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Adorno, T. W., & Eisler, H. (1994). Composing for the films. London: Athlone Press.   
Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 06/01/2007, 07:09
"Motion-picture music corresponds to the whistling or singing child in the dark"
Suggest that music was early introduced to cinema to calm the fear felt when watching ghostly and silent images of other humans on screen. The fear comes not from the images' ghostlike qualities but from the threat of [our own] muteness when confronted with images of creatures like ourselves.

A footnote mentions that Kurt London stated that music was added to drown the noise of the projector although Adorno and Eisler suggest that that was not due to the noisiness of the projector but was to appease or neutralize the sound of a mechanism to which we refuse to yield. An assertion of humanity.

London, Kurt. Film Music. New York: Arno Press (1936). p.28
Cavalcanti, A. (1939). Sound in films. Retrieved January 16, 2006, from https://web.archive.org ... /575/sound-in-films.htm   
Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 10/09/2021, 10:23
The author is quite scathing about the use of Romantic (and neo-Classical) music in films of the time. "It is an idiom suited to an atmosphere of pomp and display. In style, the music of the cinema, by and large, represents a fixation at a stage of development which the art itself left behind about thirty years ago. Tschaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, are the spiritual fathers of most cinema music."
Small, C. (1998). Musicking: The meanings of performing and listening. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press.   
Last edited by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 22/11/2023, 17:15
Small claims that the questions "What is the meaning of music and What is the function of music in human life? are the wrong questions to ask, for "[t]here is no such thing as music. Music is not a thing at all but an activity, something that people do."
Music conceived as an object, a thing, came about through "the trap of reification." An abstraction, through language use, of the action of music.
Music, through western academia and music criticism, has become equated with the western tradition, 'classical' music, which, through this equation, becomes privileged, and all other musics (including western popular musics) are relegated to the field of ethnomusicology. As Small points out (writing in 1998), even in the West, classical music sales of records account for only 3%.
Citing Dalhaus (1983, 4), the "concept of 'work' and not 'event' is the cornerstone of music history."

Small elaborates: "[M]usicologists . . . ascertain the real nature and contours of musical works by recourse to original texts . . . theorists . . . discover the way in which the works are constructed as objects in themselves . . . aetheticians . . . deal with the meaning of sound objects and the reasons for their effect on a listener. All are concerned with things, with musical works."

Dalhaus, C. 1983. Foundations of Music History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The performance of a work of music:
  1. is merely a presentation, performers play "no part in the creative process" and merely provide "an imperfect and approximate representation of the work itself" and thus "music's inner meanings can never be yielded up in performance. They can be discovered only by those who can read and study the score" (5)
  2. has only one line of communication "from composer to individual listener through the medium of the performer" and so the "listener's task is simply to contemplate the work" (6), meaning is "the composer's business" (6) and cannot be added to by the listener.
  3. "suggests also that music is an individual matter, that composing, performing and listening take part in a social vacuum" (6). Small maintains that communication also flows from listeners to performer(s) and between listeners.
In traditional musicology, "each musical work is autonomous," it has qualities that are inherent and without reference to "any occasion, any ritual, or any particular set of religious, political, or social beliefs."
"performance does not exist in order to present musical works, but rather, musical works exist in order to give performers something to perform."
"music's primary meanings are not individual at all but social. . . . The fundamental nature and meaning of music lie not in musical works at all, but in action, in what people do."
Definition of musicking: "To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, by listening, by rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is called composing), or by dancing."

This is a concept that is "descriptive, not prescriptive."

Studying the meaning or nature of a work of music is a pointless task where there is (as often is the case in many cultures) no concrete musical work to study (10). Indeed, many musical cultures do not have a thing such as a musical work (11).
Stockburger, A. (2006). The rendered arena: Modalities of space in video and computer games. Unpublished thesis PhD, University of the Arts, London.   
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 15/05/2008, 15:04
"Game music has a huge emotional impact on the player and it generally enhances the feeling of immersion."
Young, K. (2006). Recreating reality. Retrieved March 9, 2009, from http://www.gamesound.or ... /RecreatingReality.html   
Added by: Mark Grimshaw-Aagaard 09/03/2009, 10:47
"Music, in particular, is like monosodium glutamate for the ears (MSG is the chemical they add to snacks and some Chinese foodstuffs to make them taste better than they intrinsically do). The use of music in virtual worlds is especially interesting as it is such an incredibly abstract concept; our lives are not scored by music. In a virtual world, music can be used to intensify an experience and act as an emotional signifier without revealing itself as a manipulative device. Whilst there is no doubt that this is a very powerful tool when used well, it is in no way realistic."
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