We'll Meet Again: Musical Design in the Films of Stanley Kubrick

by Kate McQuiston

Overview

Unique and often startling encounters between music and the moving image in the films of Stanley Kubrick are trademarks of his style; witness the powerful effects of Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" in 2001: A Space Odyssey and of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in A Clockwork Orange, each excerpt vetted by Kubrick himself. We'll Meet Again argues that, for Kubrick, music is neither post-production afterthought nor background nor incidental, but instead is core to films' effects and meanings. The book first identifies the building blocks in Kubrick's sonic world and illuminates the ways in which Kubrick uses them to support his characters and to define character relationships. It then delves into the effects of Kubrick's signature musical techniques, including the use of texture, form, and inscription to render and reinforce psychological ideas and spectator responses. Finally it presents case studies that show how the history of the music plays a vital and dynamic role for the films. As a whole, the book locates Kubrick as a force in music reception history by examining the relationship between his musical choices and popular culture, and reveals the foundational role of music in his filmmaking.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199767663
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/22/2013
Series:	Oxford Music / Media
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Kate McQuiston is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction

PART I THE ANATOMY OF THE KUBRICK SOUNDSCAPE
1 Language, Lyrics, Voice and Sound
2 Drawing Lines and Crossing Borders: Musical Climates, the Diegetic-Nondiegetic Border and
Voice-Over Narration

PART II MUSIC-CINEMATIC TOPICS
3 Mysterious Music with Invisible Edges and The Emergence of Musical Form in The Shining
4 Reimagining Music in Barry Lyndon
5 The Mutual Inscription of Music and Drama

PART III WE'VE MET BEFORE: FAMILIAR PIECES AND THEIR HISTORIES
6 Evolution and Amnesia in the Soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey
7 Musical Dialectics and The More Troublesome Beethoven
8 Kubrick's Spin on Max Ophüls and the Ineluctable Waltz

Coda
Select Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Kate McQuiston 's We'll Meet Again: Musical Design in the Films of Stanley Kubrick stands as a conversation, informative yet melodic, stimulating and poetic. McQuiston engages with Kubrick's work on multiple levels, including those of technical production, artistic conviction, and aesthetic experience, honoring each film as an intricate piece of art and resisting mundane deconstruction...McQuiston accomplishes deeply exploratory insights into one of cinema's most complex and stunning bodies of work, forges new and important pathways in connecting musical design technically and artistically in cinema, and develops a useful syntax for discussing the potent interaction of the two." —Caitlin Zera, "Take Two", Film Matters

"Her model for thorough breakdowns of scene and soundscape can very easily be viewed as a precedent by which the musical design of any film is just as ripe for such intensive discourse. While the world might always be in shortage of auteurs as effectively meticulous as Kubrick, it should never mean that musical direction, be it a famous song or utter silence, should be left without just as much examination and analysis as the filmed image." —Matt Herzog, "Take Two", Film Matters

"For years people have been discussing these films' ever-fascinating layers of narrative and imagery. Now McQuiston, fresh from time spent at the recently-opened Kubrick archives in London, joins the conversation with brilliant commentary on the films' sound and music. Kubrick fans will love this book." - James Wierzbicki, author of "IFilm Music: A History"R

"No director was more attentive to music than Stanley Kubrick. And now, here is a thoroughly researched, gracefully written book that does justice to what Kubrick achieved with his music. McQuiston has made an essential contribution to the literature on music and cinema." — Krin Gabbard, author of Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture

"This book tackles the musical aesthetic and practice of one of the most influential filmmakers in the post-classical period. The level of archival detail it engages in is impressive and stands to revise not just our understanding of Kubrick's films but the definition of auteurism and soundtrack compilation practice since the 1960s." - Julie Hubbert, Associate Professor of Music, University of South Carolina

"We'll Meet Again is aimed at the serious admirer of Kubrick's films but delivered in a style that will be accessible to the undergraduate."—Journal of the Society for American Music

From the Publisher