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“Beam Me Up, Scottie!”: Leitmotifs, Musical Topos, and Ascription in the Sci-Fi Drama

Ron Rodman

in Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music

This chapter traces how television music imparts meaning from its borrowing of cinematic musical techniques, in particular, cinematic leitmotif. The televisual leitmotif, which often is derived from ... More

This chapter traces how television music imparts meaning from its borrowing of cinematic musical techniques, in particular, cinematic leitmotif. The televisual leitmotif, which often is derived from a program's theme music, is a special kind of musical topic that references aspects of the televisual narrative by denoting a specific character or situation in a program while also connoting traits of characters or moods of the narrative. This dual signification of a single musical idea draws from Charles Morris's conception of “ascription.” Because television programs are so ephemeral, musical meaning relies on the ability of the leitmotif to signify in several modes of signification and through extensive repetition of the leitmotif within a single episode as well as through weekly programming. To illustrate the ascriptive power of the leitmotif, the chapter provides an analysis of Gerald Fried's music to the episode “Shore Leave” from the original Star Trek series.Less

Eisler in America: The Film Music Project and Composing for the Films

Sally Bick

in Unsettled Scores: Politics, Hollywood, and the Film Music of Aaron Copland and Hanns Eisler

Eisler’s writings on Hollywood film music are interpreted from three different vantages: initially from afar as a committed Marxist in Europe; later as an émigré in New York at the New School for ... More

Eisler’s writings on Hollywood film music are interpreted from three different vantages: initially from afar as a committed Marxist in Europe; later as an émigré in New York at the New School for Social Research supported by the Rockefeller Foundation on a study about film music; and finally as a film composer working in Hollywood. The discussion traces this intellectual progression, which eventually culminates in Composing for the Films, a politically controversial and infamous book written in collaboration with Theodor Adorno. The discussion interprets the book and its political ideology and treats the thorny question of authorship, the various editions, and the book’s publication history, as well as Adorno’s problematic role in the creation of the work.Less

Women at the Pedals: Female Cinema Musicians during the Great War

Kendra Preston Leonard

in Over Here, Over There: Transatlantic Conversations on the Music of World War I

Women played many musical roles in the film industry. They accompanied silent films at the organ with existing repertoire, made new compositions of incidental music and songs, and improvised ... More

Women played many musical roles in the film industry. They accompanied silent films at the organ with existing repertoire, made new compositions of incidental music and songs, and improvised accompaniments at the keyboard; they constructed and disseminated cue sheets and educated their fellow musicians and the public in trade journals and newspapers; and they were inventors: Alice Smythe Jay created a mechanism to synchronize piano rolls with films, while Carrie Hetherington invented and promoted the Fotoplayer. In World War I, with men serving abroad, women were increasingly vital to the industry, advancing the cause of professional women throughout the music industry.Less

Introduction: Who is Anthony Gonsalves?

Gregory D. Booth

in Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai's Film Studios

This chapter presents a profile of Anthony Gonsalves, an Indian composer and music teacher. Gonsalves was born in 1927 in the Goan village of Majorda and he was the son of a choirmaster attached to ... More

This chapter presents a profile of Anthony Gonsalves, an Indian composer and music teacher. Gonsalves was born in 1927 in the Goan village of Majorda and he was the son of a choirmaster attached to the local Roman Catholic church, Mäe de Deus. His father trained him in European classical music and he worked in the film-music industry from 1943 to 1965. He has arranged and composed for a long and distinguished list of music directors including Shyam Sunder, S. D. Burman and Madan Mohan.Less

Origins, Training, and “Joining the Line”

Gregory D. Booth

in Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai's Film Studios

This chapter examines the social identities of the musicians in the film industry in Mumbai, India and the pathways by which they came to be part of this musical-professional group. It analyzes the ... More

This chapter examines the social identities of the musicians in the film industry in Mumbai, India and the pathways by which they came to be part of this musical-professional group. It analyzes the sources, natures, and processes of musical training of those who joined the film-music industry. It suggests that the backgrounds of musicians who joined the film sector reflect the film industry's place within the broader national context and the different representations of cultural identity in the industry reflect the variability of representation in the two different levels of music production in Mumbai.Less

Issues of Style, Genre, and Value in Mumbai Film Music

Gregory D. Booth

in Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai's Film Studios

This chapter examines the issues on value, genre and style in the film-music industry in Mumbai, India. It considers the distinctive notions and patterns of style and genre construction in film music ... More

This chapter examines the issues on value, genre and style in the film-music industry in Mumbai, India. It considers the distinctive notions and patterns of style and genre construction in film music and explores film musicians' representations of and relationships with musical style. It suggests that the cultural dominance of film music in India may have produced a similar form of conceptual myopia among its listeners and practitioners.Less

New Opportunities in Film: Korngold and Warner Bros.

