier ar-ticle contains economic argumentsas well.179 Kloppenburg particu-larly takes exception to theopinion that the use of popularmusic is mostly profit-seekingamong the youth market, becausesuch an idea is too general andmusic preference is not a condi-tion of age; he also contends thatthe use of Mahler in Death in Veniceis not “presumptuous misuse,” asde la Motte-Haber would have it,but a brilliant use of music with abuilt-in meaning for the audience.In an added twist, he points outthat the film boosted sales ofMahler’s music, and the albumwas marketed in connection withthe film, the same as any popsoundtrack (p. 209). As thisclearly shows, all music is a com-modity; it is self-deluding to thinkotherwise. The very presence ofany music at all in a film is a com-mercial consideration; it isconsidered a necessary conventionof film making.

While opposition to scoringfilms with pre-existing music isunderstandable among film com-posers, as it threatensemployment, and among filmscore fans, as it “robs” them ofnew music, scholarly oppositionseems merely a remnant of out-moded views about music’sautonomy on one side and theorganicism of the art work on theother.180 There can be as much or

176Alfred Cochran’s dissertation, discussedabove.177“Film Music and Pedagogy,” 9-10.178“The State of the Art: The Film Soundtrackas Contemporary Music; Contemporary Musicas Film Score,” Fanfare 4, no. 1 (1980): 309-10.179“Musikkulturelle Vielfalt – Eindeutigkeit des

Ausdrucks. Der “Unstil” der Filmmusik,”(Variety of music – clarity of expression. The“non-style” of film music), MusikpädagogischeForschung, Band 4: 207-17.180Flinn connects these tendencies to Romanti-cism, Neumeyer and Buhler to modernism.Both are true as modernism sharpened


more creativity in choosing theappropriate music as in composinga new piece. Of course, one runsthe risk that the intertextual con-nections are not made by everyonein the audience, but that shouldnot discourage one from makingthe attempt. There are levels ofrecognition. The much-maligned2001: A Space Odyssey is a perfectexample:181 One does not have torecognize Richard Strauss’s Alsosprach Zarathustra to recognize thepower of the opening fanfare. Yet,if one does know the piece, onecan associate Nietzsche’s verseprose with the film, the impliedequation of “superman is to man”with the next stage of evolutiondepicted in the film. But there isan intermediate, musical level, asthe fundamental exploration ofman’s intelligence in the film isoutlined by the compositionalexploration of the fundamentalharmonic overtone series, a sourceof the music’s power.182

The study of film music hasbeen profoundly altered in the pastfifteen to twenty years. On a basiclevel, there is much more of it anda greater proportion of that outputis of a scholarly nature. The re-searchers examining film musicnow come from a broad spectrumof disciplines—film studies, lan-guages, music psychology,

musicology, women’s studies,cultural studies—and they bring tobear an impressive armory of ana-lytical approaches—various formsof musical analysis, film theory,narrative theory, semiotics, recep-tion and perception studies,audience-oriented criticism, gen-der criticism, and cultural studies;we might add the sort of kineticanalysis that Claudia Widgeryintroduced in her dissertation, anaspect of temporality and space infilm that is far too neglected. Theyare beginning to look at newerfilms, and in the main, they arebeginning to ask more sophisti-cated questions.

Historically, the scholarly lit-erature on film music has tendedtoward the theoretical. Certainlythere has been more detailedanalysis of specific films in thepast fifteen years, but the field stillseems somewhat unbalanced. Thediffuse nature of the literature hasled to a constant repetition of his-tory and theoretical approaches tothe subject. Although each versionis slightly varied, the tripartitetheory/aesthetics/analysis formathas grown a bit tired. It seems tome that we need to find fresh ap-proaches, and perhaps the simplecase study is a good place tostart—to build theories from theground up rather than from the

top down. Rather than postulatinghow film works, we might investi-gate how individual films work.

It would also seem that such amixed medium as film shoulddraw on interdisciplinary analysis.As we have noted, a number oftheoretical approaches have beenbrought into the study of filmmusic. All of these have some-thing to offer and no one will everbe able to master them all, but, forinstance, one does not have todigest all the various semiotictheories to draw out the manner inwhich meaning is created throughsign-symbol systems. Bringingvarious aspects to bear on a singleexample might bring that singleexample into sharper focus—evenif all we discover is contradictions.The friction between divergentpossibilities is frequently a verypowerful generator of meaning, asan ambiguous example allows formore possible interpretations andalmost always proves more excit-ing than an obvious, indisputableone. Although one might wellargue that many of these theoreti-cal constructs have been developedin other fields, film is itself a hy-brid and we may modify thesetheoretical constructs to our pur-poses.

