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  • 1.
    Agevall, Ola
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Social Sciences.
    Dragspelskampen: Statsbidragen, bildningsförbunden och det folkliga musicerandet 1947-19602010Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [sv]

    Dragspelet var under 1900-talets mittersta tredjedel ett självklart inslag i svenskt folkligt musikliv; samtidigt befann sig dragspelsmusiken på nedersta plats i den genre- och instrumenthierarki som definierade såväl den seriösa musiken som det musikpedagogiska landskapet.

    Under 1940-talet inträffade två händelser som till dels var betingade av denna situation, och som därutöver bidrog till att skärpa den till ett socialt och organisatoriskt konfliktområde. Den ena händelsen var tillkomsten av Hagström Musiks musikskolor. För ett produktionsföretag med tonvikt på dragspelsframställning framträdde det stora intresset för dragspel som en potentiell marknad, vilken begräsandes till sin fulla utsträckning genom frånvaron av utbildningsinstitutioner villiga att undervisa på dragspel. Hagströms Musikskola blev genom sin storskalighet och inriktning ett konkurrerande musikpedagogiskt alternativ, obundet av de genre- och instrumenthierarkier som dominerade övriga aktörer på det musikpedagogiska fältet.

    Den andra händelsen var införandet av statsbidrag till studiecirklar. Detta följdes en stark expansion av antalet studiecirklar, parat med att en allt ökande andel av dessa cirklar inrättades som musik-, i synnerhet instrumentalcirklar. Bildningsförbundens musikverksamhet hade dittills varit präglade av en musiksyn som uteslöt schlager, dragspel och gitarr. Här betonades folkrörelsernas unisona sång, musikteori och klassisk musik. Men expansionen av antalet och andelen musikcirklar, i förening med intresset för dragspel och med förekomsten av ett musikpedagogiskt alternativ som inte skyggade för det instrumentet, bidrog s.a.s. med hotet om en perforering av bildningsrörelsens rågång mellan dansbana och konsertsal.

    Detta papper vill bidra med en sociologisk analys av de spänningsfält som uppstod när frågan om god smak dels flyttade in på insidan av bildningsrörelsen, dels blev föremål för skarpa beslut om medelfördelning som berörde såväl staten som det enskilda bildningsförbundet och förhållandet mellan bildningsförbunden.

  • 2.
    Ahlqvist, Petra
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Music and Art.
    Skön låt eller enformig?: En attitudundersökning om unga vuxnas sätt att tala om musikgenrer2014Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
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  • 3.
    Ahnstedt, Pontus
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Music and Art.
    Visualiserad musik: Hur medier och sinnen blandas2022Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 180 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [sv]

    Denna uppsats redovisar en explorativ undersökning och studie av fenomenet och frågeställningar kring hur musik kan bli visuell och hur rytm och ton relaterar till färg. De två teorier som jag använder är intermedialitet och synestesi. Jag gör en kvalitativ intervju med olika kompositörer verksamma på folkhögskolor, musikhögskolor och universitet. Fokus i frågorna ligger på tekniska medier, de inre skeendena, kropp/känsel, gehör och visuell konst. Vad som kan konstateras genom denna studie är att den visuella aspekten av musik är mycket viktig för och flitigt använd av kompositörer. I denna uppsats får vi en inblick i deras process av detta visualiserande i komplext musikskapande. Jag diskuterar hur rytm, ton och färg har en del gemensamt. Även om rytm inte direkt för en synestetiker alstrar färger på samma sätt som toner kan göra, så tolkar jag det som att rytmen finns med i det mönster av färger de kan uppleva tillsammans med dessa klingande toner. Vidare finner jag att medier och sinnen hos kompositörer blandas hela tiden. Det kroppsliga, det auditiva och det visuella är ständigt delar av en kreativ process allt efter en kompositörs inre vision för sin musik.  

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  • 4.
    Alkenäs, Dan
    Växjö University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, School of Education.
    Får man spela fel?: Studier kring improvisationens betydelse i musikundervisning.2007Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Musical improvisation is an infinite artistic well. It helps the musician to make a personal performance and lets the music reflect the inner feelings. It is a language with which the performer can adapt the formulation to the specific situation. Yet so many have fear and respect when facing the phenomenon. In this study Dan Alkenäs discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using musical improvisation as a pedagogical method in school education. During a semester Alkenäs has, together with music teacher Bitten Löfgren and a group of pupils, studied what results are to be expected when teachers let musical improvisation have a leading role in music lessons. He discusses the creative working environment and the pupils’ ability to put theory into practice. One leading theme is the discussion of the common view of musicality. Alkenäs argues that it is important for a music teacher in a democratic school, with children from different kinds of cultures and backgrounds, to be flexible and adjust the lessons according to the individuals in the group. The study shows that this pedagogy, among other things, has a positive effect on interaction between students with different interest, levels of knowledge and potentials.

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  • 5.
    Almeida, Daniel
    et al.
    Linnaeus University, School of Business and Economics, Department of Management.
    Hensch, William
    Linnaeus University, School of Business and Economics, Department of Management.
    Den digitala valutans roll i musikbranschen: En undersökning av hur antalet streams, likes och följare påverkar svenska och danska artisters karriärer2023Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [sv]

    Denna undersökning fokuserar på hur digitala interaktioner påverkar motivationen hos svenska och danska artister inom populärmusikgenrer. Genom en kvantitativ ansats formulerade vi fyra propositioner och genomförde en enkät med 99 artister, främst DIY-artister som har släppt musik under den digitala eran.

    Resultaten bidrar till en fördjupad förståelse av hur digitala interaktioner kan ses som en form av social feedback och hur det påverkar artisternas motivation att bygga en karriär inom musikbranschen.

    Vi kan konstatera att digitala interaktioner, även om de inte är den enda faktorn, är en viktig faktor att beakta för att etablera sig inom musikbranschen, särskilt under den digitala eran då möjligheterna har ökat.

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    Den digitala valutans roll i musikbranschen
  • 6.
    Almer, Anton
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Music and Art.
    Hur känns harmoni?: En musikpsykologisk undersökning om betydelsen av ackord för framkallade känslor2016Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [sv]

    Denna undersökning handlar om hur en reharmonisering påverkar unga vuxna musikers känslomässiga uppfattning av låten ”Tryggare kan ingen vara”. För att få reda på vilka känslor deltagarna kände fick de fylla i ett formulär som var baserat på Geneva Emotional Music Scale (förkortat som GEMS). Utöver detta formulär fick de även svara på två korta frågor samt fylla i ett formulär om sin musikaliska bakgrund.

    Studien visar att unga vuxna musiker känslomässigt reagerar annorlunda på olika harmoniseringar av ”Tryggare kan ingen vara”. De mest intressanta skillnaderna presenteras och analyseras med hjälp av uträknade median- och medelvärden utifrån formuläret som är baserat på GEMS. Dessa siffror jämförs sedan med de andra frågorna som deltagarna fick svara på och det förs resonemang kring varför de möjligen svarade som de svarade.

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  • 7.
    Andersson, Eva
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Music and Art.
    Musikundervisningen i grundskolan - en lära för livet?2013Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
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  • 8.
    Andersson-Lindh, Kristofer
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Music and Art.
    Musikaliskt samarbete på distans: En jämförande studie om musikaliskt samarbete på distans kontra närhet.2017Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (One Year)), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    This paper is based on the study of the cooperation of two musicproducers composing and producing two songs, each with two sessions. These sessions were recorded on video and were examined with focus on verbal and nonverbal communication. The results were quantified, analyzed and deducted. Methods used in this study are autoethnography (observation), case studies and interviews. To evaluate the various types of communication parts of grounded theory has been used. This study shows that local cooperation creates a more favorable creative environment over working with digital ways of communication. This due person-to-person being the more favorable environment as more modes of communication are possible where subtle signals are a part of the conversation.

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    Musikaliskt samarbete på distans
  • 9.
    Andersson-Lindh, Kristofer
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Music and Art.
    Teknikutveckling och kreativitet.: Vilken påverkan har teknikutvecklingen på kreativiteten hos musikproducenter?2016Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [en]

    Technology and creativity in music production What is the impact of the evolving technology in a music producer’s perspective?