Ben Winters

in Korngold and His World

This chapter sketches an overview of Erich Korngold's film output that draws attention to the variety of scenarios for which he provided music. It also discusses the kinds of musical gestures and ... More

This chapter sketches an overview of Erich Korngold's film output that draws attention to the variety of scenarios for which he provided music. It also discusses the kinds of musical gestures and techniques he used to help him meet their dramatic demands. In many ways these techniques represent a significant expansion from the range demonstrated by his operatic output; in that sense Korngold's Hollywood career was not a regression from the culturally engaged world of opera but represented an opportunity to develop his gifts as a musical dramatist. After a brief summary of Korngold's working practices, the chapter explores the sound of his scores—including his use of particular orchestral colors—and his ability to score a variety of narrative scenarios. It then outlines some aspects of his approach to scoring, including his thematic technique.Less

“Without Music, I Would Be Lost”: Scorsese, Goodfellas, and a New Soundtrack Practice

Julie Hubbert

in Popular Music and the New Auteur: Visionary Filmmakers after MTV

The centrality of music in the methodology of Martin Scorsese is most famously apparent in his extensive oeuvre of music-related documentaries. However, his characteristic synthesis of carefully ... More

The centrality of music in the methodology of Martin Scorsese is most famously apparent in his extensive oeuvre of music-related documentaries. However, his characteristic synthesis of carefully chosen soundtracks, jarring variations in both visual and auditory pacing, and definitive subtext communicated throughcarefully chosen musical selections features perhaps most prominently inhis narrative films. Informedby the time-honored concepts of Direct Cinema and cinémavéritéas well as the music videos that dominated popular culture throughout his career, Scorsese worked to develop a style that was at once classic and novel. He used unique juxtapositions of moving images and both diegetic and non-diegetic music to create multilayered narratives that drew onaesthetic conventions from earlier decades butwere progressive in concept. This chapter explores how Scorsese’s simultaneous rejection of growing commercial influences in cinema and espousal of narrative devices beyond dialogue and the physical scene gave rise to a distinctive aesthetic that amounted to his acceptance of cinematicmodernity on his own terms.Less

Background Stories

Sally Bick

in Unsettled Scores: Politics, Hollywood, and the Film Music of Aaron Copland and Hanns Eisler

This chapter introduces the political landscape caused by World War I, the crisis in capitalism, the Great Depression, and the Popular Front, crises that would shape Copland’s and Eisler’s individual ... More

This chapter introduces the political landscape caused by World War I, the crisis in capitalism, the Great Depression, and the Popular Front, crises that would shape Copland’s and Eisler’s individual musical and political perspectives. Their political commitment led them to embrace film music and to seek employment in Hollywood. Their decisions took place within the debates regarding the aesthetic and political values of high and low culture as exemplified by culture critic Gilbert Seldes (The Seven Lively Arts), George Antheil, and others. The chapter also discusses Hollywood as an industrial enterprise and the conditions that composers like Copland and Eisler faced working in the movie capital.Less

Changing Structures in the Mumbai Film Industry

Gregory D. Booth

in Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai's Film Studios

This chapter examines the changing structures of the film industry in Mumbai, India. It proposes a historical model in which overlapping cultural and industrial systems resulted in changes in ... More

This chapter examines the changing structures of the film industry in Mumbai, India. It proposes a historical model in which overlapping cultural and industrial systems resulted in changes in film-music production and the exploitation of music for maximum profit. It suggests that the gradual and seamless process of change in the Mumbai film industry consists of three rough historical periods. These include Studio Period from 1935 to 1950, Old Bollywood from 1950 to 1998 and New Bollywood from 1998 to the present.Less

Music and memory in film and other multimedia: The Casablanca effect

Berthold Hoeckner and Howard C. Nusbaum

in The Psychology of Music in Multimedia

This chapter explores the artistic representation and empirical study of audiovisual memory in cinema, with a specific focus on memory induced by music. The first section reviews how flashbacks have ... More

This chapter explores the artistic representation and empirical study of audiovisual memory in cinema, with a specific focus on memory induced by music. The first section reviews how flashbacks have been used by directors to structure filmic narration and to visualize the recollection of characters. The second section examines how different types of visual memory are cued by music in movies. In cinematic representations of episodic memory, for example, characters may associate music with past events (as in the film Casablanca). Based on musical schemas formed by cultural conventions, musical underscoring relies on semantic and implicit memory to help audiences in the perception and understanding of screen content. The third section surveys empirical studies of musical memory effects in film and multimedia, showing how affective priming through musical underscoring affects the remembrance of film events, product recall in advertisement, the comprehension of the narrative, or character perception.Less

Musicians and Technology in the Mumbai Film-Music Industry

Gregory D. Booth

in Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai's Film Studios

This chapter examines the technologies and the changing “limits of the possible” under which film musicians, recording engineers, music directors and film producers in Mumbai, India operated. It ... More

