The Invisible Art of Film Music A Comprehensive History [Hardcover]

The second edition of this film history (1st ed., 1998) covers music scored for such films as Brokeback Mountain, Unbreakable, Sweeney Todd, Nine, and others released between 2000 and 2011. Biographical information about composers appears in sidebars, allowing the text to focus more on the history and details of the composers' film music. MacDonald offers an engaging study that presents important information about the history of film music. The book gives considerable attention to the three godfather Hollywood composers--Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiomkin, and Alfred Newman--but covers film composers, their scores, and their stylistic features for every decade. Composers such as Aaron Copland, whose output was mostly outside film scoring, are also included. Despite its title, however, much of the book is devoted to Hollywood film music. With its stronger analytic approach, Music and Cinema, edited by James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer, is geared more toward music majors. This volume will be useful for general readers interested in film music history and for undergraduates with no previous musical background. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and general readers.Music plays an important part in the movies by underscoring emotions, heightening drama, and offering context to just about any and every scene. But most moviegoers rarely give film scores much thoughtit is background, after all. This impressive text provides a comprehensive, chronological introduction to the art of film scoring, showcasing key developments of some of the most important films from 1920 to 2009, with an epilogue that takes a peek at 201012. Biographical sketches of 52 composers are featured as sidebars throughout the text. An extensive bibliography, general index, and title index complete the volume. Recommended for most large public libraries and for academic libraries supporting film-studies and music-composition programs.MacDonald updates his work The InvisiblelÃÄ