Film Music: A Very Short Introduction

by Kathryn Kalinak Narrated by Amy Rubinate

Overview

Years before synchronized sound became the norm, projected moving images were shown to musical accompaniment, whether performed by a lone piano player or a hundred-piece orchestra. Today film music has become its own industry, indispensable to the marketability of movies around the world.



Film Music: A Very Short Introduction is a compact, lucid, and thoroughly engaging overview written by one of the leading authorities on the subject. Kathryn Kalinak introduces listeners not only to important composers and musical styles but also to modern theoretical concepts about how and why film music works. Key collaborations between directors and composers come under scrutiny, as do the oft-neglected practices of the silent film era. She also explores differences between original film scores and compilation soundtracks that cull music from pre-existing sources.



As Kalinak points out, film music can do many things, from establishing mood and setting to clarifying plot points and creating emotions that are only dimly realized in the images. This book illuminates the many ways it accomplishes those tasks and will have its listeners thinking a bit more deeply and critically the next time they sit in a darkened movie theater and music suddenly swells as the action unfolds onscreen.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Film Music is hands down the most useful introduction to film music available. Students and general readers alike will appreciate this clear, comprehensive, short book, one of the first to approach music and cinema beyond the frame of western Europe and the U.S. Kalinak's scholarship is dazzling, her prose compelling. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the function, history, theory and practice of music in the movies."—Caryl Flinn, author of Brass Diva and Strains of Utopia

"Kathryn Kalinak's Film Music is an outstanding achievement. It is extremely concise and systematic yet still manages to engage principal issues with a wide range of useful examples, and explain detailed history with worldwide coverage. This is more than a basic primer, however, it is an excellent overview of the field of film music, while being clearly-written and accessible to both students and enthusiasts alike."—Dr. K. J. Donnelly, author of British Film Music and Film Musicals and The Spectre of Sound: Film and Television Music

"The appropriately titled Film Music: A Very Short Introduction is to be recommended as a very first introduction to the topic...[The author's] concise depiction, which does not limit itself to the Anglo-American realm, proves to be a successful initiation to the most essential topics of this subject area." - Song and Popular Culture

Product Details

BN ID:	2940176016581
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	06/01/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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