  • 10.
    Ankarloo, Oskar
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Music and Art.
    Klappa händerna när du är riktigt glad?: Applåden som ritual under den klassiska konserten.2020Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesis
    Abstract [sv]

    Uppsatsens syfte är att bidra till en djupare förståelse för hur applåden fungerar som en ritual under den klassiska konserten samt hur praxis kring den traderas, då den klassiska konsertens ritualer och normer kan kännas underliga och avskräckande för den som aldrig närvarat vid en sådan. Med en kvalitativ intervjumetod har två informanter frågats om deras upplevelser och tankar kring applåder och den klassiska konserten. Det empiriska material som skapats används som grund för en analys med hjälp av Bourdieus sociologiska begrepp fält, habitus och kapital, Ronald L. Grimes tankar kring det rituella fältet, samt övergripande ritualteori för att bidra med en djupare förståelse kring applåden i samband med den klassiska konserten. Applåden som ritual skapar social mening, signalerar uppskattning för det som publiken upplevt och bildar även en känsla av grupptillhörighet och solidaritet. Applåden upplevs vara viktig för att de som deltagit under konserten ska få utlopp för sina känslor och kommunicera detta mellan publik och musiker, och även sinsemellan den sittande publiken, särskilt i en miljö som kan upplevas som disciplinerad och stram. Traderingen av applådens praxis sker delvis genom misstag då en individ prövar sig fram i konsertupplevelsen, samt genom observation av erfarna i publiken. Presentatörer och andra nyckelpersoner kan bidra med en förklaring av en konsert innan den börjar för att underlätta för deltagarna, och det rika material som finns på olika konserthus hemsidor bidrar med en chans att låta den nyfikna förbereda sig innan den tar klivet in i en ny miljö. Även om det kan applåderas fel under en konsert så kan detta under vissa förutsättningar leda till en delad positiv upplevelse som på sikt kan leda till en lättad syn på applåden under den klassiska konserten.

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  • 11.
    Arvidson, Mats
    et al.
    Lund University.
    Geisler, UrsulaLund University.Hansson, KristoferLund University.
    Kris och kultur: kulturvetenskapliga perspektiv på kunskap, estetik och historia2013Collection (editor) (Other academic)
    Abstract [sv]

    Dagligen nås vi av nyheter om olika kriser: ekonomiska kriser, långdragna konflikter, länder som hamnat i förhandlingskriser, kändisar som intervjuas om sina senaste kriser mitt i livet, politiska ledare som handlat tvivelaktigt och försatt sitt parti eller sitt land i kris. Det kan upplevas som om vi idag befinner oss mitt i krisernas tid. Det korta 1900-talet vittnar också om krisernas ständiga närvaro. Men i själva verket är krisen varken något unikt för vår egen samtid eller för 1900-talet. I denna antologi synliggör ett antal forskare och doktorander krisen som begrepp och hur kriser tar plats i olika sammanhang. Bokens författare presenterar också perspektiv på hur kris används inom den egna forskningen, som ett sätt att benämna fenomen och möjliggöra dramatisering, kritik och förståelse. Kris är inte bara ett fenomen att studera, utan också en metod för undersökning.

  • 12.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of Southampton, UK.
    A Gestalt Approach to the Analysis of Music in Films2017In: Musicology Research, Vol. 2, no 1, p. 69-88Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In the field of Film-Music Studies, Cognitive Psychology remains perhaps the stronger approach as an alternative to Post-Structuralism and Cultural Studies. Yet, Gestalt Psychology has recently seen a revival of interest. Gestalt can offer enlightening concepts not only to theorise how music and visuals combine in an audiovisual whole, but also productive tools to analyse concrete instances in films. While Cognitivism tends to be concerned with single mechanisms of how the brain processes the perceptual data and gives much salience to the higher cognitive operations, Gestalt is concerned with the holistic nature of our experience and attributes more importance to the lower perceptual operations. As Donnelly points out, the combination of sound and visuals into an audiovisual whole has not so much to do with cognitive elaborations as with that hard-wired orientation of our mind towards completeness and stableness that is studied by Gestalt.

    Employing the Gestalt concepts of Isomorphism, Prägnanz and Dynamic Self-Distribution, I propose an approach to the analysis of music in films based on the similarity/difference between the configuration (gestalt) of the music and that of the other cinematic components (cinematography, editing, acting, lighting, colour palette...). A stabilised experience of the audiovisual whole – the basis for both a formalistic analysis and a critical interpretation – is reached when their encounter makes the gestalts of the cinematic components reciprocally reconfigure and fuse to produce a wider all-including gestalt: the macro-configuration of the audiovisual experience. This Gestalt approach – being based on the fusion of the aural and visual factors into a whole that is 'different from the sum of its parts' – is also helpful to supersede the long-standing visual bias that influences Film Studies, which leads to think of music as something that is externally added to either reinforce or subvert what is already there in the visuals.

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  • 13. Audissino, Emilio
    Archival Research and the Study of the Concert Presentations of Film Music2015In: Audio-Visual Archives conference, the British Library, London, 18 July 2015, 2015Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Film music has increasingly entered into the concert programmes in the last twenty years, to become now standard repertoire not only of the so-called 'Pops Concerts' but also of the more classical-oriented ones. Yet, the presentation of the film-music repertoire in concert programmes is a corner of the film-music field that has received little scholarly attention – if none at all. Archival research, particularly using audiovisual archives, is the key to reconstruct how film music has been gradually introduced into concert programmes and in what forms. 

    As an example, I propose to describe the methodology and findings of the research that I conducted in Boston, U.S.A., in 2010 and 2011, the aim of which was to demonstrate John Williams' seminal contribution to the legitimisation of film music as a viable concert repertoire. The research was conducted at the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives – where I compared the concert programmes of the Williams era with the ones from the previous Arthur Fiedler era – and at the WGBH Media Archives – where I watched all the Williams episodes of the TV show Evening at Pops (1969-2004). The archival research was more rewarding that expected, the findings demonstrating my thesis very convincingly. In particular, the videos I watched at WGBH, combined with the study of the programmes at the BSO Archives, were the basis of my classification of the forms and formats in which film music is typically adapted for concert performance. The video materials were also cardinal in showing that Williams has also had a central role in developing the multimedia concert presentations – i.e. an orchestra playing live to projected film clips – in its two formats (“multimedia concert piece” and “multimedia film piece”).

  • 14.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of West London, UK.
    Archival Research and the Study of the Concert Presentations of Film Music: The Case of John Williams and the Boston Pops2013In: The Journal of Film Music, ISSN 1087-7142, E-ISSN 1758-860X, Vol. 6, no 2, p. 147-163Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Film music has increasingly populated the concert programs in the last twenty years. Yet, the presentation of the film-music repertoire in concerts is a corner of the film–music field that has received little scholarly attention. Archival research combined with the study of audio–visual documents in particular is the key to reconstruct the story of the presentation of film music in concerts. As a case study, I present the findings of the research that I conducted in Boston, U.S.A., in 2010 and 2011. Its aim was to demonstrate John Williams's seminal contribution to the legitimization of film music as a viable concert repertoire during his tenure as conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra—“America's orchestra”. The results showed very convincingly that John Williams's association with the most trend–setting and visible orchestra in the U.S.A. has been a major force and a seminal influence for the acceptance of film music as a legitimate concert repertoire.

