Sounds of Fear and Wonder

Reviews / Votes

This Introduction is also an argument - for the importance of music within cult TV; for a new understanding of musical numbers in cult/quality shows; for the recognition of cult's sonic complexity. Ranging from Star Trek to The Sopranos, and Twin Peaks to True Blood, Janet K. Halfyard has an enviable ear for detail. Say it once more, with feeling: this is musical scholar-fandom at its finest. - Professor Matt Hills, Aberystwyth University, and author of Fan Cultures and Triumph of a Time Lord; Television scholars need this book. Others will simply want it. In the modestly titled An Introduction to Music in Cult TV, Halfyard combines a musicologist's understanding of technique with a rich comprehension of the series she analyzes. Her discussions of formal structure enlighten larger meaning. She begins by examining the difference between film and TV music. From historical background on earlier cult classics such as Star Trek, Twin Peaks, and The X-Files, and investigations of changes in opening themes and end credits music, she moves on to in-depth explorations of series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with its extraordinary scoring, Supernatural, with its genre-shifting, and Hannibal, with its striking incorporation of sound. The inclusion of illuminating selections of scoring strengthens her case for our need to pay real attention to the importance of music and sound in television art. We should all applaud Halfyard's lucid, literate work. - Dr. Rhonda V. Wilcox, Professor of English, Gordon State College; Halfyard's book is a triumph of scholarship. It offers a fascinating and illuminating history of music and sound in television; a wealth of comparative analyses between television and film, and between different types of television shows; and it provides detailed, exquisite readings of the use of music in a range of programmes. Its clear and unambiguous focus on Cult TV means that not only do we learn a huge amount about the specifics of music (from live versus synth recordings; scoring; technological and aesthetic shifts; motifs and themes; and stock sounds, for example) but this also serves to re-invigorate and re-cast more general questions about the development of TV in general and Cult TV in particular. The discussion of the uses of music in intros, as an aspect of the role of intros at all in the age of streaming, is exceptional in this regard and also demonstrated the breath-taking range of knowledge this book has to offer. Intellectually stimulating; erudite, generous and deftly written this is a book every student or scholar of television drama - Cult or otherwise - should read. - Professor Matthew Pateman, Head of the Department of the Humanities, Sheffield Hallam University