Experiencing Film Music

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Composer LaFave tackles the history of film music in this noteworthy book. For many years, the musical accompaniment to silent movies was determined in theaters by local musicians, but in the early 1900s, the studios began requiring that specific music be played with their movies. This was a major shift, but it was nothing compared to what happened with the advent of motion-picture sound. Not only did the talkies put hundreds of musicians out of work, they also signaled the creation of a whole new genre: movie music. Its first major practitioner, Max Steiner (Gone with the Wind), set the standard for how film music should complement and enrich the film experience; he was followed by greats like Bernard Herrmann (who wrote scores for movies by Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock), Nino Rota (The Godfather), and many others. LaFave approaches his very big subject thematically, exploring the music for such film genres as mystery and noir (home of jazz and somber saxophones); SF and westerns (in which grand orchestral themes connote other worlds); and horror (discordant notes, jarring juxtapositions). For both musicians and casual readers. * Booklist * Kenneth LaFave's Experiencing Film Music: A Listener's Companion [is] a nuts-and-bolts introduction to the topic aimed at people who know nothing about music other than that they like the way it sounds. Mr. LaFave, a critic who also composes, has gone to great trouble to write simply, and he takes nothing for granted, explaining how composers synchronize their music to on-screen action, who decides where to put musical cues (it's almost always the director-the process is called 'spotting') and other things that film buffs know but of which laymen are unaware.... [Herein] lies the value of Experiencing Film Music: Once you've read it, you'll never again be able to ignore the presence (or absence) of music on the soundtrack of a movie. Be it a top-40 song or a colorful explosion of symphonic sound, background music is the seasoning that heightens the flavor of a great film and covers up the flat taste of an indifferent one. * The Wall Street Journal * In this elegant and energetic examination of the use of film scores throughout the history of cinema, composer and music writer LaFave (Experiencing Leonard Bernstein: A Listener's Companion) delivers insightful observations on those who compose film music and a thorough study on how composers work with directors. Launching off of the American Film Institute's 2005 list of the top 25 best film scores and their composers, LaFave looks at how those films worked and why the music sounded the way it did, exploring the subtleties and complexities in efforts including Max Steiner's score for King Kong in 1933 to Ennio Morricone's work on The Mission in 1986. His observations are always illustrative (Bernard Herrmann was Alfred Hitchcock's 'perfect musical soulmate'), perceptive (Franz Waxman's Sunset Boulevard score is 'the source of the sexy-sax-equals-film-noir notion'), and assertive (Alex North's music for A Streetcar Named Desire (1949) is 'the finest score ever written for the film adaptation of a stage play, and arguably the best score ever composed for a dramatic film'). No matter what or whom he is analyzing, LaFave never loses sight of the truth that 'the final and only real reason for movie music is to serve the movie.' * Publishers Weekly * Kenneth LaFave has written an in depth and very perceptive book filled with insights about composers and the music they wrote for films from the very beginning of cinema to the present. You don't have to be a composer or even a film buff but if you were ever moved by a motion picture song or score, you will surely enjoy this book. -- Charles Fox, composer, former Governor of the Motion Picture Academy and former chair of the Music Branch of the Academy