Cooke — A History of Film Music

Author: Mervyn Cooke
Title: A History of Film Music
Year: 2008
Type: Academic survey (Cambridge University Press)

A History of Film Music is a book by Mervyn Cooke, published by Cambridge University Press in 2008. Cooke is Professor of Music at the University of Nottingham and the author of the article on film music in the New Grove Dictionary of Music. The book surveys film scoring from the silent era to the present, focusing on the dominant practices of Hollywood while giving case studies of the national cinemas of the United Kingdom, France, India, Italy, Japan and the early Soviet Union, and it analyzes the technological and aesthetic issues that shaped the history of film music. Its method balances overviews of film genres, modes of production and critical reception with non-technical descriptions of how image and soundtrack interact in individual films. It gives separate sections to documentary and animation and to opera and the film musical, and separate chapters to popular and classical music in the cinema. Steven A. Kennedy, reviewing it in 2009, recommended it above all other film music books and found its treatment of the 1970s and of the new symphonic score brief.

Cooke is Professor of Music at the University of Nottingham and the author of the article on film music in the New Grove Dictionary of Music, and he has written on Benjamin Britten and on jazz, editing The Cambridge Companion to Jazz with David Horn.¹ Cambridge University Press published the book in 2008. Its publisher describes it as an introduction to film scoring from the silent era to the present day that focuses on the dominant practices of Hollywood while offering an international perspective through case studies of the national cinemas of the United Kingdom, France, India, Italy, Japan and the early Soviet Union.¹

The book opens with the silent cinema and a chapter on the coming of sound, and its chapter on Hollywood’s Golden Age covers the studio system, the Wagnerian leitmotif in film, and composers including Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang Korngold.² A chapter on stage and screen covers opera on film and the film musical. The later chapters cover post-war Hollywood, including Bernard Herrmann and the influence of jazz, film music in the United Kingdom, a chapter with sections on documentary and animation, and film music in France. A chapter of “global highlights” covers the Soviet Union, India, Italy and Japan, and the final chapter covers film music since the New Hollywood of the 1970s, from John Williams and minimalism to the global film music of the present.² The chapter on popular music covers title songs, compilation scores and the joint marketing of films and their soundtrack albums, and the chapter on classical music covers concert repertoire used in films from the war film to Stanley Kubrick.²

The publisher describes the method as a balance between “wide-ranging overviews of film genres, modes of production and critical reception” and “detailed non-technical descriptions of the interaction between image track and soundtrack” in representative films. It writes that the book analyzes the technological and aesthetic issues that shaped the history of film music and concludes with an account of the modern film composer’s working practices.¹ Technology recurs across the book, from a section of the second chapter on photographing sound to sections on electronics, recording and the modern soundtrack album.²

Steven A. Kennedy, reviewing the book for American Music Preservation in March 2009, rated it excellent and wrote, “If you can only buy one film music book, make it this one.” He found that it passes quickly over the film music of the 1970s, that its chapter on classical music is the least engaging, and that its discussion of the new symphonic score is brief.³

Key contributions

• A single-volume history of film music from the silent era to the present, focused on Hollywood, with case studies of six other national cinemas.
• Technology, from synchronized sound to electronics and modern recording, treated as a force in the history of film scoring.
• Chapters of their own for popular music and classical music in the cinema, beside the original score.
• A non-technical method that describes how image and soundtrack interact in individual films.

See also

• Cinematic classical — the orchestral film score
• The song in film — the use of popular songs in films
• Classical music — the concert tradition