This chapter examines the technologies and the changing “limits of the possible” under which film musicians, recording engineers, music directors and film producers in Mumbai, India operated. It suggests that despite the limitations of technology there were instances when Mumbai musicians and engineers exceeded the technological limitations of their environment. In this way, technology has been the ground on which the professional and social structures of daily life were constructed and the primary determinant in a determinist history of this music culture.Less

Roles, Relations, and the Creative Process

Gregory D. Booth

in Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai's Film Studios

This chapter examines the musical, economic, and social relationships of the creative process that took place in the world of music rooms, music directors, arrangers, assistants and sitting musicians ... More

This chapter examines the musical, economic, and social relationships of the creative process that took place in the world of music rooms, music directors, arrangers, assistants and sitting musicians in the film-music industry in Mumbai, India. It explores the workshops, professional roles and the organization of the processes involved in the local musicians' composition of about nineteen songs a week during the last years of the British rule through the early years of the 21st century. It suggests that sitting musicians were the main source of the songs for the Hindi cinema.Less

The role of music communication in cinema

Scott D. Lipscomb and David E. Tolchinsky

in Musical Communication

This chapter explores musical communication in a cinematic context. It presents empirical and theoretical models of film music perception and the role of music in film. It illustrates some of the ... More

This chapter explores musical communication in a cinematic context. It presents empirical and theoretical models of film music perception and the role of music in film. It illustrates some of the ways in which a film's soundtrack can not only contribute towards but also expand upon the meaning of a film's narrative, and on what it communicates to the audience.Less

Universal language, local accent: Music and song in the early talking film

Geoff Brown

in The Translation of Films, 1900-1950

With dialogue in early talkies complicating international product exchange, the film industry cherished the notion of music as a ‘universal language’. But this music required degrees of translation, ... More

With dialogue in early talkies complicating international product exchange, the film industry cherished the notion of music as a ‘universal language’. But this music required degrees of translation, both in the literal textual sense and in the matter of adapting ‘foreign’ customs, cultural and social, and musical styles. This chapter explores the issues principally through case studies of five key singing stars of early American and European sound films: Al Jolson, Maurice Chevalier, Carlos Gardel, Marlene Dietrich, and Richard Tauber. German producer Erich Pommer’s goal of combining universal appeal and nationalistic attractions, most evident in the multilingual Congress Dances, is also explored. After the mid-1930s, film music’s universal language significantly changed in response to technical developments, Hollywood’s solidified world power, and its development of a pervasive orchestral soundtrack style partly shaped by exiled European composers. European elements and local accents remained, but were now subsumed in a global American product.Less

Some Experiences in Film Music

Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Daniel Goldmark (ed.)

in Korngold and His World

This chapter provides some insight into the steep learning curve Erich Korngold faced when he first arrived in Hollywood. Korngold points out that, though no one questioned his abilities as a ... More

This chapter provides some insight into the steep learning curve Erich Korngold faced when he first arrived in Hollywood. Korngold points out that, though no one questioned his abilities as a composer for the stage and concert hall, he essentially knew nothing about the integration of music into film from a technical standpoint. He quickly mentions the composer's “most hated rival,” the film's dialogue, as being distracting to the creation of the score, not to mention the sound effects, both of which typically end up dominating the music in traditional Hollywood soundtracks. As a composer of opera and operetta, Korngold had much experience in writing music that would express and articulate drama that was not yet realized. Not so with cinema, in which Korngold received a largely completed record of a performance—the film itself—for which he would have to create a musical illustration of what he saw. No surprise, then, that he extols the virtues of writing music without needing to be tethered constantly to the restrictions of a click track or even the finished film.Less

Soundtracks and Scores

Todd Decker

in Hymns for the Fallen: Combat Movie Music and Sound after Vietnam

This chapter describes the large-scale narrative and musical patterns of serious Hollywood combat films made after Vietnam. Two larger narrative shapes are identified: two-part forms (such as ... More

This chapter describes the large-scale narrative and musical patterns of serious Hollywood combat films made after Vietnam. Two larger narrative shapes are identified: two-part forms (such as training camp followed by battlefield) and alternating action-reflection forms. Then, the overall shape and content of combat film musical scores are described in a comparative context. Four strategies for the use of music in war films are described: films with very little music of any sort, films which alternate between scored and unscored scenes (Saving Private Ryan), music-laden films with music noticeably present much of the time (Born on the Fourth of July), and films with almost continuous music. The frequently blurry distinctions between sound effects and music, the role of popular music (Full Metal Jacket), the importance of diegetic silence, the ambiguous authorship of some film scores (Apocalypse Now, The Hurt Locker), and the shifting nature of the soundtrack mix are also considered.Less