The use of leitmotifs in films has often been critiqued. Theodor Adorno and Hanns Eisler went as far as to claim in 1947 that "The whole form language of current cinema music derives from advertising" and that leitmotifs were in part to blame. While I take a more neutral stance, I argue that Eisler and Adorno's critique is partly correct, especially in regards to film series produced from the 1960s onwards. The analytical work undertaken for this research suggests that multiple franchises use elements of their scores as branding tools. I argue that these melodies, which have often been referred to as leitmotifs in film music scholarship, should be described as something else: title tunes. It seems that over time, they come to represent not just one or two movies, but entire franchises. They also appear to possess a marketing value not necessarily present in leitmotifs. As such, I would argue these title tunes resemble much more sonic logos as described in the sonic branding world than leitmotifs. This thesis is an exploration of title tunes. My thesis focuses primarily on mainstream Hollywood film franchises from the 1960s onwards. Various case studies from different time periods and different movie genres are analysed to describe and understand this new category of promotional film music. This thesis first takes a historical look at the concept of title tunes, explaining how other sonic branding practices used in radio, television and cinema appear to have influenced the creation of title tunes. From the sample of films analysed for this thesis, I argue that title tunes share commonalities, yet the commonalities seem to vary slightly across movie genres. The analyses undertaken also suggest that title tunes are dynamic entities, that some title tunes are more complex than others (featuring multiple components), and that some franchises can feature more than one title tune. My interpretation of the data also suggests that these title tunes are used as emotional and nostalgic tools and that specific orchestrations and arrangements might carry additional emotional power. While the majority of this thesis explores the use of title tunes in films, their use in trailers and other commodities is discussed. Finally, I suggest how title tunes might change in the future and why certain franchises have omitted using such recurring motifs.

This dissertation traces the history of the early Hollywood sound score for feature films between the years 1926 and 1934. In the growing literature on film sound, no topic has enjoyed more attention than film music. Yet film music scholars have almost uniformly written off film music in the early sound era (1926-1932). Believing the use of "nondiegetic" music (music without a source in the image) in the early sound era to be minimal, scholars have posited a striking narrative in which King Kong, released in 1933, burst onto the scene featuring a score that single-handedly revolutionized film music practices and paved the way for the heavily studied Golden Age of film music (1935-1950). In fact, a host of film scores preceded King Kong, scores which with rare exceptions have received no attention. Due to this inattention, scholars have mischaracterized the nature of late 1920s and early 1930s sound film, overlooked important and unusual early sound film music strategies and failed to offer any satisfactory account for the rise of the Golden Age of film music. Based on screenings of hundreds of early sound films, I demonstrate that the early sound era featured a wide array of musical approaches rather than a single-minded avoidance of nondiegetic music. Drawing upon musical techniques from opera, melodrama, musicals, phonography, radio, and silent films, the early sound era featured an eclectic mix of accompaniment practices. Though early synchronized sound films largely adhered to a silent film music model, the advent of synchronized dialogue encouraged the use of several other conflicting musical accompaniment models. The late 1920s featured a substantial reduction in musical accompaniment, but the period still contained a diverse array of film score experiments rather than a total avoidance of nondiegetic music. By the early 1930s, a more consistent musical approach emerged, in which music was tied to unfamiliar settings or heightened internal mental states. This tactic exerted a considerable influence on King Kong's score and continued to be influential on musical accompaniment practices in the classical era. The first chapter surveys a range of musical influences available to film music practitioners in the years leading up to the transition to sound. Chapter two then analyzes the film score in early synchronized films and part-talkies from 1926-1929, while chapter three examines the use of music in "100% talkies" from 1928-1931. After chapter four discusses the special case of the film score in the early musical from 1929-1932, chapter five examines the score for non-musicals from 1931 to just before the release of King Kong in April of 1933. In light of the plethora of pre-King Kong scores discussed in this study, chapter six offers a radical revision of King Kong's contribution to film music history. Finally, the Conclusion examines the early sound score's legacy in the Golden Age of film music.

