Saying It with Songs

Popular Music and the Coming of Sound to Hollywood Cinema

Add to my list

by Katherine Spring

Type: Studies
Subject: Technique > Music
Keywords: songs, music, 1930s
Publishing date: 2013
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Collection: Oxford Music / Media
Language: English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 256 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches (16 x 24 cm)

ISBN

978-0-19-984222-3

User Ratings

(0 vote)

Average rating:

0	rating	= We can do without
0	rating	= Good book
0	rating	= Excellent book
0	rating	= Unique / a reference

Your rating: -

Report incorrect or incomplete information

Book Presentation:
Hollywood's conversion from silent to synchronized sound film production not only instigated the convergence of the film and music industries but also gave rise to an extraordinary period of songs in American cinema. Saying It With Songs considers how the increasing interdependence of Hollywood studios and Tin Pan Alley music publishing firms influenced the commercial and narrative functions of popular songs. While most scholarship on film music of the period focuses on adaptations of Broadway musicals, this book examines the functions of songs in a variety of non-musical genres, including melodramas, romantic comedies, Westerns, prison dramas, and action-adventure films, and shows how filmmakers tested and refined their approach to songs in order to reconcile the spectacle of song performance, the classical norms of storytelling, and the conventions of background orchestral scoring from the period of silent cinema. Written for film and music scholars alike as well as for general
readers, Saying It With Songs illuminates the origins of the popular song score aesthetic of American cinema.

About the Author:
Katherine Spring is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.

See the publisher website: Oxford University Press

> From the same author: