Meaning and Interpretation of Music in Cinema [Hardcover]

By exploring the relationship between music and the moving image in film narrative, David Neumeyer shows that film music is not conceptually separate from sound or dialogue, but that all three are manipulated and continually interact in the larger acoustical world of the sound track. In a medium in which the image has traditionally trumped sound, Neumeyer turns our attention to the voice as the mechanism through which narrative (dialog, speech) and sound (sound effects, music) come together. Complemented by music examples, illustrations, and contributions by James Buhler, Meaning and Interpretation of Music in Cinema is the capstone of Neumeyers 25-year project in the analysis and interpretation of music in film.

David Neumeyers lively engagement with an entire generation of multi-disciplinary scholars yields robust frameworks for understanding how music works in 'verbocentric' narrative film. Meaning and Interpretation of Music in Cinema is a work of great erudition, clarity, precision, and authority.

A History of Film Music by Mervyn Cooke (Cambridge University Press, 2008). ISBN 9780521010481.

Preface and Acknowledgments
Part 1: Meaning and Interpretation
1. Music in the Vococentric Cinema
2. Tools for Analysis and Interpretation
Part 2: Music in the Mix: Casablanca
by David Neumeyer and James Buhler
3. Acoustic Stylization: The Films Sound World
4. Music and Utopia: A Reading of the Reunion Scene
5. The Reunion Scenes Contexts
Part 3: Topics and Tropes: Two Preludes by Bach
6. Performers Onscreen
7. Underscore: Four Studies of the Prelude in C Major
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Neumeyer . . . expands his significant contribution to film music studies with this magisterial volume. . . . Essential.

The book is cogently (even, at times, beautifully) written and is well supported by frame stills, figures, musical examples and analytical sketches. To benefit fully from the analyses, the book demands a levellÃ4