Settling
the Score
Music
and the Classical Hollywood Film
Kathryn Kalinak
Wisconsin Studies in Film
"Music in film may seem incidental, but Kalinak shows its
extreme importance as both 'articulator of screen expression
and initiator of spectator response.' Who can forget the theme
from Jaws, which turned a peaceful ocean scene into a threatening
nightmare? . . . This major work on scoring goes a long way toward
proving the importance of music in film."
—Library Journal
"Settling the Score is intended for general readers
with minimal technical musical and contemporary theoretical skills.
[Kalinak's] goal is, in fact, to 'settle the score' between the
cinematic visual and aural, to promote music as an equal partner
to the visual. In order to do so she provides a brief but illuminating
historical summary of sound and music in film. Kalinak's strongest
sections include a detailed discussion of the differences between
music for silent films and sound films, and analyses of several
different stylistic approaches toward musical composition in
the Classical Hollywood film."
—Bill Thornhill, Hitchcock
Annual
Beginning with the earliest experiments in musical accompaniment
carried out in the Edison Laboratories, Kathryn Kalinak uses
archival material to outline the history of American music and
film. Focusing on the scores of several key composers of the
sound era, including Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Captain Blood, Max Steiner's The Informer, Bernard Herrmann's The
Magnificent Ambersons, and David Raksin's Laura, Kalinak
concludes that classical scoring conventions were designed to
ensure the dominance of narrative exposition. Her analyses of
contemporary work such as John Williams' The Empire Strikes
Back and Basil Poledouris' RoboCop demonstrate how
the traditions of the classical era continue to influence scoring
practices today.
Kathryn Kalinak is professor of English and film studies
at Rhode Island College and has published many articles on film
sound.
Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)
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January 1992
LC: 92-06853 ML
256 pp. 6 x 9
29 illus. and 19 musical examples
"A strong original contribution that manages to convey a
great deal of information about film music to readers with relatively
little knowledge of music. It is likely to be one of the small
number of books on sound track issues that will be found on the
shelves of anyone seriously interested in cinema."
—Alan
Williams, Rutgers University |
