Table of Contents

1. What does film music do?
2. How does film music work?
3. Why does film music work?
4. A History of early film music: from the beginnings to the synchronized score
5. A History of Film Music in the Sound Era: The Twentieth Century
6. Composers and their Craft
7. Popular Music and Film
8. Closing Credits

About the Author

Kathryn Kalinak is Professor of English and Film Studies at Rhode Island College. Her extensive writing on film music includes numerous articles as well as the books Settling the Score: Music in the Classical Hollywood Film and How the West was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford.

Reviews

"Film Music is hands down the most useful introduction to film music available. Students and general readers alike will appreciate this clear, comprehensive, short book, one of the first to approach music and cinema beyond the frame of western Europe and the U.S. Kalinak's scholarship is dazzling, her prose compelling. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the function, history, theory and practice of music in the movies."--Caryl Flinn, author
of Brass Diva and Strains of Utopia
"Kathryn Kalinak's Film Music is an outstanding achievement. It is extremely concise and systematic yet still manages to engage principal issues with a wide range of useful examples, and explain detailed history with worldwide coverage. This is more than a basic primer, however, it is an excellent overview of the field of film music, while being clearly-written and accessible to both students and enthusiasts alike."--Dr. K. J. Donnelly, author of
British Film Music and Film Musicals and The Spectre of Sound: Film and Television Music
"The appropriately titled Film Music: A Very Short Introduction is to be recommended as a very first introduction to the topic...[The author's] concise depiction, which does not limit itself to the Anglo-American realm, proves to be a successful initiation to the most essential topics of this subject area." - Song and Popular Culture