Film Music: A History [Paperback]

Film Music: A History explains the development of film music by considering large-scale aesthetic trends and structural developments alongside socioeconomic, technological, cultural, and philosophical circumstances.

The books four large parts are given over to Music and the Silent Film (1894--1927), Music and the Early Sound Film (1895--1933), Music in the Classical-Style Hollywood Film (1933--1960), and Film Music in the Post-Classic Period (1958--2008). Whereas most treatments of the subject are simply chronicles of great film scores and their composers, this book offers a genuine history of film music in terms of societal changes and technological and economic developments within the film industry. Instead of celebrating film-music masterpieces, it dealslogically and thoroughlywith the complex machine whose smooth running allowed those occasional masterpieces to happen and whose periodic adjustments prompted the large-scale twists and turns in film musics path.

Preface  1. Introduction  Part One: Music and the Silent Film (18941927)  2. Origins, 18941905  3. The Nickelodeon, 19051915  4. Feature Films, 19151927  Part Two: Music and the Early Sound Film (1894-1933)  5. The Long Advent of Sound, 1894-1926  6. Vitaphone and Movietone, 1926-8  7. Hollywoods Early Sound Films, 1928-33  Part Three: Music in the Classic-Style Hollywood Film (1933-60)  8. The Golden Age of Film Music, 1933-49  9. Postwar Innovations and the Struggle for Survival, 1949-58  Part Four: Film Music in the Post-Classic Period (1958-2008)  10. A New Wave of Film Music, 1958-78  11. EclecticilÓ.