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2011/2 Provisional Module Catalogue - UNDER CONSTRUCTION & SUBJECT TO CHANGE
 Module Code: MUSM031 Module Title: SCREEN MUSIC STUDIES
Module Provider: Music and Sound Recording Short Name: MUM.SCREENMUS
Level: M Module Co-ordinator: BARHAM JM Dr (Music Record)
Number of credits: 30 Number of ECTS credits: 15
 
Module Availability
Weekly two-hour seminars in semester 1. Tutorials will be scheduled during the course with the Module Convenor and/or contributing lecturers.
Assessment Pattern
Assessment is by coursework consisting of:
 
A short written assignment (2,000 words; 25%)   
and EITHER
A more extended written project (6,000 words; 75%) externally moderated
OR
A portfolio of screen compositions (15 mins of music plus written commentary of up to 1,500 words) (75%) externally moderated
Module Overview
Prerequisites/Co-requisites
Module Aims
To address a range of historical, theoretical and technical aspects of screen (film/video/TV) media and associated musics
Learning Outcomes
  • The ability to demonstrate systematic understanding and critical awareness of the historical development of screen media and associated musics
  • The ability to demonstrate awareness of various aspects of screen theory, musicology and technique such as film form, film and culture, film interpretation, the role of music in film narrative
  • The development of aesthetic understanding of, and practical skills and techniques in, image-music synchronization through editing, synthesis, computer scoring, and screen score analysis
  • The ability to demonstrate scholarly and practical skills commensurate with professional standards of research and scoring
  • The ability to undertake critical evaluation of current research and associated methodologies and to propose alternative hypotheses in the scholarly field
Module Content
Analytical, historical and critical aspects of the module will address selected issues as they impinge on the functions and analysis of screen music, such as the film as text, film form and narrative structures, film psychoanalysis and semiotics, film and post-structuralist thought, film and modernism/postmodernism, film hermeneutics and film and cultural studies. 
 
Repertoire will be selected according to the interests of the students from, for example:
  • Silent film (Eisenstein, Griffith)
  • Weimar period Germany (Lang, Wiene)
  • 1920s Hollywood (Chaplin, DeMille)
  • Early sound (Ford, Hitchcock)
  • 1930s Europe (Gance, Renoir)
  • Orson Welles
  • Italian neorealism and later (Rossellini, Antonioni, Visconti)
  • French new wave, Spain, and German Das neue Kino (Godard, Bunuel, Herzog)
  • Post-war Hollywood boom (the coming of colour) and more recent Hollywood (various genres)
  • Independent Anglo-American filmmakers (Kubrick, Allen, Altman)
  • Television/video small-screen media.
  • Attention will be focussed on established composers who have written for the screen (including Saint-Saëns, Bernstein, Copland, Shostakovitch and Walton) and specialist film composers such as Herrmann, Korngold, Rózsa, Tiomkin, Williams, Horner, Goldsmith, Shore and Fenton.
Methods of Teaching/Learning
10 two-hour seminars plus up to 10 hours of tutorials
270 hours of private study (300 hours in total for the module)

The lecturer will introduce key general concepts and specific examples in an overview of the field of study and the critical literature. This will be complemented by practical tuition, and developed through class discussion and/or short, prepared presentations by students.
Selected Texts/Journals
Essential reading
 
James Buhler, Caryl Flinn & David Neumeyer (eds), Music and Cinema (Middletown CT: Wesleyan
      University Press, 2000) 
K. J. Donnelly, Film Music. Critical Approaches (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001)
Fred Karlin & Rayburn Wright, On the Track: A Guide to Contemporary Film Scoring, 2nd edn (London:
      Routledge, 2004)
 
Recommended reading
 
Michel Chion, Audio-Vision. Sound on Screen, ed. & trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York : Columbia
      University Press, 1994)
Annette Davison, Hollywood Theory, Non-Hollywood Practice. Cinema Soundtracks in the 1980s and
      1990s (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004)
Claudia Gorbman, Unheard Melodies. Narrative Film Music (Bloomington: Indiana University
      Press, 1987)
Prendergast, Roy, Film Music: A Neglected Art, 2nd edn (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992)
 
Background reading
 
Royal Brown, Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music (Berkeley: University of
      California Press, 1994)
John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, (Oxford: Oxford
      University Press, 1998)
Marks, Martin Miller, Music and the Silents: Contexts and Case Studies 1895-1924 (New York: Oxford
      University Press, 1997)
Journal of Film Music 1/1 (2002)
Kay Dickinson (ed.), Movie Music. The Film Reader (London: Routledge, 2003).
Kathryn Kalinak, Settling the score. Music and the Classical Hollywood Film (Madison WI:
      University of Wisconsin Press, 1992)
Jeff Smith, The Sounds of commerce. Marketing Popular Film Music (New York: Columbia
      University Press, 1998)
 
Last Updated
19/09/08