  • 15. Audissino, Emilio
    Behold the Newest Technological Sensation! With Music!: The Use of Music in the Silent Cinema2019In: Music and the Second Industrial Revolution / [ed] Massimiliano Sala, Turnhout: Brepols, 2019, p. 429-447Chapter in book (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Cinema was not conceived as a form of visual narrative, and certainly not as a form of art. The moving-image technique was introduced, in the Positivist milieu of the late nineteenth century, as the latest technological marvel, to be used, in the noblest cases, as an instrument for scientific inquiry – for example, to capture and analyse motion, as in Étienne-Jules Marey’s photographic rifle. Or, in more commercial usages, as an attraction at fun-fairs and world expositions – ‘Behold the latest marvel! Animated photographs!’ While the animation of images had a long tradition – for example, the seventeenth-century Magic Lantern shows – the inception of cinema was precisely made possible by recent technological advances: the faster photographic emulsions, the flexible celluloid support, and the feeding mechanism of the industrial sewing machines. While, contrary to the common narrative, it is not sure that some musical accompaniment was regularly present during the first film projections, certainly music came soon to play an increasingly central role in the development and diffusion of film shows. The chapter surveys the changes in musical practices from the early cinema of the 1890s to the standardisation of the classical narrative cinema of the 1920s – a ‘Cinema of Attractions’ that gradually turned into a ‘Cinema of Narrative Integration’ – discussing the principal functions that music fulfilled, its typical forms, its accompaniment strategies, and also some early technical attempts at making synchronisation easier and closer. While the first applications of music typically had a practical rationale – for example, drowning the fastidious sound of the projectors – and music (any music) would be simply used to provide some silence-filler, gradually film-makers realised music’s powerful potential as a narrative tool, and more dramaturgically careful uses of music were implemented, increasingly putting music under the control of the film-makers, to the point that eventually even the performer’s human variable was mechanised, with the adoption of synchronised on-film sound that crystallised the musical performance and made it interlocked with the film-strip and repeatable ad infinitum.

  • 16. Audissino, Emilio
    Building an Emotive Framework: The Macro-Emotive Function of Film Music2014In: Music for Audio-Visual Media' conference, University of Leeds, U.K., 4-6 September 2014, 2014Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    When thinking about film music, the clichéd situation of sentimental violin music accompanying a love scene often comes to mind. This is a classical occurrence of film music performing an emotive function: music projects its own emotive quality onto the visuals and thus boasts the emotive tone of the scene. We can call this “micro-emotive” function, as in said function music operates locally within the scene/sequence. However, music can fulfil a “macro-emotive” function too, i.e. it can work throughout the whole film to build up a global emotive framework. Structurally, through a gradual and consistent development of the music, the film score projects its own coherence and structural unity onto the film, which is then perceived as more structurally solid than it might be. An emotional effect is also produced: the progressive manipulation, gradual unfolding, and recurring reprises of the music produce what musicologist Leonard Meyer called the “Pleasure of Recognition” which ensures a powerful emotional pay-off.

    The case study is E.T. The Extraterrestrial (S. Spielberg, 1982). John Williams' score is fundamental in strengthening the film's overall form: all the major themes are coherently built around the musical interval of the upward perfect fifth (e.g. C–G), which comes to be the musical representation of Love. The score also creates an emotional extended climax – calibrated throughout the film in a very precise way – that strategically reaches its peak in the key moment, the famous sequence of the flight over the moon.

  • 17.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of Southampton, UK.
    'Due note di credibilita': John Williams e Lo squalo2015In: Cinergie, ISSN 2280-9481, Vol. 4, no 7, p. 36-44, article id 6968Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    A discussion of the importance of John Williams's music for the success of the 1975 film Jaws.

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  • 18.
    Audissino, Emilio
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Media and Journalism.
    Earl Wild and American Popular Music2018Other (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
    Abstract [en]

    An original essay and tracks information commissioned for the booklet of the music album "Earl Wild: The Complete Transcriptions and Original Piano Works, Vol. 3", published by the record label Piano Classics.

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  • 19.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of Southampton, UK.
    Ennio Morricone: A Versatile Composer with a Distinct Sound2020In: The conversation, article id 7 JulyArticle in journal (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
    Abstract [en]

    An obituary celebrating the many musical achievements and innovations of the Italian composer Ennio Morricone.

  • 20. Audissino, Emilio
    Film Music and Multimedia: An Immersive Experience and a Throwback to the Past2014In: Jahrbuch immersiver medien 2014 / [ed] Patrick Rupert-Kruse, Marburg: Schüren Verlag, 2014, p. 46-56Chapter in book (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Multimedia events are part of contemporary society. Music, theatre, and visual arts have been increasingly collaborating with each other to offer aesthetic experiences that are as immersive and multisensorial as possible. Film music has also entered the multimedia arena. Indeed, a very successful type of concert presentation of the film-music repertoire is the multimedia form: a live orchestra plays to projected film clips. This multimedia presentations of film music should be of interest not only to music scholars – film music has undeniably become a favourite repertoire to fuel concert programmes, and multimedia presentations are the most fitting form to present film music. Multimedia presentations should also be of interest to film scholars, as multimedia presentations are a revival of past film-viewing experiences that can be traced back to the silent era. The case study here is John Williams's conductorship of the Boston Pops Orchestra, which has been seminal not only because it brought more film music into concert programmes, but also highly influential for its experiments with the multimedia presentations.

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  • 21.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of West London, UK.
    Film Music in Concert: The Case of the Boston Pops Orchestra2016In: Society forAmerican Music: Forty-Second Annual Conference, 2016, p. 42-42Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    The Boston Pops has had a prominent role in the validation of film music as a legitimaterepertoire for concert programs, particularly during John Williams’s tenure (1980–1993).The paper focuses on the orchestra’s approach to film music, demonstrating that the present-day acknowledgment of the film-music repertoire as a legitimate source of concert pieces islargely the result of Williams’s policy and example during his Boston years. The diffuse useof illustrative film montages in film-music concerts today or the recent phenomenon of entirefilms with live orchestral accompaniment are also consequences of Williams’s successfulaudio-visual presentations with the Boston Pops.

  • 22.
    Audissino, Emilio
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Media and Journalism.
    Film Music in concert: The Pioneering Role of the Boston Pops Orchestra2021 (ed. 1)Book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The Boston Pops Orchestra was the first orchestra of its kind in the USA: founded in 1885 from the ranks of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, its remit was to offer concerts of light symphonic music. Over the years, and in particular during the fifty-year tenure of its most famous conductor, Arthur Fiedler, the Pops established itself as the premier US orchestra specialising in bridging the fields of 'art music' and 'popular music'. When the Hollywood composer John Williams was assigned the conductorship of the orchestra in 1980, he energetically advocated for the inclusion of film-music repertoire, changing Fiedler's approach significantly. This Element offers a historical survey of the pioneering agency that the Boston Pops had under Williams's tenure in the legitimisation of film music as a viable repertoire for concert programmes. The case study is complemented with more general discussions on the aesthetic of film music in concert.

  • 23.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of Southampton, UK.
    Film/Music Analysis: A Film Studies Approach2017 (ed. 1)Book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    This book offers an approach to film music in which music and visuals are seen as equal players in the game. The field of Film-Music Studies has been increasingly dominated by musicologists and this book brings the discipline back squarely into the domain of Film Studies. Blending Neoformalism with Gestalt Psychology and Leonard B. Meyer's musicology, this study treats music as a cinematic element and offers scholars and students of both music and film a set of tools to help them analyse the wide ranging impact that music has in films.

  • 24.
    Audissino, Emilio
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Media and Journalism.
    From separation to integration: Strengths and weaknesses of sound-design film music2022In: Filigrane, ISSN 2261-7922, no 27, article id 1328Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In the scoring practice of contemporary cinema the boundaries between what has been traditionally called «music» and what has been traditionally called «sound effects» have gotten thinner and overlapping. This practice has been favoured by technical innovations in sound reproductions – Dolby, THX, DTS… – and by the technological convergence and digitalisation of the processes of film-making: film are being edited on a computer station, sound effects manipulated on a computer station, music composed on and often partly played from a computer station, and the master copy finalised on a computer station. While once all the ingredients were produced not only in separate departments but through separate technological procedures, now everything goes into the computer, and hence the past categorical differences get blurred and fused into the common journey through binary codes. Hans Zimmer has been a pioneer of this technological convergence, anticipating (and influencing) the contemporary style of film music, one that integrates closely with the overall sound design of the film.

    Sound-studies scholars and sound designers have typically provided accounts of the positive sides, of the strengths and opportunities, of new «integrated soundtrack» and the interchanges between sound design and music, concentrating on the novel results, away from the cliches of symphonic film scoring, the elision of barriers between the sonic categories, and the expansion of creative solutions. In this article, after providing a short summary of the path to the contemporary integrated soundtrack and sound-design style and after summarising the strengths and opportunities, I discuss some of the potential threats and risks of this new trend. These threats and risks can have an impact on the film-music practitioners, on the viewers, and on film music in general. In the conclusions, I propose a more balanced approach when the current trend in film sound is considered and accounted for.

