Metafilm Music in Jean-Luc Godard's Cinema

by Michael Baumgartner

Overview

Hailed as a leading innovator of visual montage, unique storytelling style, and ground-breaking cinematography, Jean-Luc Godard is a prominent pioneer in sculpting complex soundtracks altering the familiar relationship between sound and image, but his achievements in sound have been largely overlooked. Such a lacuna in the extensive research on Godard's work is unfortunate, as Godard's lifelong preoccupation of exploring self-reflexively all aspects of filmmaking particularly affects film music. With the novel approach of metafilm music, extrapolated from Jean-Luc Godard's oeuvre, this book not only closes up a crucial gap in Godard research, but also offers detailed analyses of the music as metafilm music in Contempt, Alphaville, Band of Outsiders, Pierrot le fou, First Name: Carmen, Histoire(s) du cinéma, among other films and video productions. The innovative scholarly concept of metafilm music, enriching the burgeoning field of music in audio-visual media, describes how Godard thinks about film music with film music. This book thus provides a thorough examination of Godard's self-reflexive approach to film music which has resulted in a lifelong creation of multi-layered soundtracks pushing the envelope of film music and sound to the limit.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190497156
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/24/2022
Series:	Oxford Music / Media
Pages:	520
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.50(h) x 1.26(d)

About the Author

Michael Baumgartner teaches at Cleveland State University. His research focuses on music in relation to cinema, theater, and visual arts, music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the exploration of the narrative capacity of music. He is the author of the monograph Exilierte Göttinnen: Frauenstatuen im Bühnenwerk von Kurt Weill, Thea Musgrave und Othmar Schoeck (2012) and the co-editor of the three anthologies Music, Collective Memory, Trauma, and Nostalgia in European Cinema after the Second World War; Music, Ideology, Commerce, and Popular Cinema in Europe: 1940s to 1980s; and Music, Process, Narration, and Art Cinema in Europe: 1940s to 1980s (2020-22).

Table of Contents

Introduction: For Ever Metafilm Music

PART I: METAFILM MUSIC, FRAGMENTATION, REPETITION, AND QUOTATION
1. Gapped Music in Godard's 1960s Films: Dissection of the Musical Unity as a Self-Reflexive Exercise
2. Leitmotif Technique Revisited: Indexical Function of Multiply Repeated Musical Fragments in Godard's 1960s Films as Manifestations of Metafilm Music
3. The Undoing of the Leitmotif Technique: Quotation, Fragmentation, and Repetition in Godard's 1960s Films with Beethoven, Schumann, and Pseudo-Bach as Metafilm Music
4. Quoting Popular Songs: Chanson and Canzone as Metafilm Music in Godard's Work

PART II: METAFILM MUSIC AND GENRE REFERENCE
5. Referencing Silent Film Music: Metafilm Music, Mise en Scène, Acting, and Storytelling
6. Referencing Music-Specific Genres and Genre-Specific Music: Metafilm Music, "Cinéma-en-kit" Musical, and Pastiched Film Noir Music
7. Referencing Film Music as a Genre: Metafilm Music, Prototypes of Film Music as Genre Mash-Up, and Melodramatic Commutation

PART III: METAFILM MUSIC, MUSIC MAKING, AND FILMMAKING
8. Music-Making as Metaphor for Filmmaking I: Metafilm Music in One Plus One and Prénom: Carmen
9. Music-Making as Metaphor for Filmmaking II: Metafilm Music in Soigne ta droite (Une place sur la terre)

Conclusion: Two or Three Things I Know about Metafilm Music(s)
Notes Works Cited
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Brilliantly informed and boldly written, this magisterial study gets to the heart of Godard's pioneering, multilayered practice of 'metafilm music'. Baumgartner reveals in rich and fascinating detail the remarkable consistency of Godard's self-reflexive musical strategies and their significance for understanding both the ontology of film music and the critical challenges of audioviewing." — James S. Williams, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

From the Publisher