A Film Studies Approach
Emilio Audissino, 2017 / 2025
This book offers an approach to film music in which music and visuals are seen as equal players in the game. The field of Film-Music Studies has been increasingly dominated by musicologists and this book brings the discipline back squarely into the domain of Film Studies. Blending Neoformalism with Gestalt Psychology and Leonard B. Meyer’s musicology, this study treats music as a cinematic element and offers scholars and students of both music and film a set of tools to help them analyse the wide ranging impact that music has in films.
In the last twenty years there has been a significant shift of interest in film music from Film departments to Music departments. This study seeks to balance the situation and bring film music back into the sphere of action of Film Studies. Film scholars can still give an important specialistic contribution by tackling the music as one of the cinematic devices, and focussing on the analysis of its interplay with the other formal elements of film. In this view, the scope of this study is to develop an approach and a set of analytical tools that serve as a guidance to film scholars to address music in film from their discipline-specific perspective.
The analytical approach here offered stems from a mix of Neoformalism – from Film Studies – and concepts drawn from Leonard Meyer’s music theories. Neoformalism describes and explains the filmic system focussing on the overall form and style, not only on the interpretation of the film’s contents and meanings. In particular, the analysis concentrates on the function(s) and motivation(s) of a series of devices, whose interplay is at the basis of the film’s formal system. Being one of the film’s devices, music carries out specific functions and responds to specific motivations. Yet, film music is also music. Hence, Neoformalism is coupled with Leonard B. Meyer’s theories. According to Meyer the meaning and emotional effect of a tonal piece of music derives from the way in which the composition plays with the listener’s expectations and anticipations, which are based on a shared knowledge of norms and conventions. This interest in norms and conventions and in the psychology of perception links Meyer’s studies to Neoformalism. And their common interest in the ‘whole,’ in formal stabilisation, and closure makes Gestalt Psychology a fitting overarching theoretical framework to integrate Neoformalism with Meyer’s musicology. The combination of the micro-configuration of the music and that of the visuals produces a macro-configuration in which the whole is something different from the sum of its parts. In this audiovisual interaction, three areas of musical agency are identified in the film: music can have a perceptive function; an emotive function; a cognitive function.
The findings are valuable for both the disciplines involved. To film scholars, it presents film music as a topic that can be handled with more confidence and breadth, because the musicological analysis of the musical text (the score) is not required in this approach. To musicologists, it provides a way to deepen their understanding of and insights into the formal and stylistic ways in which music interacts and combines with the other cinematic components.
This second edition provides an updated survey of the field and a new chapter featuring additional case studies, including a novel analytical category for studying the contemporary ‘sound-design style’ film music.
“In this compelling analysis of how film music functions in a wide variety of contexts, Audissino illustrates his clearly explained theoretical concepts with numerous well-chosen examples and substantial case studies. Approaching its subject primarily (and refreshingly) from a film-studies perspective, this book will equally prove an immensely useful and thought-provoking resource for anyone interested in music and cinema.”
Mervyn Cooke, Professor of Music, University of Nottingham, UK, author of A History of Film Music, 2008
“In Film/Music Analysis, the author displays an impressively broad knowledge when critiquing previous writings on the subject of analytical approaches to musical scores in films. He offers a new type of analysis, based on the neoformalist approach. It assumes that a film’s score is not a self-contained piece of music inserted into it, to be analyzed simply as music. Instead, for Audissino, music serves as one of the many filmic techniques that together function to make up the narration of a story. Film music is thus treated as comparable to cinematography, staging, acting, special effects, editing, and other components of movies. A series of compelling examples demonstrates the practicality of this sensible approach, one accessible to film scholars who are not musicologists”.
Kristin Thompson, Honorary Fellow, Department of Communication Arts, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, author of Breaking the Glass Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis, 1988
“Thirty years ago, Claudia Gorbman pioneered placing film music within regular film theory. Now it once again seems necessary to apply a theoretical frame which allows music to be treated as a cinematic device and not as autonomous music. Here Emilio Audissino couples neoformalism and Meyer’s musicology into an analytical tool that highlights the interplay between film and music. This book is indispensable for every scholar who wants to analyze and understand film music.”
Ann-Kristin Wallengren, Professor in Film Studies, Lund University, Sweden, co-editor (with K. J. Donnelly) of Today’s Sounds for Yesterday’s Films: Making Music for Silent Cinema, 2016
Emile Wennekes, Chair Professor of Musicology: Music and Media, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, Chair of the Study Group Music and Media (MaM) of the International Musicological Society, co-editor (with Emilio Audissino) of The Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema, 2023
“Audissino’s neoformalist approach is not merely a distinctive addition to the analytical toolkit for professionals, I have been using his perspectives on film/music analysis intensively in the classroom for years. His model is especially useful for bringing students from various disciplinary backgrounds together. Students of Film Studies are not presupposed to possess profound music-theoretical skills, yet can still formulate sensible conclusions on how music functions within a film score; musicology students do not need an all-encompassing knowledge of the technical lingo of film-making. This second edition makes Audissino’s work even more useful due to the incorporation of (the increasingly important) timbral aspects of soundtracks, as well as addressing additional cinematic genres”.