Perhaps the greatest challengeto the study of film music is find-

Romanticism’s drive toward the individual“genius”.181Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 science fiction film is alocus classicus of the debate of original score vs.pre-composed music. A score by Alex North wasjettisoned by the director in favor of a“temp[orary] track” of music ranging fromRichard Strauss to Johann Strauss to GyörgiLigeti. One finds numerous references to thisscore throughout the literature, and opinions aresharply divided between those who claim thatpre-existing music can never fit the drama aswell as a specifically composed score and thosewho claim that the cultural meanings ingrainedin the vastly divergent styles of Strauss, Strauss,and Ligeti bring a depth to the film that newmusic from a single composer cannot approach.

Although North’s score clearly reflects qualitiesof the temp track, it has a homogeneity (North’spersonal voice as a composer) which, one couldargue, blunts the impact of the startling – andexhilarating – disjunctures of the film scoredwith the temp track.182Popular songs may also function in a similarway. In Mike Newell’s caustic theatrical comedyAn Awfully Big Adventure (1995), the dashingmid-fortyish actor P.L. O’Hara asks the gauchesixteen-year-old assistant stage manager StellaBradshaw to dance while a band plays the song“You Make Me Feel So Young” (Mack Gordon/Josef Myrow). On a sheerly musical level, thebouncy, cheery tune provides a kinetic counter-point as the camera lingers on the physicalbeauty and grace of Stella and O’Hara, who are

notably more fluid than the other dancers; it isalso an emotional counterpoint to the pain of thewatching Dotty, an older actress who has longbeen in love with O’Hara. Yet, if one recognizesthe unsung lyrics of the song, other levels ofmeaning are revealed. One can make the obvi-ous connection that O’Hara is attempting torecapture his youth (a recurring motif of thischaracter) by seducing Stella; but O’Hara’s suavesexual authority also clearly makes Stella feel “soyoung” and inexperienced, and the words arebitterly ironic for Dotty, who obviously feelsquite old compared to Stella. Still another layerof irony is added retrospectively, when O’Hararealizes at the end of the film that his lover,Stella, is his daughter, the product of a youthfulindiscretion.


ing a balance between technicalanalysis and meaningful interpre-tation. “Analysis” withoutinterpretation is a fairly sterileexercise; “interpretation” withoutproper analysis easily becomes anexercise in self-indulgence. Again,I think that a broad approach to arelatively narrow subject will tellus more than a narrow approachto a broad subject—we have hadmany of these. The next greatestchallenge is then presenting thatinterpretation in a meaningful way.Music, sound effects, dialogue,and visual images must all be inte-grated in some fashion; theemergent CD-ROM and DVDtechnology offers such capabilities,

although unfortunately at thistime hardware and software areexpensive and relatively scarce.One can project, however, that infive years or even less, the stan-dard method of presenting filmmusic scholarship will be withQuickTime film clips, MIDI musi-cal examples, and HyperTextanalysis.183

In his study of Satie’s playfulscore to the Dadaist/Surrealistfilm Entr’acte, Martin Marks givesus the sage advice not to take our-selves too seriously.184 Flexibilitymay be the most important ingre-dient we add to our analysis. Everyanalyst, like everyone who experi-

183An early attempt at such an integratedpresentation was Jon Newsom’s “DavidRaksin: A Composer in Hollywood” (QuarterlyJournal of the Library of Congress 35 (1978): 142-72). Newsom’s article included extensiveManvell & Huntley-type examples with musicand stills from the films and was accompaniedby two 7” plastic discs with musical examples– unfortunately, if understandably, when Iordered the article through Interlibrary Loan,the discs were not included.184“The Well-Furnished Film,” 268.

ences a film, is different and willbring something different to thetable. There will be many readingsthat are fairly straightforward, thatmost of us will accept, but therewill be others that are more idio-syncratic; some may interpret thesame film and the same score inradically different ways. KathrynKalinak and Royal S. Brown givequite divergent interpretations ofthe film Laura in their books, buteach is convincing in the contextof what the authors wish to say.There need not be only one pointof view; disagreement breeds dis-cussion, which is healthy. In thisway, we may build a literature.