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  • 25. Audissino, Emilio
    Golden Age 2.0: John Williams and the Revival of the Symphonic Film Score2014In: Film in Concert: Film Scores and their Relation to Classical Concert Music / [ed] Sebastian Stoppe, Glücksstadt: VWH Verlag , 2014, p. 109-123Chapter in book (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    The chapter looks into John Williams' contribution to the return of symphonic film scores in the Hollywood cinema of the late 1970s.

    In the first part, it traces an outline of the context, i.e. the pop-music fad that characterised Hollywood during the 1960s and early 1970s. Due to many reasons, the symphonic film score entered a gradual demise at the end of the 1950s. In particular, 1966 is a highly symbolic landmark, as in that year Hitchcock rejected Bernard Herrmann's symphonic score for Torn Curtain in favour of a more pop and market-oriented one: thus one of the most successful director/composer relationship ended abruptly. In those years, the symphonic score was replaced either by pop-music scores whose piece de resistance was a marketable song – as in Henry Mancini's film scores. Although the symphonic score did not disappear completely, it decidedly became a second option and an old-fashioned one.

    In the second part, the chapter shows how John Williams reverted the trend. The unanimously recognised landmark is the release of Star Wars in 1977 which launched the so-called “Film Music Renaissance.” However, the chapter shows how Williams' penchant for the classical Hollywood music and for symphonic writing can be also spotted in his early 1960s works – e.g. in the 1967 comedy Fitzwilly and in the picaresque 1969 film The Reivers. Also, before Star Wars it was Jaws that demonstrated that a symphonic score could still be a very powerful cinematic tool, more powerful than any pop score. After almost a decade, Jaws was the first major film set in the the present day, telling a contemporary story and designed to be a popular success that did not resort to pop music or marketable songs. Instead, Jaws employed a symphonic score reminiscent of Herrmann, on the one hand, and Korngold, on the other, which was awarded an Oscar.Williams' restoration was completed two years later with Star Wars, a film boasting a grand-orchestral almost continuous symphonic scoring sounding like the old Korngold scores for the Errol Flynn films, brilliantly performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. With the success confirmed by another Oscar and by unprecedented sales – in two months the symphonic album sold 650,000 copies – Star Wars brought back symphonic scoring as a major option for block-buster films and confirmed that the symphonic score could not only be enormously effective to film narration but also successfully marketable.

    If it is historically imprecise to state that John Williams brought back symphonic music as the Hollywood music, as it used to be in the old days, it is safe to say that he launched a successful neoclassical trend within the eclectic style of contemporary Hollywood cinema, and he was responsible like no other for bringing the symphonic score back to the general attention and appreciation.

  • 26. Audissino, Emilio
    Gottfried Huppertz's Metropolis: The Acme of “Cinema Music"2016In: Today's Sounds for Yesterday's Films: Making Music for Silent Cinema / [ed] K. J. Donnelly; Ann-Kristin Wallengren, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, p. 45-63Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The chapter concerns Gottfried Huppertz’s original score by highlighting two of its merits. First, the lushly orchestrated, leitmotiv-driven, and tightly synchronised score can be seen as the major and last achievement of ‘cinema music,’ following Peter Larsen’s distinction (Larsen 2005: 26) between the music composed for silent films and played live (cinema music) and the music composed for the sound films and interlocked with the visuals on the film strip (film music). In its musical richness and narrative precision, Huppertz’s score seems even to prefigure the typical Hollywood score that would emerge in the following decade. Secondly, Huppertz’s score is one of the few original scores for a silent film that has survived in its entirety to the present day – notoriously, Honegger’s full score to Abel Gance’s Napoleon is lost. More importantly, the fact that Huppertz’s score has survived – and that it was composed so as to be so closely adherent to the film narrative – has been a fundamental recovery aid for the film itself, which up to 2008 had been considered to be irreparably lost in its full and original form.

    The chapter is divided into three sections. The first one provides some background information on the complex restoration and reconstruction process that has finally brought Metropolis very close to the original 1927 Berlin version. In particular, I concentrate on how the music helped the reconstruction. Then, I move on and give a short biographical background of Gottfried Huppertz, after which I analyse the structure of the score, its main leitmotivs and how they operate within the film. Finally, the third section surveys the recent multimedia screenings of Metropolis, with the film accompanied live by a symphony orchestra, and how the film with its original music is perceived today. Among the questions being raised: With such a high-quality musical score, can these shows be defined films with live musical accompaniment, or concerts with visual accompaniment? (In 2011 Metropolis was projected at ‘Teatro alla Scala’ in Milan, with the official in-house orchestra playing.) After years of familiarity with Moroder’s version – or other versions with spurious musical accompaniments – how has Huppertz’s score modified the perception, reception, and interpretation of Metropolis? Huppertz’s score was rather ambitious and even up-to-date at the time in terms of musical language, blending late-romantic idiom, medieval modes, Wagnerian instrumentation and harmonies with 1920s avant-garde idioms. Today, the score sounds somewhat old-fashioned and Hollywood-ish – because we have been exposed to the Hollywood music of the Golden Age before being exposed to Huppertz’s music; and most people have experienced Metropolis with the Moroder compilation, which sounds like pop/art music and has given Metropolis the spurious aura of an art film with an experimental, anti-Hollywood scoring.

  • 27. Audissino, Emilio
    Hollywood Film Music and Ethnic Diversity2013In: Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia / [ed] Carlos E. Cortés, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2013, p. 1101-1103Chapter in book (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Throughout its history, Hollywood film music has had a number of influences from various ethnic groups. It moved from the abstract musical universalism of the classical period to the cosmopolitan eclecticism of the present day. This encyclopedia entry surveys how film music has representated and portrayed ethnicity throughout its history.

  • 28. Audissino, Emilio
    Introduction: John Williams, Composer2018In: John Williams: Music for Films, Television, and the Concert Stage / [ed] Emilio Audissino, Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, p. ix-xxivChapter in book (Other academic)
  • 29.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of Southampton, UK.
    Jazz, Hollywood Cinema, and John Williams2017In: International conference: When jazz meets cinema: Lovere, Auditorium di Villa Milesi 5-7 May 2017, 2017Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Composer John Williams is best known for such large-scale symphonic works as Star Wars, Superman, the Indiana Jones series and the likes. Yet, his musical roots are also (and strongly) in jazz. In his formative years he had the opportunity to be in touch with some of the finest performers – his father was the percussionist in the 'Raymond Scott Quintette.' In the 1950s, while studying 'legitimate' piano music at the Juilliard School in New York, he tickled the ivories in the city's jazz clubs. In the early 1960s, while working in Hollywood as a pianist and an orchestrator, he arranged albums for Mahalia Jackson and Vic Damone. When Williams firmly established himself as a film composer the mid-1960s, he brought in his jazz background as a perhaps less noticeable but yet fundamental component of his style.

    After a quick introduction about the relation between cinema and jazz in Hollywood history in order to contextualise Williams's film career, the lecture focusses on the Williams film scores in which jazz episodes emerge from beneath the otherwise symphonic texture – for example, 'Cantina Band' in Star Wars (1977), 'Swing, Swing, Swing' in 1941 (1979), 'The Knight Bus' in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) – and on film scores in which jazz is central to the film's narrative: for example, Catch Me if You Can (2002) and The Terminal (2004). To close the lecture, a few remarks are offered on the jazz influences on Williams's concert music, namely the second movement of his 1994 Concerto for Cello ('Blues') and the four-movement piano work Conversations (2013), in which Williams imagines historic jazz pianists engaged in a musical conversation. In both his film works and in his concert works, Williams has proven to be not only extremely proficient in evoking the past and present musical styles of specific composers, but also in evoking the idiosyncratic manners and musicality of specific performers. 

