Saying It With Songs
Popular Music and the Coming of Sound to Hollywood Cinema
Published on 28. November 2013
Book
Hardback
256 pages
978-0-19-984221-6 (ISBN)
Description
In the late 1920s, Hollywood's conversion from silent to synchronized-sound film production not only instigated the convergence of the film and music industries but also gave rise to an extraordinary period of song use in American cinema. Saying It With Songs considers how the increasing interdependence of Hollywood studios and Tin Pan Alley music publishing firms influenced the commercial and narrative functions of popular songs in a variety of film genres. Whereas most scholarship on film music of the period focuses on adaptations of Broadway musicals, Saying It With Songs examines the functions of songs in a variety of non-musical genres, including melodramas, romantic comedies, Westerns, prison dramas, and action-adventure films, and shows how filmmakers tested and refined their approach to songs in order to reconcile the tension produced by three competing forces: the spectacle of song performance, the classical norms of storytelling, and the established conventions of background orchestral scoring inherited from the period of silent cinema. By 1931, a so-called "song glut" led the studios to curtail their use of popular music in favor of a growing alternative -- the classical film score -- but popular songs continued to fulfill critical functions of narration in Hollywood films of subsequent decades. Written in language accessible to film and music scholars as well as general readers, Saying It With Songs illuminates the seminal origins of the popular song score aesthetic of American cinema.
Reviews / Votes
Combining archival research with impressive scholarship, Spring offers a stimulating, provocative, and often paradigm-shifting study of how popular music shaped the very definition of cinema in its transformation from a silent to a sound medium. Lucid and lively, a must-read for anyone interested in the convergence of film and popular song in Hollywood. * Kathryn Kalinak, author of Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood and Film Music: A Very Short Introduction * Finally, a book that creatively covers popular song's contribution to the coming of sound. Katherine Spring's SAYING IT WITH SONGS is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the connections between Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley. * Rick Altman, University of Iowa * An engaging and thought-provoking exploration of heretofore largely uncharted territory- that transition between the coming of synchronized sound and the emergence of classical Hollywood practice. Combining archival research into the corporate and legal maneuverings of the studios as they move to take over music publishing with nicely articulated readings of films from the late 1920s and early 1930s, Saying It With Songs maps out the boom-and-bust cycle of early musicals and the reaction against them before musical and narrative conventions 'settle' around 1933. * Robynn Stilwell, Georgetown University * Essential reading for historians of film and popular music. In it, the author combines impressive scholarship with conceptual clarity, making accessible to readers the complex changes that took place in the motion picture and music businesses resulting from the coming of sound * The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television * This title will also be of interest for researchers of popular music, since it gives a broad introduction of how one kind of pop song (the film theme song) was established, promoted by radio, sheet music and naturally in the movies and influenced/lured audiences. * Dr. A. Ebert, Pop Culture Shelf *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
28 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
534 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-984221-6 (9780199842216)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
11/2013
Oxford University Press Inc
€40.22
Shipment within 15-20 days
E-Book
10/2013
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€16.49
Available for download
Person
Katherine Spring is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario. Her articles on film music have appeared in Cinema Journal, Film History, and Music and the Moving Image. The recipient of a development grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, she is presently undertaking a study of film music in contemporary Hong Kong and Hollywood cinemas.
Content
Acknowledgments ; Introduction ; Chapter 1. Singing a Song: The Culture and Conventions of Popular Music in the 1920s ; Chapter 2. Owning a Song: The Restructuring of Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley ; Chapter 3. Plugging a Song: The Discrete Charm of the Popular Song, From Broadway to Hollywood ; Chapter 4. Integrating a Song: The Threat to Narrative Plausibility ; Chapter 5. Curtailing a Song: Toward the Classical Background Score ; Conclusion: The Fate of the Motion Picture Song ; Appendix 1: Confirmatory License Issued by Music Publishers Protective Association (1929) ; Appendix 2: "Tieups of Film and Music" as Reported by Variety ; Appendix 3: Timeline of Relationships Between Film and Music Companies ; Appendix 4: Agreement between Al Dubin, The Vitaphone Corp., and Music Publishers Holding Corporation ; Appendix 5: Summary of Agreement between Vitaphone Corporation, M. Witmark & Sons, and Ray Perkins ; Bibliography ; Credits ; Index