Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music

I purchased this book for a class and continued to read it independently. It details the American and foreignfilm music of classic films and some little known gems. The author discusses the major melodic themes of the films as wellas some of the hidden melodic melodies that enhance the quality of the film. A long list of film and their works composers is a useful guide.

I'm just getting started learning about film music with Royal and I've got to say that it has been very productive. I've learned a lot more in a few weeks than I expected I would. A must read for anyone who wants to start talking about film music like they know something.

If you're a composer you'll probably love it. A great addition to the professional library at home

This book cannot be summed up. It is too disorganized for that. When arguments become intelligible in it, which is rare, they make "paper thin" an understatement. The first one is that most film music is tonal. A shocking, mind-blowing revelation, without a doubt. The only problem is that the author's explanations of what tonality is are too sophisticated for the initiated, let alone the reader without an academic education in music, who is, ironically enough, his intended audience. In a chapter on Bernard Herrmann, the thesis appears to be that his music for Hitchcock is "irrational." The way in which this reasoned out is astonishingly ridiculous. A minor triad with a major seventh is the defining sonority in many Herrmann scores for Hitchcock (e.g. Vertigo and Psycho). This chord is also common is "Jazz." Jazz is considered irrational, therefore this chord, and by extension all Hermann/Hitchcock music, is irrational. I know, I was totally convinced also. Then in the afterword, things become fully self-parodic. The author imagines a world in the not to distant future where people will be assembling their own movies cum soundtrack from scratch or something close to it, thanks to advances in editing technology and software. Of course, this has come true. But when he says that this will lead, or, at any rate, contribute to collapse of the bourgeois subject, he seriously "misunderestimates" the infinite adaptability of capitalism. It would be better to point to the way all those changes were blessings in the disguise for venture capitalists in the emerging markets of the digital age. "Interacting" with the product is hardly subversive (hello, video games?) nor is it particularly liberating (hello, video games?). Don't read this book, unless you want to understand film music less.

Al well!

Required reading for my Composition Theory module at university, Brown's dense but articulate treatise on the evolution and power of music in the cinematic medium covers its birth through to the 1980s, stopping off for several in-depth case studies along the way.While Brown frequently spends more time analysing the films and their score from the literary critical theory standpoint which may put off those with less experience of such examination (unlike, say, Chion's more accessible Audio-Vision), he still remains eminently readable, largely down to his willingness to step through complex musical sequences and the imagery that accompanies them at a reasonable pace.Perhaps not a holiday read for the layman, Overtones and Undertones is nevertheless an excellent book for those looking for a deeper understanding of the often underappreciated part of the cinematic experience. With a hefty bibliography for further reading and some excellent interviews with the finest composers of cinema, it makes quite a complete package.