  • 30.
    Audissino, Emilio
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Media and Journalism.
    John Williams2023In: Oxford Bibliographies Online, Cinema and Media StudiesArticle, review/survey (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Annotated bibliography of the principal literature items and sources on composer John Williams

  • 31. Audissino, Emilio
    John Williams and Contemporary Film Music2017In: Contemporary Film Music: Investigating Cinema Narratives and Composition / [ed] Lindsay Coleman; Joakim Tillman, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, p. 221-236Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    There seems to be the idea that everything has been written on John Williams, because he is such a widely famous film composer. Yet, this is not true at all, since academic studies of his work are rather few. Moreover, when discussed critically if not academically, the take on Williams’s work is often oversimplified if not prejudiced. On the other hand, the stylistic influence of Williams’s work on contemporary scoring has also been overstated by fans and favourable critics. The use of big orchestras and dense sound textures is actually the only thing that contemporary mainstream Hollywood composers such as Hans Zimmer seem to have inherited from him, certainly not Williams’s leitmotivic, symphonic, and classical-Hollywood sounding style. This chapter aims at defining Williams’ contribution to contemporary scoring in its fair terms. It surveys Williams’s career in terms of his revival of the musical style and repertoire of Hollywood’s Golden Age and  compares Williams’s style with the general style of mainstream contemporary film music. Williams has continued to be an active protagonist of film scoring in the last fifteen years – a period of great stylistic and industrial change – and he still is, being a permanent reference point for film music that strives for higher standards. This chapter argues that the main reason of Williams's prolonged success is a well-balanced mix of versatility and strong musical personality, the latter element being most notably reflected in his memorable musical themes.

  • 32. Audissino, Emilio
    John Williams e Star Wars: “Torniamo all’antico e sarà un progresso”2018In: Musica, no 297, p. 46-51Article, review/survey (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
    Abstract [it]

    La «tripla trilogia» forse più celebre della storia del cinema deve gran parte del suo successo ad una colonna sonora che unisce rigore della scrittura e effervescente inventiva: uno dei maggiori capolavori di John Williams

  • 33.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of Southampton, UK.
    John Williams: Music for Films, Television, and the Concert Stage2018Collection (editor) (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Once mostly considered a commercial composer and a mere rewriter of previous composers’ styles, only recently Williams’ music has begun to be taken seriously, and scholars from the music and the film departments have begun to produce research in the form of books, journal articles, conference papers, and Ph.D. theses. The present volume seeks to build upon, complement and review what has been written so far on Williams. This volume is a large exploration of the many sides of Williams's output, aimed at showing the range of his production (not merely focussing on film music) and at analysing the depth of his dramaturgic and compositional skills with selected case studies. To accomplish this exploration – which has not the pretence of exhaustiveness but certainly that of being an accurate survey possessing both latitude and depth – a large team of international scholars has been assembled from all around the world. The contributors come from film, media and music departments – to provide a variety of disciplinary perspectives on Williams's work.

    Table of Contents:

    Emilio Audissino, Introduction: John Williams, Composer

    1) John Williams and the Musical Landscapes: Film, Television, Jazz, and Concert Halls

    Mervyn Cooke, A New Symphonism for a New Hollywood: The Musical Language of John Williams’s Film Scores

    Paula Musegades, John Williams: Television Composer

    Ryan Patrick Jones,"Catch as Catch Can": Jazz, John Williams, & Popular Music Allusion

    Emile Wennekes, No Sharks, No Stars, Just Idiomatic Scoring and Sounding Engagement: John Williams as a ‘Classical’ Composer

    Sebastian Stoppe, John Williams’s Film Music in the Concert Halls 

    2) The Williams Touch: Style and Musical Dramaturgy

    Mark Richards, The Use of Variation in John Williams’s Film Music Themes

    Frank Lehman, The Themes of Star Wars: Catalogue and Commentary

    Ian Sapiro, Star Scores: Orchestration and the Sound of John Williams’s Film Music

    Nicholas Kmet, Orchestration Transformation: Examining Differences in the Instrumental and Thematic Colour Palettes of the Star Wars Trilogies

    Joakim Tillman, The Villain’s March Topic in John Williams’s Film Music

    Jamie Lynn Webster, Musical Dramaturgy and Stylistic Changes in John Williams’s Harry Potter Trilogy

    3) Case Studies

    Laura Anderson, Sounding an Irish Childhood: John Williams’s Score for Angela’s Ashes

    Chloé Huvet, John Williams and Sound Design: Shaping the Audiovisual World of E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

    David Ireland, «Today I’m Hearing with New Ears»: John Williams’s Use of Audiovisual Incongruence to Convey Character Perspective in Munich and Spielberg’s Historical Films

    Irena Paulus, John Williams and the Musical Avant-garde: The Score for War of the Worlds

    Tom Schneller, Out of Darkness: John Williams’s Violin Concerto

    Stefan Swanson, Happily Never After: Williams’s Musical Exploration of the ‘Controversial’ Ending to A. I.: Artificial Intelligence

    4) The Performer’s Viewpoint

    Emilio Audissino & Frank Lehman, John Williams Seen from the Podium: An Interview with Maestro Keith Lockhart

    Maurizio Caschetto, John Williams Seen from the Piano: An Interview with Maestro Simone Pedroni

    Abstracts and Biographies Index of Names

  • 34. Audissino, Emilio
    John Williams, Star Wars, and the Canonization of Hollywood Film Music2011In: Il Canone Cinematografico/The Film Canon / [ed] Pietro Bianchi, Giulio Bursi, and Simone Venturini, Udine: Forum Editrice, 2011, p. 273-278Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    In 1977 George Lucas's Star Wars not only set new standards on special effects, post-modern contamination and box office records: with his all symphonic, old fashioned, yet best-selling film score, composer John Williams was a key figure in the “Renaissance” of the classical Hollywood orchestral music. In that film score the whole tradition of Hollywood music gained a new life, found a launch pad to achieve a fair recognition, to became a model of practice and an example to follow: the classical Hollywood film music, with the Star Wars score, was “canonized”.

  • 35. Audissino, Emilio
    John Williams, The Boston Pops Orchestra and Film Music in Concert2012In: Cinema, critique des images / [ed] Claudia D’Alonzo, Ken Slock, and Philippe Dubois, Udine: Campanotto , 2012, p. 230-235Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    The Boston Pops is a world-class orchestra playing “non-high Art music” in one of the most prestigious concert venues in the world: Symphony Hall in Boston. The first in its genre, with an impressive array of best-selling recordings, tours, and nation-wide radio and TV broadcasts, the Boston Pops has always been at the forefront of American music and has, over the years, achieved huge popularity. In 1980, famed Hollywood composer John Williams was named to succeed the late Fiedler. While several film composers had conducted film music concerts before, this was the very first case of a Hollywood composer appointed leader of such an important musical institution. During his fourteen-year tenure, Williams seized the opportunity to erode the “iron curtain” that segregated “applied” film music from “absolute” concert music.

  • 36.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of Southampton, UK.
    John Williams's Film Music : 'Jaws,' 'Star Wars,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' and the Return of the Classical Hollywood Music Style2014 (ed. 1)Book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    John Williams is one of the most renowned film composers in history. He has penned unforgettable scores for Star Wars, the Indiana Jones series, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jaws, Superman, and countless other films. Fans flock to his many concerts, and with forty-nine Academy Award nominations as of 2014, he is the second-most Oscar-nominated person after Walt Disney. Yet despite such critical acclaim and prestige, this is the first book in English on Williams’s work and career.

    Combining accessible writing with thorough scholarship, and rigorous historical accounts with insightful readings, John Williams’s Film Music explores why Williams is so important to the history of film music. Beginning with an overview of music from Hollywood’s Golden Age (1933–58), Emilio Audissino traces the turning points of Williams’s career and articulates how he revived the classical Hollywood musical style. This book charts each landmark of this musical restoration, with special attention to the scores for Jaws and Star Wars, Williams’s work as conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, and a full film/music analysis of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The result is a precise, enlightening definition of Williams’s “neoclassicism” and a grounded demonstration of his lasting importance, for both his compositions and his historical role in restoring part of the Hollywood tradition.

  • 37. Audissino, Emilio
    Orchestrating a Prejudice: European Misunderstanding of the Use of Orchestrators in Hollywood2014In: 9th MaMI (Music and the Moving Image) conference, New York University, Steinhardt School of Music, New York, U.S.A., 31 May 2014, 2014Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    “Whoever writes music for films without orchestrating each segment is nothing but a dilettante.” This (typically) trenchant statement by Ennio Morricone reveals a common prejudice. Many not familiar with Hollywood music practice typically show a misunderstanding of the role of the orchestrator. In non-Hollywood film industries the composer traditionally handles all the stages of the process, orchestration included. Thus, for some the fact that Hollywood composers use orchestrators means that they are frauds using ghost-writers. Yet, even indisputable masters such as Aaron Copland and Erich Wolfgang Korngold used orchestrators for their film assignments. 

