Music for the Flickering Image: American Film Scores

Abstract

Many moviegoers-evenprofessional musicianscome out of the theatre praising the leading lady, the lavish costuming, the color photography, and the plot but are totally unaware of the music in the film. Some musicians even look down on film music as unworthy of their time and attention, just as filmmakers seldom consider the composer an essential member of the film team, bringing him or her in after the film has been completed.Music is, however, a major component of film.The author is currently working with the New York-based group Sounds out of Silent Spaces, under the sponsorship of the New York State Council for the Arts, on a project in group-improvised composition. She has taught and written about film music.This has been so ever since the so-called "silent era." There was an early realization that film, in itself a "cold" medium, needed the warmth that music alone can provide. With few exceptions, every style or technique of concert music has been used in film-including nineteenth-century romanticism, Debussyesque impressionism, jazz, electronic sound, computer music, and rock. This fact and the place of film in American culture are reasons that music educators should be familiar with the music of film. Functions of film musicHere are some of the tasks that music can accomplish in a film.(1) It can set a mood. This is probably its most obvious function. In romantic dramas, such as Now, Voyager (1942), lush melodies on the violin accompany

�It might have been sophisticated film music�: The role of the orchestra in stage and screen versions of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

“…High grace notes and electronic sounds suggest birdcalls before Johanna's 'Green Finch and Linnet Bird'. Sondheim employs the cinematic scoring technique of 'Mickey Mousing', whereby music synchronizes sound with action (Newlin 1977). One example occurs after 'Epiphany', an intense moment where Todd vows to get his vengeance.…”

The Roles of Music in Films

“…Siu-Lan Tan's exploration of music's impact on character perception unveils three pivotal dimensions: the audience's perception of a character's motivational and emotional states, their visualization of a character's role in a scene, and their understanding of the character's interpersonal dynamics [2]. For example, as Dika Newlin featured in her research on Alfred Hitchcock's cinematic masterpiece Vertigo (1958), Hitchcock masterfully incorporated music and visuals to heighten the suspense in the opening sequence to mold the character's inner feelings [3]. In this scene, a detective prepares to pursue a suspect across a rooftop, but his fear of heights Journal of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences…”

“…Music also contributes to shaping the audience's anticipation of forthcoming developments in the film's narrative [5]. An experiment outlined by Boltz et al underscores this point by demonstrating how music, or its absence, concurrently presented with film, can influence the audience's perception of characters' moods and their predictive expectations [3]. In the study, 177 participants watched a selection of excerpts from famous films, each about 1 minute, coupled with different emotions of music ranging from happiness, sadness, fear, to anger.…”

"Si no lo veo, no lo creo". La serie televisiva Little Einsteins como recurso audiovisual para el aula de Música

“…Tanto el fragmento musical, que se muestra con notación convencional y cuyas notas se iluminan conforme van sonando, como la otra obra artística se convierten en el hilo conductor de la historia que se narra en cada capítulo, en el que sus personajes principales, los niños Quincy, June, Annie y Leo, con ayuda de su Nave, deben completar una serie de pruebas encaminadas a conseguir una meta que queda 1 Newlin (1977), Wegele (2014), Durán (2014) y Neumeyer (2015) definen este término como una técnica común en los dibujos animados que fue utilizada, especialmente, por Max Steiner entre 1930 y 1940, consistente en sincronizar la música con las acciones en pantalla haciendo coincidir el movimiento con la música, produciéndose una segmentación exacta entre música e imagen. De esta forma, persigue reforzar una acción imitando su ritmo de la manera más exacta posible mediante la música.…”