Unheard Possibilities: Reappraising Classical Film Music Scoring and Analysis
Résumé
Comprised of eight articles that focus on mainstream and even independent cinema from the silent era to the 21st century, this issue explores the creative possibilities of music in US-American cinema and aims to contribute to a renewal of methodological perspectives. In a day and age when film music and sound studies are increasingly paying attention to the history, technique and technology of sound film and sound design, the articles refocus attention on music itself in order to assess the continued relevance of the analytical tools developed in the classical studies of film music, in particular those developed by the Michel Chion-Claudia Gorbman-Karthyn Kalinak trio. The articles demonstrate the continued applicability of their tools, notably when it comes to analyzing a score’s structure or the relationship between music and image. But taken as a whole, they also single out areas that require more critical attention, including the praxis of creating film music itself and its central role in the filmmaking process, as well as the central role of silence in a film music score. The authors also emphasize that music is steeped in ideology and that its non-verbal quality endows it with political power. As a whole, the issue suggests that music in US-American cinema remains constantly open to invention and experimentation; classical Hollywood music refers more to a period than to an actual style or set of conventions.