Film/Music Analysis - 2nd Edition: A Film Studies Approach

The field of Film-Music Studies has been increasingly dominated by musicologists; this book brings the discipline back squarely into the domain of Film Studies, offering an approach in which music and visuals are seen as equal players in the game. Blending Neoformalism with Gestalt psychology and Leonard B. Meyer’s musicology, this study treats music as a cinematic element, offering 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. 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.

Emilio Audissino is Associate Professor at Linnaeus University, Sweden. A film historian and film musicologist, he researches and teaches about Italian and Hollywood cinema; film narratology; neoformalist analysis; comedy; horror; and film music and sound. Most notably, he is the author of The Film Music of John Williams (2014/2021), Film Music in Concert (2021), and co-editor of The Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema (2023). He also published the first academic articles on the cinema of Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker.