Film Music a neglected art [antikvár]

Preface The first edition of this book was the first attempt at a comprehensive look at the history, aesthetics, and techniques of film music. Seldom in the annals of music history had a new form of musical expression gone so unnoticed. While the use of music to accompany film is a relatively new phenomenon, beginning in the last decade of the nineteenth century, its relatively recent appearance should not have precluded a body of intelligent and perceptive writing on the subject. At the time of the first edition of Film Music there was no such body of critical literature on film music, with the notable exception of a few penetrating articles by critic Lawrence Morton. The remainder of the literature on the subject of film music had been done by so-called aficionados. For the most part, these writers, though well intentioned, had little or no musical background and the depth of their musical perception seldom ranged beyond such superficial matters as whether or not music for films should be performed without the accompanying visuals. These writers were also responsible for the propagation of several myths concerning music in films, some of which, 1 hope, have been dispelled in this book. What were the reasons for this dearth of illuminating literature? One reason certainly was the idiom composers writing for films chose: namely, the late nineteenth-century symphonic style of Strauss, Wagner, Verdi, and Puccini. The fact, coupled with the assumption of many musicians that twentieth-century music represented some sort of inevitable improvement over ix