Theorists of the soundtrack have helped us understand how the voice and music in the cinema impact a spectator's experience. James Buhler and Hannah Lewis edit in-depth essays from many of film music's most influential scholars in order to explore fascinating issues around vococentrism, the voice in cinema, and music’s role in the integrated soundtrack.The collection is divided into four sections. The first explores historical approaches to technology in the silent film, French cin...

Through the rise and fall of the Hollywood studio system, David O. Selznick reigned as Hollywood's preeminent producer. His reputation depended in large part on music. The orchestral cacophony of King Kong, the pulsing electronic sonorities of Spellbound, and the Tara theme from Gone with the Wind made music a distinguishing feature of the Selznick experience. By flaunting music's role in film and overseeing its distribution through sheet music, concerts, radio b...

Sound has always been an integral component of the moviegoing experience. Even during the so-called “silent era,” motion pictures were regularly accompanied by live music, lectures, and sound effects. Today, whether we listen to movies in booming Dolby theaters or on tiny laptop speakers, sonic elements hold our attention and guide our emotional responses. Yet few of us are fully aware of the tremendous collaborative work, involving both artistry and technical wizardry, required to create ...

Upon his arrival in Hollywood, Alfred Hitchcock began work on his first American film, an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s best-selling novel. Produced by David O. Selznick and featuring compelling performances by Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson, Rebecca became one of Hitchcock’s most successful films. It was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and received the Oscar for Best Picture, the only Hitchcock work to be so honored. Without question, one of the reasons for t...

This collection of interviews with Hollywood composers offers the most intimate look ever at the process of writing music for the movies. From getting started in the business to recording the soundtrack, from choosing a musical style to collaborating with directors, including Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, the Coen brothers, Terry Gilliam, Kenneth Branagh, and Ken Russell, from learning to deal with editing to writing with time-sensitive precision, the leading practitioners in the field...

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 book’s 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 ...

David Morrell isnt only an acclaimed thriller author. Hes also a former professor of American Studies who writes in-depth profiles about music and film legends.Frank Sinatra. Nat “King” Cole. Ella Fitzgerald. Judy Garland. Peggy Lee. Rosemary Cloony. Linda Ronstadt. No matter their various styles, these and other iconic popular singers had one thing in common—much of their best work was arranged by Nelson Riddle, whose renown within the world of arrangers rivaled that of the legends for wh...

Drawing on the extraordinary collection of The Library of Congress, one of the greatest repositories for silent film and memorabilia, Peter Kobel has created the definitive visual history of silent film. From its birth in the 1890s, with the earliest narrative shorts, through the brilliant full-length features of the 1920s, Silent Movies captures the greatest directors and actors and their immortal films.Silent Movies also looks at the technology of early film, the...

This essay represents the first organic study about Jerry Goldsmith (1929-2004), emblematic American film composer in the second half of the 20th century. Goldsmith was also a brilliant conductor. He conducted his music, but also of other composers, such as those of his mentor Alex North. He has worked with several great orchestras, first of all the London Symphony Orchestra. His personality is framed within the cinematic production system in which he worked on about fifty years, collabora...

A composer and lyricist of enormous innovation and influence, Marc Blitzstein remains one of the most versatile and fascinating figures in the history of American music, his creative output running the gamut from films scores and Broadway operas to art songs and chamber pieces. A prominent leftist and social maverick, Blitzstein constantly pushed the boundaries of convention in mid-century America in both his work and his life. Award-winning music historian Howard Pollack's new biography c...

"A wonderfully coherent, comprehensive, groundbreaking, and thoroughly engaging study" of how the director of Psycho and The Birds used music in his films (Sidney Gottlieb, editor of Hitchcock on Hitchcock).Alfred Hitchcock employed more musical styles and techniques than any film director in history, from Marlene Dietrich singing Cole Porter in Stage Fright to the revolutionary electronic soundtrack of The Birds. Many o...

Many believe Max Steiner's score for King Kong (1933) was the first important attempt at integrating background music into sound film, but a closer look at the industry's early sound era (1926–1934) reveals a more extended and fascinating story. Viewing more than two hundred films from the period, Michael Slowik launches the first comprehensive study of a long-neglected phase in Hollywood's initial development, recasting the history of film sound and its relationship to the "Golde...