This thesis explores the relationship of Hindi film songs with Hindi cinema from the 1950s, especially emphasizing the present day. It is based on fieldwork completed in Bombay from 1998-2000 and the analysis of film songs and their picturizations. The main question addressed is: 'How far can film songs be seen as an independent tradition of popular music and how far are they a part of their parent films and Indian cinema?' Chapter 1 surveys previous scholarship on film songs and introduces their cinematic study. Chapter 2 deals with the production process of film songs, identifying the role of various personnel in their creation including the music director (composer), lyricist and singer(s). Chapter 3 addresses the musical style of film songs and its development in the light of both their cinematic and popular music roles. Chapter 4 turns to the use of Western music in film song from the perspective of meaning. Is Western music used in the same way in Hindi films as in Hollywood films, and if so, how, if music is not a universal language? Is the presence of Western music in film songs just due to hegemony? Song and background score material is analysed in its dramatic context, and Indian and Western music theory and interview material drawn on to answer these questions. Chapter 5 looks at the commercial life of film songs, addressing the question of whether songs sell films or films sell songs through an examination of the marketing and profitability of film songs in various eras. Chapter 6 discusses the reception of film songs, their popularity, how audiences come into contact with them, and their appropriation by audiences. Adorno's profile of mass music as alienating is revisited with reference to film song.

This thesis examines the importance of the musical score in creating a film's meaning, through an analysis of the musical scores to several recent Hollywood movies. To show how film music is ideologically loaded, this thesis takes the case of the new, ultra-violent film (anti)heroine and demonstrates how the musical score works to explain, excuse or undermine her violence so that she can remain situated within the standard gender codes of Hollywood film. To do this, the theoretical section first discusses issues about the representation of femininity and the pleasures of movie violence, and then continues with a discussion of theories of musical meaning, both within and without film scores. The analysis section examines the scores to several well-known mainstream Hollywood movies, dividing the heroines into either action heroines or fatal femmes, to show firstly how these women potentially transgress gender codes, and how the music is employed - along with other filmic elements - to lessen the threat of the female character's transgression. It examines the presentation of women as mothers, victims, lesbians and jezebels - all of which roles act to frame the active heroine within some acknowledged stereotype. Finally, the thesis addresses the question of how specific this phenomenon is to Hollywood, by examining the scores to a test-case French film and its Hollywood remake. Through the analyses contained within this thesis, I show how violent Hollywood women are still subject to ideologies which position women as passive and specifically as non-violent, and that the musical score is a particularly effective means of neutralising their potential transgression of gender norms.

This thesis grows from the premise that film music analysis is currently at an impasse. The reason for this impasse is the inability of film theory and music theory to relate to one another because of their lack of a common theoretical language. It is my contention that a large percentage of the scholarly writing on film music is less than successful, because of the inability of these two disciplines to relate to each other theoretically. Therefore, it is the intention of this thesis to construct a methodological bridge which will allow music theory and film theory to relate to each other on a common analytical plane. I am primarily concerned with just how the film score functions once it enters into the mise-en-scène and is able to exist on an equal theoretical plane with the other elements of the filmic universe. In order to facilitate this, I will apply philosophical concepts drawn from the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze to the analysis of six individual film/score(s): L’Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934), Things to Come (William Cameron Menzies, 1936), Scott of the Antarctic (Charles Frend, 1948), East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955), Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, 1964) and Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993). Each of these scores provides a specific theoretical challenge which can not be overcome through the use of traditional analytical methodologies. By adapting specific Deleuzian philosophical concepts (sensation, nomadology, the refrain, the eternal refrain, becoming, utopia, smooth space, and duration) to the individual scores in question I will demonstrate that it is possible to create a flexible analytical methodology which draws the various elements of the film into a deep relationship with the score, thereby revealing the score’s actual function in each instance.

The thesis examines the role of music in South African film pertaining to representation of identity of South African peoples and cultures, from the country's earliest sound films until the industry expansion of the 1970s. Chapter 1 contextualizes the study in relation to South African film and music, mainstream (Hollywood) film music theory/analysis/history, and national film music studies outside the Hollywood context. Chapter 2 provides an analysis of nationalist trends in South African silent film and the transition to sound film. The subsequent two chapters analyse the filmic use of rural and urban African music as tools of representation of African identity across a continuum of films, from earlier colonial/Afrikaner nationalist-oriented films to later films with an explicitly anti-apartheid message. The final chapter returns to the themes of Chapter 2, exploring film-musical representation of Afrikaner nationalism. As with Chapters 3 and 4, the source material is eclectic, covering a broad spectrum of techniques to promote a nationalist agenda. The study reaches four principal findings. Firstly, film-musical representation of African identity develops nuance over time, as African subjects succeed in moving from being represented to achieving some self-representation. This representation remains within the ambit of diegetic music, however, and frequently maintains a subject/object relationship regarding white/black representation. Secondly, the use of diegetic African music functions as a form of othering, creating an illusion of representational "authenticity" while in practice ensuring the music remains external to the filmmakers' expressive universe, relegating it to the role of "ethnic" colour rather than engagement with characters' psychologies. Thirdly, film music is implicated in issues of land rights: rural African music questions the legitimacy of "whites only" city spaces, and is metaphorical of population displacement from rural to urban locales. Conversely, nationalist films use pastoral tropes to reimagine rural African spaces through European conceptualizations of "tamed" land, and sentimentalize spaces through song to lay claim to them through emotional ties. Fourthly, it evaluates African music's potential to function as dramatic, narrative, extradiegetic underscore, showing how this was partly achieved by certain films of the period, with possible implications for contemporary mainstream film scoring.

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This essay concerns the traditional view of the function of music in film. It’s a study of the existing theories within the research area of modern film music and their applicability on film music in general. Is the function of film music always the same or is it depending on the film itself? The objects of my studies are The Piano, a film written and directed by Jane Campion, and the soundtrack composed by Michael Nyman. The central issue is to determine whether the main characters muteness has an impact on the music’s significance and if so, in which way? The purpose of this essay is foremost to broaden the traditional view of film music as being added to, instead of being a part of, a film as a whole. The intention is also to give film music and all its composers the acknowledgement of being a part of a unique art form.

Thesis (M.M.) -- Florida State University, 2003. / Advisor: Denise Von Glahn, Florida State University, School of Music. Title and description from thesis home page (viewed 9-29-04). Document formatted into pages; contains 78 pages. Includes biographical sketch. Includes bibliographical references.

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This thesis makes three claims new to the critical literature onWalt Disney’s 1940 film Fantasia. Setting the scene by placing a spotlight on the long-serving Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski, it contextualizes his pervasive influence, as well as contributions by others that shaped Fantasia and defined the film’s stylistic elements. Inspired by recent critical debates on post-silent era filmmaking and theories of authorship, it makes a case for Fantasia being the culmination of a “sound film” and notes that its displays of individual artistic talent makes it a noteworthy example of distributed authorship. Fantasia remains a unique experiment in Disney’s filmmaking in that it acquired its eventual form only because of decisions taken during production since no absolute “blue-print” for the finished film existed at the time it went into production, when a large selection of musical numbers were assigned to teams of animators. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection