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To write a 'history' of a phenomenon as culturally and technologically diverse as film music is a daunting task, and yet Mervyn Cooke achieves it with ease in A History of Film Music. Although the reader is carried forward at an energetic (and sometimes breathtaking) pace, this book is at once accessible and impressively well-rounded. The author explains that his history is intended as a
straightforward introduction to the development of film-music techniques in a selection of Anglophone and non-Anglophone cinemas, with emphases placed on the practical roles of composers, musicians, music directors and supervisors, their changing working conditions, cultural contexts and creative aspirations, and the various ways in which their work has been received. (xv)
Although the primary focus of the book is mainstream cinematic practice, Cooke's engagement with a diversity of film styles beyond this tradition, ranging from experimental animation to the work of Akira Kurosawa, is most welcome. Not only does it enable the tracing of a more lateral historical trajectory than the usual linear journey through Hollywood's key composers, but it also allows Cooke to grapple with an unusually wide range of musical styles, including modernist and minimalist compositions, jazz film scores, composed scores, and compiled pop soundtracks. The result is a nuanced investigation into the different styles of music for film, an exploration framed by contextual reference to the historiography of the genre.
The overarching structure of A History of Film Music is historical, though numerous digressions guard against the monotony apparent in many chronological voyages that pass in similar fashion from 'The "Silentâ[euro] Cinema' (here Chapter 1) to 'Film Music since the New Hollywood' (Chapter 12). Cooke's narrative is divided into sections that alternate between bite-sized historical outlines and more in-depth case studies that emphasize the main points. After the historical discussion of 'Hollywood's Golden Age', for instance, Cooke offers a series of case studies that demonstrate different approaches to film scoring (the work of Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, and Alfred Newman, among others, is discussed). The section on Bernard Herrmann is particularly useful, as it serves to illustrate several of the ideas outlined earlier during the historical discussion. Other case studies pursue more unusual lines of inquiry,...