    The paper engages with this misunderstanding and explains the intended function of the Hollywood orchestrator and why the use of orchestrators have become a recurring staple of most attacks against Hollywood film music. Italy is chosen as a sample of the European bias – in that country there is still a strong influence from high-brow musicology and Benedetto Croce's Idealism. The difference in work routine and conception of the film-music job is illustrated with examples taken from La musica nel film (ed. Enzo Masetti, Roma: Bianco e Nero, 1950, which collects papers by both American and European film composers from the 1950 Musicology Conference held in Florence) and with the comparison of two case studies: Ennio Morricone in opposition to John Williams (excerpts from documentaries are shown to argue that the difference in modus operandi of the two is a matter of different traditions, not different talent).

  • 38. Audissino, Emilio
    Overruling a Romantic Prejudice: Forms and Formats of Film Music in Concert Programs2014In: Film in Concert: Film Scores and their Relation to Classical Concert Music / [ed] Sebastian Stoppe, Glücksstadt: VWH Verlag , 2014, p. 25-43Chapter in book (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Film music is still considered by most musicologists and art-composers not as an Art with intrinsic aesthetic value, but as a mere commodity with a trivially functional scope. Along this line, the phenomenon of film-music pieces featured in concert programmes is considered an aberration to be ignored altogether.

    This chapter aims, first of all, at giving an explanation of this long-standing prejudice and then at classifying the main forms and formats of concert arrangement and presentation of the film-music repertoire. The reasons of the prejudice is traced back to the nineteenth century and to Romantic Idealism – the influence of the so-called “Beethoven-centred Canon” and the “Absolute Music VS Applied Music” dualism have survived to the present day.

    In the second part, the chapter offers a survey of how film music is typically selected, arranged for concert performance and presented on the stage. The first option is that of borrowing the “traditional form” and its formats – suite, overture, medley, etc... – already in use for other types of applied music. The most common film-music versions of the traditional formats will be illustrated, exemplified and compared to the older formats on which they are based.The second and more specific option is the “multimedia form”. As the orchestra plays live, film clips are projected on a big screen above the stage, being synchronised more or less tightly with the phrasing and gestures of the music. There are two main formats: the “multimedia concert piece” – a film-music concert piece adapted according to the traditional formats but accompanied by projected film clips – and the “multimedia film piece.” – an entire scene or sequence of a given film, comprising the dialogue and sound effect tracks, which is accompanied live with the same music piece featured in the film. Apart from single multimedia pieces which may be featured in otherwise traditional concerts, there are also entire events based on the multimedia combination of music and visuals. They can be called “multimedia concert” and “multimedia film.” In the former instance, we have themed programmes having film projections across the whole concert – e.g., Star Wars in Concert. In the latter, we have the projection of an entire film with live musical accompaniment – e.g. the Lord of the Rings Trilogy road-show. Again, a precise description and proper examples will be provided for each case.

    The final aim of the chapter is to show how the phenomenon of film music in concert is a rich and very topical one and cannot be ignored or downplayed just because of old prejudices.

  • 39. Audissino, Emilio
    Rediscovering a Film, Revisiting a Film, Damaging a Film: A Musical Comparison of Three DVD Editions of Nosferatu2018In: Music and Sound in Silent Cinema: From the Nickelodeon to The Artist / [ed] Ruth Barton; Simon Trezise, New York: Routledge, 2018, p. 174-186Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Music is a particularly sore point in the DVD editions of silent films. Even if we happen to have a complete or almost complete print, music is likely to be different from one edition to the other, because in silent cinema music and sounds in general were provided live, and hence were subject to change from one screening to another. The overall impression of the Heller/Erdmann score is one of narrative nuance and sensitivity, and musical richness and sophistication. Serene consonant music, ranging from a pastoral mood for exterior natural settings to the sentimental music for the Hutter/Ellen romance, is contrasted with the dissonant expressionistic music depicting Count Orlok and his devilish deeds and creepy locales. The film opens with menacing music that, from the titles, continues over the images of a diary detailing the dreadful events, and the infernal nature of the forces involved, that would corrupt Goodness, symbolised by the love between Hutter and Ellen , with Evil.

  • 40.
    Audissino, Emilio
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Media and Journalism.
    Salvaging a Film and Reviving the Tradition: The Historic Role of John Williams’s Jaws Score2020Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    The year 2020 marks the 45th anniversary of a film that had a multiple impact on Hollywood cinema: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). The film’s marketing strategy – an unprecedented massive media coverage and intensive advertising – and the saturation-booking distribution – the film opened in more than 400 US theatres – made it the model for and progenitor of today’s blockbusters. Jaws is said to be one, if not the pivotal film that ushered in the New Hollywood, a re-organisation of the American film industry characterised by the adoption/normalisation of the narrative and stylistic innovations of the auteur-driven American New Wave of the late 1960s/early 1970s under novel horizontally-integrated marketing strategies. John Williams’s score had an essential role in making the film a memorable item in American cinema, as well as a historic landmark.

    The music to Jaws, first of all, undertook the protagonist’s role that the chronically-defective animatronic shark puppet had been failing to fulfil. For the first half of the film, contrary to the original plans, the shark could not be shown for such technical reasons, but the music succeeded in making the monster’s off-screen presence powerfully felt nevertheless, to the point that the music became itself a central character in the film. Stylistically, the musical choices – largely attributable to the composer’s own intuitions – took a radical turn from the musical style that had dominated in Hollywood since the mid-1960s: in more than a decade, the film was the first mainstream film with a contemporary setting that did not include any interpolated song or pop scoring. Contrary to the 1960s trend of combining each film designed to be a box-office it with a tie-in song in order to enable a synergistic cross-promotion and a safer double stream of box-office/record-market revenues, Jaws featured an entirely symphonic score. Even in the Fourth of July montage sequence that would have been the perfect place to advertise some ‘surf music’ song, we find instead a Baroque-like symphonic pastiche. The score not only employed a symphonic orchestra, but Williams also wrote the music utilising such classical film-music devices as leitmotifs, swashbuckling fanfares, and even Mickey-Mousing – the shark is scored with a leitmotivic menacing motto but also with the notorious ostinato, which is a dramaturgically-ingenious extended use of Mickey-Mousing. 

    Jaws presents interesting parallelisms with King Kong (1933): as Max Steiner in that classical film managed to make the Kong puppet believable through his music and at the same time demonstrated the narrative power of non-diegetic scoring, so Williams with the score to Jaws gave substance to the mostly non-visible shark and revived the classical Hollywood music style, launching what I have called a ‘neoclassical’ style. If the neoclassical style fully flourished with Star Wars (1977), which was the manifest and resounding reaffirmation of symphonic scoring and the zenith of film-music neoclassicism, it was Jaws that prepared the soil and sowed the necessary seed for that flourishing.

  • 41.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of Southampton, UK.
    Sound-logos, Olympics, Presidents, and Other Celebrations: When John Williams Scores for the Mass Media2019In: Sounds of Mass Media: Music in Journalism and Propaganda: Program with abstracts, 2019Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    John Williams is universally renowned and celebrated as the Maestro of the Movies, one of the most successful and accomplished composers for the screen, a reputation built on and consolidated with an impressive string of collaborations with top directors, seminal contributions to some of the most famous cinematic hits of all times, and countless awards and accolades. Yet, there are many more sides to Williams’s artistry. He has also a considerable background and training as a jazz-man; he is also a respectable and prolific composer of concert pieces that are entering the standard repertoire; he has been the Principal Conductor and Music Director of the Boston Pops Orchestra – ‘America’s Orchestra’ – establishing himself as a proficient and sensitive conductor in both the ‘classical’ and popular arena. This talk presents and explores another facet of his career, that of America’s unofficial ‘Laureate Composer’.

