Theories of the Soundtrack

Abstract

This book is concerned with summarizing and critiquing theories of the soundtrack from roughly 1929 until today. A theory of the soundtrack is concerned with what belongs to it, how it is effectively organized, how its status in a multimedia object affects the nature of the object, the tools available for its analysis, and the interpretive regime that the theory mandates for determining the meaning, sense, and structure that sound and music bring to film and other audiovisual media. Beyond that, a theory may also delineate the range of possible uses of sound (and music), classify the types of relations that films have used for image and sound, identify the central problems, and reflect on and describe effective uses of sound in film. This book does not provide an exhaustive historical survey but rather sketches out the range of theoretical approaches that have been applied to the soundtrack over time. For each approach, it presents the basic theoretical framework, considers explicit and implicit claims about the soundtrack, and then works to open the theories to new questions about film sound, often by putting the theories into dialogue with one another. The organization is both chronological and topical: the former in that the chapters move steadily from early film theory through models of the classical system to more recent critical theories; the latter in that the chapters highlight central issues for each generation: the problem of film itself, then of image and sound, then of adequate analytical-descriptive models, and finally of critical-interpretative models.

Musical Geopolitics: Masculinity, Nationhood, and the Scoring of Superman (1978–2006)

“…5 The fanfare lasts less than a single minute (approximately 25 seconds, followed by a linking passage to the Superman march), but is rich in spatial and geopolitical meanings. As remarked previously, fanfares are a musical topic commonly employed to connote heroism (Buhler 2019). Geopolitical information is also communicated in the fanfare via instrumentation.…”

“…As the interdisciplinarity of film music studies might suggest, theoretical approaches within the field are plural. They include, in a recent review, perspectives informed by neoformalism, narratology, psychoanalysis, semiotics, and critical theory, with frequent overlap between these approaches (Buhler 2019). For example, the analytical purchase of critical theories is often predicated on semiotic interpretations of film scores (Buhler 2019)that is, close readings of how certain musical passages signify ideas in a structured way (see van Leeuwen 1999).…”

“…They include, in a recent review, perspectives informed by neoformalism, narratology, psychoanalysis, semiotics, and critical theory, with frequent overlap between these approaches (Buhler 2019). For example, the analytical purchase of critical theories is often predicated on semiotic interpretations of film scores (Buhler 2019)that is, close readings of how certain musical passages signify ideas in a structured way (see van Leeuwen 1999). Critical theories have been especially attuned to how representational forms construct identity/difference, and to questions of ideology and power that underly these constructions.…”

Geography and film music: Musicology, gender, and the spatiality of instrumental music

“…Despite geographers’ interest in film and music, however, film music has largely gone unconsidered. This is a notable omission, given that, beyond its ability to accompany and accentuate what is seen on‐screen, “[film] music can express what the image in itself cannot, especially characters’ moods and feelings” (Buhler, 2019, p. 23). In this paper, the small amount of geographical work that has addressed film music is foregrounded (Brownrigg, 2007; Kirby, 2019).…”

“…In major Hollywood films, a large proportion of composed scores have been written in the Western symphonic tradition (Neumeyer, 2000). As such, they portray the world, including non-Western peoples and places, through Western stylistic conventions (see Buhler, 2019). At a foundational level, this orientates the listener in a particular way to that which is being represented.…”