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Situated Listening
The Sound of Absorption in Classical Cinema
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Book Presentation:
• Offers a new theory of listenership in cinema
• Thoroughly illustrated with nearly 60 screen shots
Screenwriters and film directors have long been fascinated by the challenges of representing the listening experience on screen. While music has played a central role in film narrative since the conception of moving pictures, the representation of music listening has remained a special occurrence.
In Situated Listening: The Sound of Absorption in Classical Cinema, author Giorgio Biancorosso argues for a redefinition of the music listener as represented in film. Rather than construct the listener as a reverential concertgoer, music analyst, or gallery dweller, this book instead shows how films offer a new way of thinking about listening as distributed experience, an activity made public and shareable across vast cultural spaces rather than an insular motion. It shows how cinema functions as not only a reservoir of established modes of listening, but also an agent in the development of new listening practices. As Biancorosso argues, many films have perpetuated a long-existing paradox of music as a means of silencing. Consider an aggressive score overlaying battle scenes or a romantic scene conveying unspoken intimacy. In the place of conversational exchange exists a veil of sound in the form of music, and Situated Listening explains why this function influences both the course of interpretation and empathy experienced by film spectators. By focusing on cinematic, physical, and emotional scenery surrounding a character, viewers can recognize aspects of their own lives, developing a deeper empathy for each fictional character through real and shared listening practices.
About the Author:
Giorgio Biancorosso, Associate Professor of Music, The University of Hong Kong Giorgio Biancorosso is Associate Professor in Music, The University of Hong Kong. His work on the history and theory of listening practices reflects a long-standing interest in musical aesthetics, film music, and the history of global cinema. Biancorosso is also active in Hong Kong as a programmer and curator.
Press Reviews:
"Situated Listening: The Sound of Absorption in Classical Cinema [is] a quite welcome addition to the recent literature in sound studies, particularly for readers interested in film music and spectator psychology." - Jeff Smith, Projections
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
> From the same author:
Scoring Italian Cinema (2025)
Patterns of Collaboration
Dir. Giorgio Biancorosso and Roberto Calabretto
Remixing Wong Kar-Wai (2025)
Music, Bricolage, and the Aesthetics of Oblivion
Subject: Director > Wong Kar-wai
> On a related topic:
Sound Design is the New Score (2019)
Theory, Aesthetics, and Erotics of the Integrated Soundtrack
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