Hammer Film Scores And The Musical Avant Garde

Music in film is often dismissed as having little cultural significance. While Hammer Film Productions is famous for such classic films as Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein, few observers have noted the innovative music that Hammer distinctively incorporated into its horror films. This book tells how Hammer commissioned composers at the cutting edge of European musical modernism to write their movie scores, introducing the avant-garde into popular culture via the enormously successful venue of horror film. Each chapter addresses a specific category of the avant-garde musical movement. According to these categories, chapters elaborate upon the visionary composers who made the horror film soundtrack a melting pot of opposing musical cultures.

The 20th century saw radical changes in the way serious music is composed and produced, including the advent of electronic instruments and novel compositional methods such as serialism and stochastic music. Unlike previous artistic revolutions, this one took its cues from the world of science. Creating electronic sounds, in the early days, required a well-equipped laboratory and an understanding of acoustic theory. Composition became increasingly “algorithmic”, with many composers embracing the mathematics of set theory. The result was some of the most intellectually challenging music ever written – yet also some of the best known, thanks to its rapid assimilation into sci-fi movies and TV shows, from the electronic scores of Forbidden Planet and Dr Who to the other-worldly sounds of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This book takes a close look at the science behind "science fiction" music, as well as exploring the way sci-fi imagery found its way into the work of musicians like Sun Ra and David Bowie, and how music influenced the science fiction writings of Philip K. Dick and others.

Film Music in the Sound Era: A Research and Information Guide offers a comprehensive bibliography of scholarship on music in sound film (1927–2017). Thematically organized sections cover historical studies, studies of musicians and filmmakers, genre studies, theory and aesthetics, and other key aspects of film music studies. Broad coverage of works from around the globe, paired with robust indexes and thorough cross-referencing, make this research guide an invaluable tool for all scholars and students investigating the intersection of music and film. This guide is published in two volumes: Volume 1: Histories, Theories, and Genres covers overviews, historical surveys, theory and criticism, studies of film genres, and case studies of individual films. Volume 2: People, Cultures, and Contexts covers individual people, social and cultural studies, studies of musical genre, pedagogy, and the Industry. A complete index is included in each volume.

Combining analyses of modernist concert and stage music by Elisabeth Lutyens with those of her audio-visual scores, and contextualising Lutyens and Edward Clark's biographies within international developments in dodecaphonic music and music-making, this book will speak to a wide audience interested in British and European twentieth-century music.

Gothic Music - The Sounds of the Uncanny traces sonic Gothic through history and genres from the eighteenth-century ghost story through the spooky soundtracks of cinema, television and video games to the dark music of the Goth subculture.

This reference work contains entries on every film made by Hammer Films, a British studio renowned for its horror films of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. In addition, entries on people—directors, writers, producers, etc.—who have worked with the studio, as well as the stars associated with the studio, notably Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

Hammer Film's is justly famous for Gothic horror but the company also excelled in the psychological thriller. Influenced by Henri-Georges Clouzot and Alfred Hitchcock, Hammer created its own approach to this genre in some of the company's very best films. This book takes a chronological, film-by-film approach to all of Hammer's thrillers. Well-known classics such as Seth Holt's The Nanny (1965) and Taste of Fear (1961) are discussed, together with less well known but equally brilliant films such as The Full Treatment (dir. Val Guest, 1960) and Michael Carreras' Maniac (1963). The films' literary ancestry, reflection of British society and relation to psychological theories of Freud and Jung, architectural metaphor, sexuality, religion, and even Nazi atrocities are all fully explored.

Friedrich Nietzsche regarded himself as the most musical philosopher--he played the piano, wrote his own compositions and espoused a philosophy encouraging all to dance for joy. Central to his life and his ideas were the music and personality of Richard Wagner, whom he both loved and loathed at different times of his life. Nietzsche had considerable influence on composers, many of whom employed Wagnerian sonorities to set his words and respond to his ideas. This book explores Nietzsche's relationship with Wagner, the influence of his writings on the music of Strauss, Mahler, Delius, Scriabin, Busoni and others, his place in Thomas Mann's critique of German Romantic music in the novel Doctor Faustus and his impact on 20th-century popular music.

The Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening explores the intersection between the history of listening and the history of the moving image. Featuring established and emergent scholars from musicology, film studies, and literary studies, ethnomusicology and sound studies, popular music,sociology, media and communications, and psychology, this Handbook offers a wide range of case studies and methodological perspectives on the archaeologies, aesthetics, and extensions of cinematic listening.Chapters are structured around six themes: Part I ("Genealogies and Beginnings") considers film sound in light of pre-existing genres such as opera and shadow theatre, and explores changes in listening taking place at critical junctures in the early history of cinema. Part II ("Locations andRelocations") focuses on specific venues and presentational practices (from roadshow movies to and contemporary live-score screenings). Part III ("Representations and Re-presentations") zooms into the formal properties of specific films, analysing representations of listening on screen as well as onthe role of sound as a representational surplus. Part IV ("The Listening Body") focuses on cinematic sound as a powerful and sensual stimulus that has the power to engage the full body sensorium. Part V ("Listening again") discusses a range of ways in which film sound is encountered andreinterpreted outside the cinema, through ancillary materials like songs and soundtrack albums, in experimental conditions, and in pedagogical contexts. Part VI ("Between Media") compares the listening protocols of cinema with those of TV series and music video, promenade theatre and personalstereos, video games and Virtual Reality.

A stimulating overview of the intellectual arguments and critical debates involved in the study of British and Irish cinemas British and Irish film studies have expanded in scope and depth in recent years, prompting a growing number of critical debates on how these cinemas are analysed, contextualized, and understood. A Companion to British and Irish Cinema addresses arguments surrounding film historiography, methods of textual analysis, critical judgments, and the social and economic contexts that are central to the study of these cinemas. Twenty-nine essays from many of the most prominent writers in the field examine how British and Irish cinema have been discussed, the concepts and methods used to interpret and understand British and Irish films, and the defining issues and debates at the heart of British and Irish cinema studies. Offering a broad scope of commentary, the Companion explores historical, cultural and aesthetic questions that encompass over a century of British and Irish film studies—from the early years of the silent era to the present-day. Divided into five sections, the Companion discusses the social and cultural forces shaping British and Irish cinema during different periods, the contexts in which films are produced, distributed and exhibited, the genres and styles that have been adopted by British and Irish films, issues of representation and identity, and debates on concepts of national cinema at a time when ideas of what constitutes both ‘British’ and ‘Irish’ cinema are under question. A Companion to British and Irish Cinema is a valuable and timely resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of film, media, and cultural studies, and for those seeking contemporary commentary on the cinemas of Britain and Ireland.