The Cultures of Film Music

This course treats the evolution of film music from silent movies until the present.  It introduces students to musical syntax, the aesthetics of film music, and the means by which composers synchronize music and script to convey mood and render action vivid. Working chronologically, the course explores the increasing importance of music in cinema and how music functions as an expressive element in a film.  The course treats composers who wrote almost exclusively for the cinema (i.e., Charlie Chaplin and the contemporary John Williams), treats classical central European composers who migrated to the screen composition from wartime Europe (i.e., Korngold, Waxman, Alexandre Tansman, Bronislaw Kaper), and treats composer-director/producer collaborations such as Eisenstein-Prokofiev, Rota-Fellini/Visconti, and others. The course additionally treats the role of music from Morocco, India, China, and Japan in world cinema. Two term papers are assigned, one dealing with a composer-director partnership, the second treating the function of score in a major, iconic film such as Gone with the Wind. The textbook is Mervyn Cooke’s A History of Film Music.[Formerly titled Film Music]