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Powrie, Phil and Robynn Stilwell, eds. 2006. Changing Tunes: The Use of Pre-existing Music in Film. Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series. Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing.
Reviewed by Giorgio Biancorosso
This twelve-essay anthology is a collection of papers first presented at two conferences on music and film held in 2000 and 2001 in the United Kingdom.1 It brings together a diverse group of scholars-musicologists, film scholars, media and communication scholars, literature and area specialists-around one topic: the use of "pre-existing music" in film. Though the anthology is somewhat inconsistent in quality and type of contribution, its appearance is welcome, for it provides not only the most extensive treatment of the subject to date but also the most convincing proof of the topic's significance and intrinsically interdisciplinary, collaborative nature.
The book is divided into two sections: "Pre-existing Classical Film Scores" and "Popular Music and Film." The term "scores" in the heading of the first section suggests that it deals only with classical music used nondiegetically; in fact, both sections touch on diegetic and nondiegetic uses of the repertories. Notwithstanding the division into two headings, the book brings together three areas of research under the rubric of "pre-existing music": instrumental art music, opera, and popular music (xiii). This grouping results in more than breadth of content; it is an implicit acknowledgement that "pre-existing music" is an aesthetic category in and of itself that cuts across genres and repertories. The volume's title, Changing Tunes, expresses a fundamental methodological assumption sustaining the collection: a commitment to the study of emergent musical meaning as music crosses social, political, and cultural contexts that transform, sometimes radically, its impact and reception.
The essays range significantly in style and content. After a short and lucid introduction by the book's editors, Phil Powrie and Robynn Stilwell, Claudia Gorbman's treatment of the use of music in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and Mike Cormack's essay on the ambiguity of classical music in film serve almost as secondary introductions. We are then treated to chapters on the use of Mascagni in The Godfather III (Lars Franke), the history of Carmen on the big screen (Ann Davies), Mozart as film music (Jeongwon Joe on the film Amadeus), and a close look at three different...