<p>The purpose of this study is to generate a greater understanding of the different ways in which music can be used to build an identity and create image within movies, and also to explain the different impacts this can have on the parties involved. Through the history of movies music has been used as a tool for enhancement and for expression of emotions. Through music the audience relates to personal memories or emotional states and the experience is given a deeper impact, helping to create memorable movie scenes. Certain directors have created a unique identity through the use of music in their movies, and also artists have been brought forward by starring in a soundtrack. What we find interesting, and what is also the discussion in this study, is in what ways this collaboration/artistic expression can be done and what impact it has on the parties involved. This study is made from a qualitative approach based on nine interviews with respondents working in the business of movies and film music, carefully chosen to answer and fulfill our purpose from various perspectives. All the interviews are presented in full length in the appendix, and serves as the base of our analysis. Since our study is made with a qualitative approach, is it not of our intention to generalize the results. Although, we do in the analysis recognize patterns which guide us to our conclusions about film music: the characters, functions and impacts of music in film, and how it generates identity and image. These conclusions are later brought together in our figure, presented in chapter six, through which we intend to clarify and further explain our conclusion.</p>

The purpose of this study is to generate a greater understanding of the different ways in which music can be used to build an identity and create image within movies, and also to explain the different impacts this can have on the parties involved. Through the history of movies music has been used as a tool for enhancement and for expression of emotions. Through music the audience relates to personal memories or emotional states and the experience is given a deeper impact, helping to create memorable movie scenes. Certain directors have created a unique identity through the use of music in their movies, and also artists have been brought forward by starring in a soundtrack. What we find interesting, and what is also the discussion in this study, is in what ways this collaboration/artistic expression can be done and what impact it has on the parties involved. This study is made from a qualitative approach based on nine interviews with respondents working in the business of movies and film music, carefully chosen to answer and fulfill our purpose from various perspectives. All the interviews are presented in full length in the appendix, and serves as the base of our analysis. Since our study is made with a qualitative approach, is it not of our intention to generalize the results. Although, we do in the analysis recognize patterns which guide us to our conclusions about film music: the characters, functions and impacts of music in film, and how it generates identity and image. These conclusions are later brought together in our figure, presented in chapter six, through which we intend to clarify and further explain our conclusion.

Film musicology is growing at a heartening pace, but the discipline is still bereft of sustained contributions from music theory. The current study seizes the opportunity presented by the underanalyzed repertoire of film music, offering an argument for applying the techniques of transformational analysis, and neo-Riemannian analysis in particular, to the interpretation of music for the moving image. Film musical style and form respond strongly to a transformational approach, which adapts well to both the triadic chromaticism characteristic of Hollywood’s harmonic practice and the dynamic and contingent condition of musical design inherent to the medium. Concurrently, the analytic tools and conceptual structure of neo-Riemannian theory benefit from exposure to a fresh repertoire with different analytic needs than those of art music. In this dissertation, the author scrutinizes the capacity for tonality to act as a unifying and dramatically potent force in film. With parameters of effective cinematic tonal design established, the adapted transformational methodology responds faithfully to the expressive and temporal qualities of the soundtrack. The author develops a model for harmonic associativity and a general hermeneutics of transformation, extrapolated from analyses of scores from John Williams, James Horner, Jerry Goldsmith, and many others. The power of the transformational approach to capture tonal phenomena through spatial representations is marshaled to perform critical readings of scores for A Beautiful Mind and Star Trek. Not only can the neo-Riemannian stance illuminate the way film music works, but it can train the listener and analyst to perceive and enjoy film with more sensitive ears. / Music

This dissertation examines music's role in cinema in the early years of synchronized sound film in the United States and France. Working against the historical and technological determinism that often plagues narratives of the transition to sound, I investigate the myriad ways in which directors, producers, and composers approached the new technology. Films acted as artistic manifestoes on the new technology and its aesthetic potential as filmmakers experimented with the musical soundtrack. Through multi-site archival research and close analyses of films and their music, I point to the heterogeneity of film music practices during synchronized sound's nascent years, considering early sound films as sites of aesthetic contestation and negotiation. / Music

This essay aims to explore acoustiographies of the interior and interpret the cultural impressions that they perpetuate. While I do consider the conventional iconographies of headphones and full-body suits (e.g., spacesuits) that filmmakers employ as tools to focalize a character’s internal subjectivity, acoustiographies often supersede or occur in lieu of such visual symbols. While the acoustiography of “leakage” symbolizes the disparity between the self-perception of the self and the social perception of the self, that of “head sound” aims at placing the audience inside the head of a given character by positioning the point of audition as if it were emanating from the character’s head. Leakage is a diegetic sound that is somewhat obscured or filtered by some barrier blocking the sound’s full frequency emission, whereas sound effects or music seemingly sounding from inside a character’s head, as for example through headphones, represent head sound. These acoustiographies of leakage and head sound play a crucial role in the filmic expression of a character’s interiority, which they accomplish through their ability to physically represent interior space, but also figuratively represent a character’s subjectivity. / text