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Miceli, Sergio. La Musica nel Film: Artee artigianato Fiesole. Firenze:Discanto, Distribuzione La NuovaItalia, 1981.

Pauli, Hanjörg. “Bernard HerrmannsMusik zu ‘Citizen Kane.’” Disso-nance 26 (November 1990):12-18.

Rodman, Ronald. Review of Film Music1 edited by Clifford McCarty.Indiana Theory Review 11, no. 1-2(1990): 173-79.

Rosen, Philip. “Adorno and FilmMusic: Theoretical Notes on Com-posing for the Films.” Yale FrenchStudies 60 (Fall 1980): 157-82.

Schmidt, Hans-Christian. “…ohnedurch die ordnende Instanz desIntellekts zu gehen. Reflexe aufdie vermutete Wirkung vonMusik im Spielfilm.” Musikpäda-gogische Forschung, Band 3 (1982):164-79.

Shattuck, Roger. “The Devil’s Dance:Stravinsky’s Corporal Imagina-tion.” In Confronting Stravinsky:Man, Modernist, and Musician. ed.Jann Pasler. Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1986.

Stilwell, Robynn. “Stravinsky andBalanchine: A Musico-Choreo-graphic Analysis of Agon.” Ph.D.diss., University of Michigan,1994.

Strauch, Hedemarie. “Der Einfluß vonMusik auf die filmischeWahrnehmung am Beispeil von L.Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou.” InMusikpädagogische Forschung 1. ed.Karl-Ernst Behne. Laaber: LaaberVerlag, 1980.

Sun, R.F. “The Esthetics of FilmMusic.” College Music Symposium19, no. 1 (1979): 216-20.

Tagg, Philip. “Analyzing PopularMusic: Theory, Method andPractice.” Popular Music 2 (1990):37-67.

van der Lek, Robbert. Diegetic Music inOpera and Film: A Similarity betweenTwo Genres of Drama Analysed inWorks by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991.

Voill, Martin A.F. “Science FictionFilm Music After Star Wars(1978).” Master’s thesis, LoyolaUniversity, 1990.

Wescott, Steven D. “Miklós Rózsa’sBen-Hur: The Musical DramaticFunction of the HollywoodLeitmotiv.” In Film Music I. ed.Clifford McCarty. New York:Garland Publishing, Inc., 1989.

Widgery, Claudia. “The Kinetic andTemporal Interaction of Musicand Film: Three Documentariesof 1930’s America.” Ph.D. diss.,University of Maryland, CollegePark, 1990.

Weis, Elisabeth. The Silent Scream:Alfred Hitchcock’s Sound Track.Rutherford, NJ: FairleighDickinson University Press, 1982.

Pedagogy

Bell, David A. Getting the Best Scorefor Your Film. Los Angeles:Silman-James Press, 1994.

Burt, George. The Art of Film Music.Boston: Northeastern UniversityPress, 1991.

Carlin, Dan. Music in Film and VideoProductions. Boston & London:Focal Press, 1991.

Gies, Stefan. “Musik im Film:Manipulation oder dramatischesMittel?” Musik und Bildung 18(September 1986): 762-70.

Grey, Andrea. Music for Film: PapersDelivered at the National Music forFilm Symposium. Sydney: Re-sources Unit, Australian FilmTelevision and Radio School,1985.

Kalinak, Kathryn. “Music to MyEars: A Structural Approach toTeaching the Soundtrack.”Indiana Theory Review 11, no.1-2(1990): 29-45.

Karlin, Fred. Listening to Movies: TheFilm Lover’s Guide to Film Music.New York: Schirmer, 1994.

Karlin, Fred and Rayburn Wright. OnThe Track: A Guide to Contempo-rary Film Scoring. New York:Schirmer, 1989.

Neumeyer, David. “Film MusicAnalysis and Pedagogy.” IndianaTheory Review 11, no.1-2 (1990):1-27.

Penn, William. “Music and Image: APedagogical Approach.” IndianaTheory Review 11, no. 1-2(1990):47-63.


Rieger, Eva. “’Spiel’ es Sam!’Filmmusikanalyse im Musikun-terricht dargestellt am SpielfilmCasablanca.” Musik und Bildung18 (September 1986): 771-78.

