Journal of Film Music 3.

1 (2010) 95-97
doi:10.1558/jfm.v3i1.95

ISSN (print) 1087-7142

ISSN (online) 1758-860X

Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, and Richard

Leppert, eds., Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing
Music in Cinema
Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2007. [xiii, 324 pp.
ISBN: 0520250703. $24.95 (trade paper)] Music examples, illustrations, figures, tables,
filmography, bibliography, indices.
Matthew Brown
Eastman School of Music
mbrown.esm@gmail.com

ne of the most interesting developments over

the past few years has been the emergence
of film music as a legitimate subject for
scholarly research. This move is an important one
not only because it acknowledges the significant role
film music plays in contemporary culture, but also
because it promises to foster exchanges between
experts in such diverse field as film studies, media/
cultural studies, aesthetics, historical musicology,
music theory, and music psychology. That being
the case, the development has also shown just how
problematic film music can be. Indeed, although
films normally create narratives from combining
images and sounds, the music does not necessarily
serve the narrative to the same degree as the images
or the other sound sources, the dialog and effects.
Sometimes it seems to behave almost autonomously,
imposing structure on the other elements. When
scores do serve the narrative, many experts distinguish
between music that is actually invoked by the story
(so-called diegetic music, which by now should be
described as source music) and music that is not
(non-diegetic music, which by now should be described
as the score). And yet, this dichotomy is often
blurred at best. To complicate matters further, film
music reopens age-old philosophical debates about
authenticity, representation, expression, reception,
and meaning in music: some claim that music has

clear representational and expressive powers, whereas

others insist that these powers are extremely limited.1
The promise and the problems posed by film
music are both on display in the recent set of essays
Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema. The
book collects sixteen papers delivered at a conference
sponsored by the University of Minnesota in April
2004. Motivated by a desire to stop treating music
as a subordinate element in films, this conference
explored the ways in which films conceptualize
music and how they position music and musicality
as partsof a fictional world (p. 225). The papers are
arranged into three groups: those that consider the
ways in which music is represented in film (Musical
Meaning); those that show how music influences the
ways in which people understand the outside world
(Agency); and those that discuss the ways in which
the generic identity of music carries over into film
(Identity) (pp. 68). The editors also add a brief
introduction, a filmography, and a general index.
Taken as a whole, Beyond the Soundtrack is an
attractive book. Perhaps the most obvious strength
of the collection is the broad scope of its material;
it contains lots of things for lots of people. This
enormous breadth stems in large part from the fact
1 For a convenient survey of these debates, see Peter Kivy, Introduction to a
Philosophy of Music (Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, 2002), especially
pp. 182201.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010, 1 Chelsea Manor Studios, Flood Street, London SW3 5SR.

96 THE JOURNAL OF FILM MUSIC

that contributors have varied backgrounds in film

studies, literature, cultural studies, and historical
musicology. Between them, they address many of the
problems mentioned above. For example, Robynn
Stilwell and Daniel Goldmark expose problems with
the distinction between source music (diegetic) and
score (non-diegetic). Goldmark is particularly skeptical
of its relevance in cartoons. He pursues this further in
his book Tunes for Toons: Music in Hollywood Cartoons
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 2005). In his extremely engaging essay on the
film music of Nino Rota, Richard Dyer explores some
of the ways in which music can function independently
of the narrative. He also provides a brief summary
of the philosophical problems that arise in trying
to understand expression and meaning in music.
Meanwhile, other writers tackle broad issues of history,
gender, and culture. The papers by Rick Altman and
Daniel Goldmark, two of the strongest in the book,
present wonderful insights about the use of music
in feature films and cartoons during the 1920s. The
sense of diversity is also borne out by the enormous
number of films mentioned in the text. Between
them, the contributors refer to 172 films, ranging from
early silent films to recent Hollywood blockbusters,
and epic feature films to short cartoons. Given the
editors insistence that music is not a subordinate
element in film, it is ironic that their filmography
identifies the films director, country of origin, and
date of release, but not the name of the composer.
There are other missed opportunities. Take,
for example, the books title. Although the term
soundtrack is problematic, the editors basically
equate the word with the musical score: as they
point out, it acquired this meaning in the 1940s
as advertising lingo for recordings of music from
the movies (p. 3). This usage takes for granted
the fact that soundtracks normally contain dialog
and sound effects as well.2 And yet, it is not always
easy to differentiate musical scores from sound
effects or sound effects from dialog. One need only
think of works like The Birds (1963) and The Picnic
(a 28-minute film originally aired on British TV
in 1976). In The Birds, Bernard Herrmann worked
closely with electronic composers Remi Gassmann
2 See Rick Altman, with McGraw Jones and Sonia Tatroe, Inventing the
Cinema Soundtrack: Hollywoods Multiplane Sound System, in Music and
Cinema, ed. James Buhler, Caryl Flinn, and David Neumeyer (Hanover, NH:
Wesleyan University Press, 2000), 33959. In addition, the Wikipedia article
about soundtrack shows that many scholars use the term as a misnomer
(for example, as a synonym for film score). It is an interesting state of
affairs that Wikipedia seems better informed than scholars writing about
film music. See Soundtrack, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Soundtrack (accessed on 18 June 2008).