This thesis argues that how-to manuals and cue sheets are indicative of ideal performance practice amongst musicians from the silent film era. Pre-scored music was widely practiced amongst musicians. How-to manuals and cue sheets helped the musician accurately and consistently accompany a film. Authors of period manuals include W. Tyacke George, Edith Lang and George West, Ernst Luz and George Tootell. Compilers of cue sheet include James C. Bradford, Ernst Luz, Edward Kilenyi and Michael P. Krueger. Cue by cue analyses of The Cat and the Canary and The Gaucho show a high repetition of music, establishing continuity between the music played and the image on the screen. This shows how compilers associated music and film. These manuals and cue sheets prove that the musician community strove for a close connection between the image on screen and accompaniment. By 1920, arbitrary improvisation was unacceptable.

<p>This dissertation seeks to position the music of American arranger-orchestrator-composer Conrad Salinger (1901-62) as one of the key factors in creating the larger camp aesthetic movement in MGM film musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. The investigation primarily examines Salinger's arranging and orchestrating practices in transcriptions and conductor's scores of musical numbers from MGM films, though some scores from Broadway shows are also considered. Additionally, Salinger's style is frequently compared to other arrangers, so as to establish the unique qualities of his music that set it apart from his contemporaries from both a technical and an aesthetic standpoint and that made it desirable as an object of imitation. By inquiring into his musical practices' relationship to his subjectivity as a gay person in the era of "the closet," this analysis both proposes and confirms Salinger's importance to the MGM camp aesthetic. With the concept of "musical camp" thus established, the dissertation subsequently demonstrates its capacity to produce new readings of the politics of national belonging and gender that manifest in various musical numbers.</p> / Dissertation

Esta pesquisa concentra-se na articulação entre o discurso cinematográfico e o discurso musical, a partir da observação de determinado corpus fílmico: „Sal de Prata‟ (2005) de Carlos Gerbase. O filme, organizado através de intertítulos narrativos, cujo conteúdo semântico o remete à estrutura de uma sinfonia, propicia a reflexão acerca das aproximações e das apropriações entre ambas as manifestações. Inicialmente, se discorre acerca da estrutura em música e da estrutura no cinema, em que se insere a montagem e suas apropriações à terminologia musical. Complementam a discussão vieses cinematográficos e alguns exemplos fílmicos, destacados por outros autores sob a ótica de suas aproximações a formas e estruturas musicais. A estas reflexões segue a apresentação do conceito de sinfonia fílmica e de sua aplicabilidade em „Sal de Prata‟. Para tanto, foram considerados as observações oriundas da música pertencente à trilha sonora; a organização de planos; o percurso dramático do corpus em discussão. Encerra o trabalho, um exame das relações entre uma sequência fílmica e a música a ela combinada. A sequência selecionada compreende a única peça musical que pode ser ouvida em sua totalidade em „Sal de Prata‟: Largo do Concerto n. 5 em Fá menor, BWV 1056, de Johann Sebastian Bach, discutido aqui sob o viés retórico-musical. Entre música e cena percebem-se aproximações e concomitâncias referentes às estruturas observadas que são discutidas no pormenor. Esta dissertação concentra-se na reflexão das utilizações multifacetadas da música, no complexo cinematográfico, visando contribuir para a constituição desta área interdisciplinar de estudos. / This research focuses on the relationship between cinematographic and musical discourses taking as its object the observation of Carlos Gerbase‟s „Sal de Prata‟ (2005) as a film corpus. „Sal de Prata‟ is organized through narrative intertitles that refer to a symphonic structure through their semantic content; they elicit a reflection on the rapprochement and the appropriation between the two events. The thesis discusses the notion of structure in music and movies, including the concept of film editing as it mirrors musical terminology. The discussion is complemented by cinematic biases and film examples which are followed by the introduction of the concept of „film symphony‟ [„sinfonia fílmica‟] as well as its viability as related to „Sal de Prata‟. The soundtrack of the film is discussed, as are its plan organization, its dramatic journey, and the only piece that can be heard in its entirety in the film, the Largo from the Concerto no. 5 in F minor, BWV 1056, by Johann Sebastian Bach. This piece is analyzed under a rhetorical-musical bias and the parallel procedures in film and music are highlighted. This masters‟ thesis aims at a reflection on the multifaceted usage of music in the cinematographic complex, contributing to the construction of this interdisciplinary area of study.