Rona, Jeffrey. Synchronization: FromReel to Reel – A Complete Guide forthe Synchronization of Audio, Film& Video. Milwaukee, WI: HalLeonard Publishing Corpora-tion, 1990.

Schmidt, Hans-Christian. “Didaktikder Filmmusik.” Musik undBildung 3 (1980): 158-61.

Schneider, Norbert Jürgen. “Wasmacht eigentlich ein Filmkom-ponist?” Musica 46, no. 2(1992): 79-82.

Skiles, Martin. Music Scoring for TVand Motion Pictures. Blue RidgeSummit, PA: Tab Books, 1976.

Willgress, Kathryn. “Film scores.”The Guardian (1993): 16-17.

Sociology and CulturalStudies

Andersen, Leslie N. “Women Filmand Television Composers in theUnited States.” In The MusicalWoman: An International Perspec-tive, vol.3, 1986-1990. ed. JudithLang Zaimont. New York:Greenwood Press, 1991.

Arnold, Alison. “Popular Film Songin India: A Case of Mass-MarketMusical Eclecticism.” PopularMusic 7, no. 2 (1988): 177-88.

Berg, Charles. “Cinema Sings theBlues.” Cinema Journal 17, no.2(1978): 1-12.

Condren, R. “Abstract for ‘Let ItBleed’, the Music of Goodfellas,”Popular Music and Society 15, no.3(1991): 131-36.

Covach, John. “The Rules and theUse of Specific Models inMusical Satire.” Indiana TheoryReview 11, no. 1-2 (1990): 119-44.

Faulkner, Robert R. Hollywood StudioMusicians: Their Work and Careersin the Recording Industry. Chicago:Aldine-Atherton, 1971.

———. Music on Demand: Composersand Careers in the Hollywood FilmIndustry. New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction Books, 1983.

Fregoso, Rosa Linda. The BronzeScreen: Chicana and Chicano FilmCulture. Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, 1993.

Gibson, Gloria J. “The Cultural Sig-nificance of Music to the BlackIndependent Filmmaker.” Ph.D.diss., Indiana University, 1987.

Hubbard, Preston. “SynchronizedSound and Movie-House Musi-cians.” American Music 3, no. 4(1985): 429-41.

Kloppenburg, Josef.“Musikkulturelle Vielfalt -Eindeutigkeit des Ausdrucks.Der ‘Unstil’ der Filmmusik.”Musikpädagogische Forschung,Band 4 (1983): 207-17.

Manuel, Peter. “Popular Music inIndia: 1901-86.” Popular Music 7,no.2 (1988): 157-76.

McLean, Adrienne L. “‘It’s only thatI do what I love and love what Ido’: Film noir and the MusicalWoman.” Cinema Journal 33, no.1(Fall 1993): 3-16.

Newsom, Jon. “David Raksin: AComposer in Hollywood.” Quar-terly Journal of the Library ofCongress 35 (1978): 142-72.

Reitinger, Douglas W. “Paint ItBlack: Rock Music and VietnamWar Film.” Journal of AmericanCulture 15, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 53-59.

Rosenberg, Neil V. “Image and Stereo-type: Bluegrass Sound Tracks.”American Music 1, no. 3 (1983):1-22.

Schubert, Gisela. “Hollywood’s‘grosse’ Musik (Beobachtungenon Musical-Filmen).” Musik-theorie 8, no. 1 (1993): 57-68.

Silber, Frederic. “The State of theArt: The Film Soundtrack asContemporary Music; Contem-porary Music as Film Score.”Fanfare 4, no. 1 (1980): 309-10.

Stilwell, Robynn. “Symbol, Narrativeand the Musics of Truly, Madly,Deeply.” Screen 38, no. 1 (Spring1997): 60-75.

Tambling, Jeremy. Opera, Ideology &Film. Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1987.

Turk, Edward Baron. “Deriding theVoice of Jeanette MacDonald:Notes on Psychoanalysis and theAmerican Film Musical.” CameraObscura: A Journal of Feminism andFilm Theory 25-26: 225-49.

Walser, Robert. Running With theDevil: Power, Gender and Madnessin Heavy Metal Music. Hanover:Wesleyan University Press,1993.


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———. 1982. …ohne durch die ordnende Instanz des Intellekts zu gehen. Reflexe auf die vermuteteWirkung von Musik im Spielfilm. Musikpädagogische Forschung, Band 3: 164-79.

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