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.
Preface 1. Introduction Part One: Music and the "Silent" Film (1894-1927) 2. Origins, 1894-1905 3. The Nickelodeon, 1905-1915 4. Feature Films, 1915-1927 Part Two: Music and the Early Sound Film (1894-1933) 5. The Long Advent of Sound, 1894-1926 6. Vitaphone and Movietone, 1926-8 7. Hollywood's Early Sound Films, 1928-33 Part Three: Music in the "Classic-Style" Hollywood Film (1933-60) 8. The "Golden Age" of Film Music, 1933-49 9. Postwar Innovations and the Struggle for Survival, 1949-58 Part Four: Film Music in the Post-Classic Period (1958-2008) 10. A "New Wave" of Film Music, 1958-78 11. Eclecticism, 1978-2001 12. Epilogue, 2001-8 Notes. Bibliography. Index
