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Michel Chion is renowned for his explorations of the significance of frequently overlooked elements of cinema, particularly the role of sound. In this inventive and inviting book, Chion considers how cinema has deployed music. He shows how music and film not only complement but also transform each other.
List of contents
Translator’s Note
Preface
Introduction: Music Redefined by Cinema
Part I: Historical Perspectives
1. Dreams and Realities: 1895–1935
2. Classicism to Modernism: 1935–1975
3. Back to the Future: 1975–1995
4. Whither Film Music? 1996–2020
Part II: The Three Faces of Music in Cinema
5. Music as Element and Means
6. Music as World
7. Music as Subject, Metaphor, and Model
By Way of Conclusion
Glossary
Notes
Index
About the author
Michel Chion is an independent scholar, composer, filmmaker, and teacher who has written more than thirty books on sound, music, and film. His previous Columbia University Press books include The Voice in Cinema (1999); Film, a Sound Art (2009); Words on Screen (2017); and Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (second edition, 2019).
Claudia Gorbman is professor emerita of film studies at the University of Washington, Tacoma. She has written widely about film sound and music and has translated several books by Michel Chion.
Summary
Michel Chion is renowned for his explorations of the significance of frequently overlooked elements of cinema, particularly the role of sound. In this inventive and inviting book, Chion considers how cinema has deployed music. He shows how music and film not only complement but also transform each other.
Additional text
Michel Chion is the world’s leading scholar of the film soundtrack, and Music in Cinema is one of his greatest works. Clearly written and jargon-free, this account of music in cinema will interest readers from students to film buffs to scholars. I appreciated Chion’s personal spin on this subject and found him making me reevaluate what I thought I knew about soundtrack music.
