Film Music: Cognition to Interpretation explores the dynamic counterpoint between a film’s soundtrack, its visuals and narrative, and the audience’s perception and construction of meaning.
Adopting a holistic approach covering both the humanities and the sciences—blending cognitive psychology, musical analysis, behavioral neuroscience, semiotics, linguistics, and other related fields—the author examines the perceptual and cognitive processes that elicit musical meaning in film and breathe life into our cinematic experiences. A clear and engaging writing style distills complex concepts, theories, and analytical methodologies into explanations accessible to readers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, making it an indispensable companion for scholars and students of music, film studies, and cognition.
Across ten chapters, extensive appendices, and hundreds of film references, Film Music: Cognition to Interpretation offers a new mode of analysis, inviting readers to unlock a deeper understanding of the expressive power of film music.
Introduction
1 Empathy
2 CONTAINER Schema
3 LINEARITY Schema
4 SOURCE-PATH-GOAL & CONTAINER Schemas
5 Affordances
6 Memory & Auditory Perception
7 Archetypes
8 Associations
9 Categorization
10 Interpretive Transformations
Appendix I Empathy
Appendix II Conceptual Metaphor and Image Schema
Appendix III Affordances
Appendix IV Memory
Appendix V Auditory Perception
Appendix VI Archetypes
Appendix VII Conceptual Integration
Appendix VIII Categorization
Appendix IX Additional Examples
References
Film, Filmmaker, and Composer Index
Subject Index
Biography
Juan Chattah is Associate Professor of Music at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami, USA.
Juan Chattah has produced one of those rare books that usually takes many minds to create -- blending and applying concepts, theories, and methods in diverse disciplines to offer a rich framework for interpreting a soundtrack's narrative agency. Each of the ten chapters introduces key concepts that are vividly applied to film scenes from an analytical approach of the humanities, while also addressing the 'how?' question (or the mechanisms) from a scientific perspective. The book's clever structure makes it versatile, as the main text is accessible and immediately engaging, while more specialized technical and conceptual background is provided in a separate series of appendices. The clarity of presentation, fascinating film scene analyses, and wealth of illustrations provided by vibrant images and well-chosen film excerpts, makes this an equally appealing book for scholars, students, and any reader who is passionate about film.
—Siu-Lan Tan, James A.B. Stone Professor of Psychology at Kalamazoo College
With a series of engaging examples and insightful interpretations, Juan Chattah masterfully guides the reader through a wide range of approaches—from the psychological to the semiotic—to explain how music and vocalization contribute to the meanings of films.
—Robert S. Hatten, Marlene and Morton Meyerson Professor in Music at The University of Texas at Austin
Through a wealth of film vignettes, the book delves deeply into the perceptual and cognitive processes that elicit musical meaning. I recommend this volume for anyone interested in learning more about how music influences our interpretations of films.
—Violetta Kostka, Professor of Humanities in Art Studies, Academy of Music in Gdańsk
