Music in Films

The purpose here is not to trace the history of music in film, but to survey the literature about music in film written between 1980 and 1996. Film music literature is a strange hybrid, much like its subject, existing in a limbo cut off from the main body of both its progenitors: neither film studies nor musicology have paid much attention to film music in the past, and like a squalling brat, film music studies have continued to protest loudly the neglect. While it is true that film studies and musicology have been largely uninterested in film music—or, to be fair, ill-equipped theoretically to approach the synthetic form—the vociferous plaints of complete neglect are gradually being exposed as hyperbole.