Film Music: A History

By James Eugene Wierzbicki

Film Music: A History explains the development of film music by considering large-scale aesthetic trends and structural developments alongside socioeconomic, technological, cultural, and philosophical circumstances.

The book's four large parts are given over to Music and the "Silent" Film (1894--1927), Music and the Early Sound Film (1895--1933), Music in the "Classical-Style" Hollywood Film (1933--1960), and Film Music in the Post-Classic Period (1958--2008). Whereas most treatments of the subject are simply chronicles of "great film scores" and their composers, this book offers a genuine history of film music in terms of societal changes and technological and economic developments within the film industry. Instead of celebrating film-music masterpieces, it deals--logically and thoroughly--with the complex 'machine' whose smooth running allowed those occasional masterpieces to happen and whose periodic adjustments prompted the large-scale twists and turns in film music's path.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415991986
• ISBN13: 9780415991988
• Release Date: November 2008
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.0" x 10.0"