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

and Oskar Sala to recreate the squawk of the birds

in the studio. Seen in the context of 1950s and 60s
electronic composition, it is unclear whether they
created elaborate sound effects or a piece of avantgarde electronic music. And in The Picnic, the actors
mumble or squeal in expressive ways without uttering
a single coherent word.3 Are those mumbles and
squeals sound effects or distorted forms of dialog?
The second half of the title also cries out for
clarification. The editors interpret the phrase
representing music in cinema liberally: to
represent music in film is to represent what music
represents (p. 6). But this interpretation actually
conflates two separate questions. First, how is music
represented in film? Second, how does a given piece
of music represent other objects, events, or ideas?
There are many ways to answer the first question.
The most obvious way to represent music in film is
through images of people making music, as in the
famous concert scene from Hitchcocks The Man
Who Knew Too Much (1956).4 Such images can be
abstracted in shots of musical instruments, music
stands, radios, among others. Another way is to
show images of people responding to the music, as
in the scene from Bruno Nuytens Camille Claudel
(1988) in which Debussy (Maxime Leroux) dances
a waltz with Camille (Isabelle Adjani). The motion
of dancers can be represented more abstractly as in
the famous shot of the space station spinning to the
sounds of The Blue Danube in Kubricks 2001: A
Space Odyssey (1968). Still another way is to show
images of specific representations of music, as in the
shot of Rita Hayworth lounging over a giant page of
sheet music in the publicity still for Charles Vidors
Cover Girl (1944). There are likewise many ways
to answer the second question, assuming that the
music is indeed representational. Sometimes music
represents non-musical objects by mimicking the
sounds made by those objects or by alluding to the
meaning of particular images or words; sometimes
it represents general ideas by including culturally
coded musical figures, or topoi; sometimes it refers to
particular ideas or people through the use of recurring
themes or leitmotivs; sometimes it expresses the same
3 Written and performed by the two Ronnies (Ronnie Barker and Ronnie
Corbett), it was first shown on BBC 2 on 1 January 1976. It has since been
shown several times by ITV 3, who currently holds the rights to the film. The
two Ronnies created a sequel By the Sea, which was first shown in 1982 and
feature some as the same characters as The Picnic. A limited VHS release of
By the Sea and The Picnic was available in 1990 and deleted in 1994; a limited
DVD release (by BBC Video) of By the Sea/The Picnic was available in 2007.
4 At the climax of the film, the composer Bernard Herrmann conducts a
performance of Arthur Benjamins cantata Storm Clouds at the Royal Albert
Hall. Benjamins music also appeared in the original British version of The
Man Who Knew Too Much (1934).

REVIEWS

emotions as the characters; sometimes it expresses

the tension in a particular scene by manipulating
the principles of musical syntax; and so on.
But perhaps the biggest lacuna is that Beyond the
Soundtrack is blind to music psychology and music
theory, two fields that promise to add important
insights on representation and film music. For
example, although the former can surely contribute to
any discussion of music, memory, and mental images,
contributor Berthold Hoeckner shuns this line of
inquiry, preferring instead to quote vague remarks
on the subject by Friedrich Nietzsche.5 The lack of
detailed musical analysis is even more striking, given
the fact that one the contributors, Nicholas Cook, is
author of the recent book Analyzing Musical Multimedia
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).6 Even
when the authors do offer detailed readings of
particular film scores, the results are not always
very successful. Take, for example, Susan McClarys
discussion of Philip Glasss music for The Hours (2002).
Having shown how one particular scene relies on three
distinctive musical patterns, she classifies the second
sonority in Pattern 2 as a first inversion Eb triad
(Eb6). The label is not wrong, but it fails to capture
the fact that this sonority is a neighbor chord to the
adjacent G minor chords. This contrapuntal reading
ties in not only with melodic motion Bb/G-C/A-Bb/G
in the last two versions of Pattern 2, but also with
the same configuration in Pattern 3.7 While on the
subject of neighbor tones, Marty Feldmans melancholy
horn solo in Mel Brookss Young Frankenstein (1974)
features an upper neighbor and not, as she suggests,
an appoggiatura (p. 53). Unlike appoggiaturas, upper
neighbors are not necessarily used as musical signs of
[sexual] desire. Just think of famous lick from Jaws!
All in all, Beyond the Soundtrack is a welcome
addition to the bookshelf; it provides a handy snapshot
both of the enormous promise and the complex
problems posed by film music. Although the book
has some limitations, which undoubtedly stem from
the fact that the papers were originally designed for
a conference, it nonetheless gives the reader plenty
5 For examples of the ways cognitive psychology can inform film music, see
Annabel Cohen, Film Music: Perspectives from Cognitive Psychology, in
Buhler, Flinn, and Neumeyer, Music and Cinema, 36077, Understanding
Musical Soundtracks, Empirical Studies of the Arts 8 (1990), 11124, and Scott
Lipscomb and Roger Kendall, Perceptual Judgment of the Relationship
between Musical and Visual Components in Film, Psychomusicology 13, no. 1
(1994): 6098.
6 Besides ignoring Cooks book, Beyond the Soundtrack barely mentions David
Neumeyers and James Buhlers theoretically driven writings.
7 McClary mentions an interesting chromatic twist in Pattern 3 when
the F major sonority in m. 2 shifts to a D major sonority in m. 3 (p. 59).
Progressions of this kind are not uncommon in tonal contexts. See Heinrich
Schenkers discussion of VIIV progressions in Free Composition, trans. Ernst
Oster (New York: Longman, 1979), 8990.

Equinox Publishing Ltd 2010.

97

to think about. One can only hope that the book will
encourage even greater interest in film music and ever
more fruitful dialogs between scholars from every
part of the academic community. That, of course, not
only means engaging experts in film studies, media/
cultural studies, and historical musicology, but it
also means approaching specialists in philosophy,
music theory and music psychology. When the
conversation widens to include these other voices,
our understanding of film music can only get better.
Matthew Brown is a Professor of Music Theory
at the Eastman School of Music. He has a PhD
in musicology from Cornell University and was
a Junior Fellow at Harvards Society of Fellows.
He has written books about Debussys Ibria
and about Schenkerian theory. He is currently
finishing a book about Debussys impact on popular
culture, including Hollywood movies, and started
another that focuses on music in horror films.