Since the establishment of film music studies, there has been a steady growth of serious analytical work on the film music repertoire. Film Music Analysis: Studying the Score offers the first collection of essays dedicated to the close investigation of musical structure and meaning in film music. Showcasing scholarship from a diverse and distinguished group of music theorists and musicologists, this book presents the many ways to inspect the inner workings of film music in a manner that is exciting and accessible to anyone curious about this music, regardless of their background in film or music theory.
Each chapter takes as its focus one music-theoretical parameter and explores how that concept can be used to analyze and interpret film music. Covering theoretical concepts that range from familiar categories such as leitmotif and pitch structure to more cutting-edge ideas such as timbral associativity, topic theory, and metrical states, the book provides a toolkit with which to explore this captivatingly varied repertoire. With example analyses drawn from classic and contemporary films, Film Music Analysis: Studying the Score is a valuable teaching tool and an indispensable addition to the library of any lover of film and music.
Foreword
Introduction: Film and Music, Theory and Analysis
Frank Lehman
1. Timbre in Film Music – Making Magic through Tone Color
Chelsea Oden
2. “The Click Is Your Friend”: Film Scores and Tempo Analysis
Rebecca M. Doran Eaton
3. Tracking Progressions of Heroic Chord Progressions in Recent Popular Screen Media
Scott Murphy
4. John Williams’ Star Wars Themes: Good vs. Evil Conflicts as a Structural Principal for Leitmotifs
Mark Richards
5. Topic Theory and Film: Coming of Age in 1994’s and 2019’s Little Women
Janet Bourne
6. A Matter of Time: Reality and Fantasy through Metrical Analysis in Contemporary Hollywood Film
Andrew S. Powell
7. Film Music and Dialogic Form
Charity Lofthouse
8. Tonal Analysis of the Integrated Soundtrack: Music, Sound, and Dialogue in Baby Driver
Táhirih Motazedian
9. Analyzing Musical Metamorphoses: Thematic Transformation in Shirley Walker's Batman
Frank Lehman
10. Post-Tonal Theory and Hollywood Scores: Three Analytical Vignettes
Erik Heine
11. Attuning Serialism: David Shire’s Scores for The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, 2010: The Year We Made Contact, and Zodiac
Juan Chattah
12. Romance and the Two Poles of Underscore
James Buhler
Notes on Contributors
Index
Biography
Frank Lehman is Associate Professor of Music at Tufts University, Massachusetts, USA.