    On many occasions, Williams has been the one to call when some landmark in the nation’s history had to be musically celebrated. He has been a visible composer for the Mass Media too, first of all with the signature sound-logo he composed for NBC News, which has been opening the newscasts of one of America’s top networks for more than thirty years. His role as leader of the Boston Pops has caused him to be involved – in both capacities, as conductor and composer – in some of the country’s most momentous events, like the orchestra’s own centennial in 1985 (with a nation-wide televised concert at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.), the re-dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1986 (with President Reagan in attendance), the centennial edition of the Olympic Games held in Atlanta, GA, in 1996, the 2000 New Year’s Eve celebration in Washington D.C. with President Clinton, and the inauguration of President Obama’s first term in 2008, plus other appearances, including more Olympics, presidential campaigns, and musical contributions to state visits. 

    This vast exposure has made him a star composer and a revered figure, but also – for a long time – a maligned and suspicious one. His association with both the ‘imperialistic’ and ‘hollow’ Hollywood films – in particular with some of the key oeuvres of the ‘Reaganite cinema’ – and some of the mass-media events in Reagan’s era might have had a major part in this. He was often rancorously dismissed as a phoney artist in some quarters – notably by high-brow music critics – or identified by some from the culturalist circles as an agent of reactionary ideology, a skilled composer but also a more-or-less complicit endorser of the conservative agenda of those years. The talk surveys Williams’s main contributions and achievements in the field of mass-media and public-event music, and also discusses and problematises the potential/alleged propaganda implications of his music. 

  • 42.
    Audissino, Emilio
    Linnaeus University, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Department of Media and Journalism.
    Teaching Cinema, Music, and Film Music with Star Wars2020Conference paper (Other academic)
  • 43. Audissino, Emilio
    The Aesthetic Cost of Marketing: The Economical Motivation of Pop Songs in Films2013In: Pratiques et esthétiques: Le coût et la gratuité. Tome 3 / [ed] Catherine Naugrette, Paris: L'Harmattan, 2013, p. 41-46Chapter in book (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson – in Narration in the Fiction Film and Breaking the Glass Armor – list four types of motivation to explain the presence of a given device – e.g., camera movement, lightning pattern, chromatic contrast, etc... – in the film form: compositional motivation, artistic motivation, realistic motivation and transtextual motivation. This set of heuristic tools explains how the film works and how it has been constructed from an aesthetic, ars-gratia-artis point of view, that is, how an artwork is formally and narratively understood by the active spectator. However, cinema – and Hollywood cinema in particular – is indeed an Art, but also an Industry. Bordwell and Thompson's set of motivations is good to understand the film as an Art object. Though, in order to understand it as an industrial commodity, a fifth type seems to be required: economic motivation. Most technical and formal changes in film history can be properly explained by means of an economical approach – see Douglas Gomery's use of the economic “Theory of Technological change” for his account on the coming of sound – rather than by means of a purely aesthetic one. Such a case is the relationship between cinema and songs, particularly in the Sixties and Seventies, when pop scores and compilations  replaced the classical symphonic scoring. The paper focusses on the economic motivation of this pop music craze in the American cinema of that decade, trying to point out how the use of songs was mostly a marketing strategy: to advertise the song via the film, to advertise the film via the song – by its presence on the radio or in the music stores –, to maximise the profit by having the film industry owing also the music industry and thus – by a synergistic cross-promotion – getting money from both markets. In most cases, this market-oriented approach had quite big an aesthetic cost: that of stopping the narration in order to let the song play, which – in the worst instances – has nothing to do with the narrative. A brief history of the relationship between songs and films are traced – mostly with references to Rick Altman's Silent Film Sound, Jeff Smith's The Sound of Commerce, and James Wierzbicki's Film Music. A History –, with the aim of showing that the explicitly visible instances of the Sixties and Seventies are only the “tip of the iceberg”, the peak moment of a longer story: the massive aesthetic change of the period can be explained by the economic and industrial revolution that Hollywood had to face after the dismantlement of the Studio System in the Fifties. The main difference between the use of songs in classical cinema and their use in the Sixties is that, while in the former system songs were diegetically placed and carefully and coherently integrated in the narrative, in the latter case songs were also used non-diegetically, without much concern about their consistency, which resulted in the baring of the sole economic motivation.

  • 44. Audissino, Emilio
    The Agency of Music in Audiovisual Artefacts: A Gestalt-based Approach2018In: 10th Conference of the International Musicological Society, Study Group ‘Music and Media’, University of Salamanca, Spain, 13-16 June 2018, 2018Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    ‘Film/Music Analysis’ is the name I give to my proposal for an alternative approach to the study of music in films. By ‘film music analysis’ the general understanding – influenced by the musicological dominance in the film-music discipline – is that one is performing either a musicological study of the musical text (the score) or a musico-dramaturgic examination of a film’s music track. By this new label I wish to stress the inescapably interrelational nature of music and images in the audiovisual artefact. I foster an approach that be more film-studies oriented then musicological, and this can be achieved by tackling music as a cinematic device within a larger and interconnected system. My take is to adopt a Gestalt-based perspective, with music seen as one micro-configuration and visuals as another micro-configuration, the two fusing into an audiovisual macro-configuration. This Gestalt approach – being based on the fusion of the aural and visual factors into a whole – is not only useful to provide alternative analytical tools but is also helpful to supersede the long-standing visual bias that to some extent still plagues the Film Studies, which leads to think of music as something that is externally added to either reinforce or contradict what is already there in the visuals.

    Indeed, a common issue when discussing music and film is to adopt – whether consciously or not – a ‘separatist’ approach, one in which music and visuals are conceptualised as two distinct entities. Often, music is analysed as to its musical qualities, as if it were any other kind of ‘applied’ music, and visuals – in the aforementioned ‘visual bias’ – is treated as the most important, dominant element. A ‘non separatist’ approach should conceptualise the audiovisual product as a whole in which music and visuals have a potentially equal importance and agency. In arithmetical parlance, music and visuals are not two terms of an addition but two factors of a product. When music meets the visuals, it does not merely adds something to a meaning that is already there – as theorised by Noël Carroll in his ‘modifying music’ proposal – but a fusion happens between the two elements whose result is a new meaning that was not present in either of the separate elements, a multiplication in which the single factors change one another. As Gestalt Theory teaches, the whole is different from the sum of its parts.

  • 45. Audissino, Emilio
    The "Ancrage" Effect of Film on Music in Film-Music Concert Pieces2015In: Listening Cinematically conference, Royal Holloway: University of London, Egham, 25-26 June 2015, 2015Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Claudia Gorbman, after Barthes, calls 'ancrage' the ability of music to anchor an ambiguous image to a defined meaning (Unheard Melodies, p. 32). Similarly, Noel Carroll says that film music mainly operates in films as 'modifying music' (Theorizing the Moving Image, p. 141). In both proposals, music is seen as something that adds a stable meaning to the film's images. We can posit a similar function of the film's image when it comes to film music played in concert programmes. In these cases, it is the film that adds a stable meaning to the music being listened. This can happen either because of the listener's recollections of a set of visuals and moods triggered by the music previously heard in a given film, or, more directly, through the multimedia combination of the live musical performance with projected clips from the related film. 

    Film music as concert music has a peculiar aesthetic, one which is richer and more clear-cut in terms of extramusical associations than any other type of programme/applied music. To fully appreciate this interdependent nature of film music as something semantically and referentially rich – instead of automatically dismissing it as something merely functional and unable to stand on its own in the concert hall – it is necessary to adopt a cinematical way of listening. Film music in concert programmes should be enjoyed bearing the film in mind, and judged as to its ability to translate into music the moods and visuals of the film.

  • 46. Audissino, Emilio
    The Function of Mickey-Mousing: A Re-assessment2020In: Sound and Image: Audiovisual Aesthetics and Practices / [ed] Andrew Knight-Hill, New York: Taylor & Francis Group, 2020, p. 145-160Chapter in book (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Film Studies have long been characterised by a visual bias (“image first, sound later”) and a “content-oriented” approach (“What is the message?”) that, when dealing with music, have favoured “interpretation” (what music communicates) over “analysis” (the consideration of the full gamut of music’s functions). When interpretation is favoured, attention is primarily given to music that passes some meaning (“commentary”, “counterpoint”, “asynchronism”…). Conversely, music that simply “accompanies” and is “synchronous” is characteristically deemed to be of lesser interest. This chapter offers a re-assessment of the formal agency of the often maligned “Mickey-Mousing”, the most extreme type of parallel and synchronous accompaniment. Mostly dismissed as a hollow and banally-subservient musical mirroring of the visual action, Mickey-Mousing can, on the contrary, contribute to the audiovisual “whole” in a number of more or less subtler ways and levels. Its agency is especially important in the orientation and connection of the viewers with the filmic space, in both visual and tactile terms.

