A History of Film Music

From silent cinema to the modern Hollywood blockbuster, this volume provides a comprehensive and engaging overview of the major trends in the history of film music. The first study of film scoring to present a genuinely international perspective, it is ideal for both students and film enthusiasts alike.

CONTENIDO

List of illustrations
Preface and acknowledgements

1. The "silent" cinema
- Why sound?
- Why music?
- The birth of film music
- Categories of film music
- Camille Saint-Saëns and film d'art
- Cue sheets and anthologies
- Venues and ensembles
- Photoplayers and cinema organs
- Music for silent epics
- Charlie Chaplin and music for comedies
- Early film music in Europe and the Soviet Union
- Postlude: the silent-film revival

2. Sound on track
- A sound debate
- New technology
- Photographing sound
- Animated sound
- Creative possibilities

3. Hollywood's Golden Age: narrative cinema and the classical film score
- The studio system
- Practicalities
- Style
- Wagner and the filmic leitmotif
- Structure
- Max Steiner
- Erich Wolfgang Korngold
- Franz Waxman: horror and sophistication
- Alfred Newman
- Miklós Rózsa, Roy Webb and David Raksin: film noir and the music of psycological drama
- Dimitri Tiomkin and others
- Aaron Copland and the sounds of America

4. Stage and screen
- Opera on film
- Film in opera; opera in film
- The film musical
- Scoring Shakespeare

5. The mainstream divides: post-war horizons in Hollywood
- The epic and the intimate
- Modernism
- Bernard Hermann: the composer as auteur
- Jazz and its influence

6. "Never let it be mediocre": film music in the United Kingdom
- Visitors from abroad
- Ralph Vaughan Williams
- Brian Easdale, William Alwyn and Benjamin Frankel
- William Walton and Malcolm Arnold
- Generic (re)takes: horror and comedy
- End of an era

7. Defectors to television
The documentary film
- Hanns Eisler
- Documentaries in the United States
- Information films in the United Kingdom
- The movies at war: reportage and propaganda
- Theatrical documentaries for the modern age
Animation
- Cartoon music in the silent era
- Walt Disney and the animated musical
- Warner Bros. and MGM: comic shorts
- Classical music
- Migration to the small screen
- Experimental animation
- Animation in Europe

8. Film music in France
- Symphony and song
- The 1930s: Maurice Jaubert and Joseph Kosma
- Georges Auric and others
- Nouvelle vague
- Jean-Luc Godard
- François Truffaut
- French modernism
- At home and abroad
- Poles apart: Krzysztof Kieslowski and Zbigniew Preisner

9. Global highlights
Early sound films in the Soviet Ünion
- Dmitri Shostakovich
- Vsevolod Pudovkin and Yuri Shaporin
- Sergei Eisenstein and Sergei Prokofiev
India: Bollywood and beyond
- Early Indian cinema
- Successes abroad: Ravi Shankar and Satyajit Ray
- Modern commercial cinema
From Italy to little Italy
- Federico Fellini, Nino Rota and the circus of life
- Ennio Morricone and the spaghetti western: eccentricity and populism
- Italian abroad
Japan
- Traditional elements in silent and early sound films
- The films of Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa
- Toru Takemitsu
- Modern composers, modern genres

10. Popular music in the cinema
- Music of youth and race
- Title songs and interpolated songs
- Compilation scores and original song scores
- Synergistic marketing
- Pop (stars) in performance

11. Classical music in the cinema
- Romantic concerto and war film
- Classical biopics and milieu films
- Period, nationality, class
- Stanley Kubrick
- Back to Bach

12. State to the art: film music since the New Hollywood
- John Williams and the new symphhonism
- Electronics, sound technology and recording
- Pop scoring, dual tracking and the modern soundtrack album
- Minimalism
- Modern auteurs: Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch
- The modern mainstream
- The global and the glocal

Bibliography
Index of film titles
General index