1st Edition
The Music of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings Sounds of Home in the Fantasy Franchise
Introduction: Home is Behind, the World Ahead - Fantasy, Franchises and Film Music
1. The Creation of Musical Worlds: Suture in Opening Sequences
2. Homeward Bound: Desuture in Closing Sequences and Credit Songs
3. Musical Homes and their Inhabitation
4. Trips to Enchantment: Recreating Magic and Wonder at Harry Potter Tour Sites
5. Sonic Immersion: Affect, Literacy and Interaction in Game Music
6. Fan Practices/Fan Products
Conclusion: Home From Home
Biography
Daniel White is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at the University of Huddersfield, where he teaches on music for film, game and media. He has published widely on musical worldbuilding and fantasy film, and his research interests also include minimalism, transmedia music and the music of children’s media.
"Full of perceptive analysis and drawing on original interviews with relevant practitioners, Daniel White's rewarding study explores how music and sound take us 'there and back again' – time and again – into and out of the worlds of fantasy cinema. Focusing on the crucial role of music in the screen adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World, White addresses the process of worldbuilding and how audiences are encouraged to enter into and inhabit these screen worlds via their scores and then return to and reconstruct them beyond the cinema – whether in theme parks, stage productions, video games, fan projects or our daily lives. Steeped in the lore of his case studies and informed by relevant theory, White considers the importance of title sequences and closing credits, the use of leitmotif and song in such a way that, although delving deep into fantasy, the ideas developed within The Music of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings: Sounds of Home in the Fantasy Franchise can be applied fruitfully to other franchises or genres in order to enhance our understanding of how music enables us to reside within and consume the worlds presented to us on film."
David Butler, Senior Lecturer in Drama and Film Studies, University of Manchester, author of Fantasy Cinema: Impossible Worlds on Screen (2009).