  • 47. Audissino, Emilio
    The Importance of John Williams2018Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    There are many John Williamses. One is the “Jedi Maestro”, a figure idolised by a multitude of film-music fans, grateful to him for having brought music to such a foregrounded position in films, particularly with Star Wars. Another is the so-called “Plagiarist”, accused of having based his success on easy acts of stealing from the past masters. Another is the much respected “Hollywood Professional”, with an outstanding work ethics and innate writing fluency that have established him as one of the most sought-after and reliable practitioners in Hollywood. For many years, these three figures mostly represented how Williams was perceived in the different communities: fans, critics, and industry. The academic community, on the other hand, has been silent until recently, preferring composers like Ennio Morricone or Bernard Herrmann, whose style was (at a superficial glance) more adventurous and modernistic. The recent years have seen a reconsideration of Williams, who has finally been accepted as a worthy object of academic study. Other three Williamses, at least, have thus emerged. John Williams the “Accomplished Composer”, the one that has managed to achieve, both in his film-score and in his concert-hall output, a seminal fusion between late-romantic symphonism, twentieth-century atonalism, jazz harmonies, absolutemusik and gebrauchsmusik, helped by an exceptional mastery of orchestral writing and an uncanny sense of melodic balance. There is, then, Williams the “Conductor”, once maligned with particular vehemence, who is now recognised as a sensitive and insightful interpreted of other people’s music too. There is, finally, Williams the “Restorer”, the one who has single-handedly resurrected the film-music style of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The latter is what distinguishes Williams from all the other composers: no other, though talented, has arguably had this historical importance. The importance of John Williams lies above all in the recuperation of a part of the classical Hollywood film style that had long been dead and buried.

  • 48. Audissino, Emilio
    The Multiform Identity of Jazz in Hollywood: An Assessment through the John Williams Case Study2019In: Cinema Changes: Incorporations of Jazz in the Film Soundtrack / [ed] Emile Wennekes; Emilio Audissino, Turnhout: Brepols, 2019, p. 85-97Chapter in book (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    John Williams is best known for such large-scale symphonic works as Star Wars, Superman, the Indiana Jones series and the likes. Yet, his musical roots are also (and strongly) in jazz. In his formative years he had the opportunity to be in touch with some of the finest performers. In the 1950s, while studying 'legitimate' piano music at the Juilliard School in New York, he tickled the ivories in the city's jazz clubs. In the early 1960s, while working in Hollywood as a pianist and an orchestrator, he arranged albums for Mahalia Jackson and Vic Damone. When Williams firmly established himself as a film composer the mid-1960s, he brought in his jazz background as a perhaps less noticeable but yet fundamental component of his style. After a quick introduction about the relation between cinema and jazz in Hollywood history in order to contextualise Williams's film career, the chapter focusses on the Williams film scores in which jazz episodes emerge from beneath the otherwise symphonic texture – for example, 'Cantina Band' in Star Wars (1977), 'Swing, Swing, Swing' in 1941 (1979), 'The Knight Bus' in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) – and on film scores in which jazz is central to the film's narrative: for example, Catch Me if You Can (2002) and The Terminal (2004).

  • 49.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of Southampton, UK.
    "The Shark Is not Working” – but the Music Is: Scoring a Hit with Jaws2020In: The Jaws Book: New Perspectives on the Classic Summer Blockbuster / [ed] Ian Hunter; Matthew Melia, Bloomsbury Academic, 2020, p. 65-78Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The year 2020 marks the 45th anniversary of a film that had a multiple impact on Hollywood cinema: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). The film’s marketing strategy – an unprecedented massive media coverage and intensive advertising – and the saturation-booking distribution – the film opened in more than 400 US theatres – made it the model for and progenitor of today’s blockbusters. Jaws is said to be one, if not the pivotal film that ushered in the New Hollywood, a re-organisation of the American film industry characterised by the adoption/normalisation of the narrative and stylistic innovations of the auteur-driven American New Wave of the late 1960s/early 1970s under novel horizontally-integrated marketing strategies. John Williams’s score had an essential role in making the film a memorable item in American cinema, as well as a historic landmark.

    The music to Jaws, first of all, undertook the protagonist’s role that the chronically-defective animatronic shark puppet had been failing to fulfil. For the first half of the film, contrary to the original plans, the shark could not be shown for such technical reasons, but the music succeeded in making the monster’s off-screen presence powerfully felt nevertheless, to the point that the music became itself a central character in the film. Stylistically, the musical choices – largely attributable to the composer’s own intuitions – took a radical turn from the musical style that had dominated in Hollywood since the mid-1960s: in more than a decade, the film was the first mainstream film with a contemporary setting that did not include any interpolated song or pop scoring. Contrary to the 1960s trend of combining each film designed to be a box-office it with a tie-in song in order to enable a synergistic cross-promotion and a safer double stream of box-office/record-market revenues, Jaws featured an entirely symphonic score. Even in the Fourth of July montage sequence that would have been the perfect place to advertise some ‘surf music’ song, we find instead a Baroque-like symphonic pastiche. The score not only employed a symphonic orchestra, but Williams also wrote the music utilising such classical film-music devices as leitmotifs, swashbuckling fanfares, and even Mickey-Mousing – the shark is scored with a leitmotivic menacing motto but also with the notorious ostinato, which is a dramaturgically-ingenious extended use of Mickey-Mousing. 

    Jaws presents interesting parallelisms with King Kong (1933): as Max Steiner in that classical film managed to make the Kong puppet believable through his music and at the same time demonstrated the narrative power of non-diegetic scoring, so Williams with the score to Jaws gave substance to the mostly non-visible shark and revived the classical Hollywood music style, launching what I have called a ‘neoclassical’ style. If the neoclassical style fully flourished with Star Wars (1977), which was the manifest and resounding reaffirmation of symphonic scoring and the zenith of film-music neoclassicism, it was Jaws that prepared the soil and sowed the necessary seed for that flourishing. 

  • 50.
    Audissino, Emilio
    University of Southampton, UK.
    The “Spatial Perceptive Function” of Film Music: When Music Tells You What and Where to Look2019In: Mapping Spaces, Sounding Places. Geographies of Sound in Audiovisual Media: Cremona, 19-22 March 2019, 2019Conference paper (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    In my book Film/Music Analysis I claim that film music mainly operates in films under three (overlapping) types of agency: emotive function (micro and macro), perceptive function (spatial and temporal), and cognitive function (denotative and connotative), depending on which of the viewer’s three dimensions of activity is most triggered by music. In this paper I would like to focus on the “spatial perceptive function”, which is when music is designed to attract the viewer’s attention to some movement within the film’s space, or to increase the prominence of a visual event. For example, in a crowded scene a fast descending scale of the strings, played simultaneously to someone falling down a flight of stairs in the background, would point the viewer’s attention to that “isomorphic configuration” and thus isolate an action in the space that might otherwise have gone unnoticed in that visually packed shot. In horror films, the sudden appearance of the monster is typically coupled with a “stinger”, a sudden sforzando dissonant chord that has not only the function of “scaring” the viewer (emotive function) but also that of boosting the “startle response” by adding to the sudden violent movement in the visuals an isomorphic sudden violent movement in the music. This function is also identifiable with the so-called “Mickey Mousing” used in old-fashioned Hollywood scoring, widely considered one of the types of musical intervention of least interest and least worth of analysis. Film music is, instead, amply discussed as to its contribution in shaping the emotional response or in communicating meaning. Employing Gestalt Theory and Leonard B. Meyer’s scholarship, I will go against the tide and bring the attention to this “spatial perceptive function”, to highlight music’s important contribution in pointing the viewer’s attention to the desired action or visual detail inside the filmic space. 

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