Music and Film

Catalog description

The object of this course is to develop skills in analyzing the soundtrack, music's role in the soundtrack, and the relation of soundtrack and image track (especially relating to music) on small-scale and large-scale (narrative) levels. The course develops critical listening and viewing skills, but it also offers a particular kind of film-music history survey, one that focuses on the three nodal points in the history of film sound: the introduction of sound, the introduction of stereo, and the introduction of digital sound. We will explore the thesis that each of these technological advances alters the structural relationships among the three relatively autonomous components of the soundtrack—dialogue, music and effects.