Film Music: A Very Short Introduction

The rich and deeply moving sounds of film music are as old as cinema. The first projected moving images were accompanied by music through a variety of performers--from single piano players to small orchestras--that brought images to life. Film music has since become its own industry, an aesthetic platform for expressing creative visions, and a commercial vehicle for growing musical stars of all varieties.

In this Very Short Introduction, Kathryn Kalinak takes readers behind the scenes to understand both the practical aspects of film music--what it is and how it is composed--and the theories that have been developed to explain why film music works. This accessible book not only entertains with the fascinating stories of the composers and performers who have shaped film music across the globe but also gives readers a broad sense of the key questions in film music studies today. The updated second edition includes the music from film industries in Africa, Asia and South Asia, and Latin America, and focuses on previously under-represented film musicians, in particular women and minority composers.

Kathryn Kalinak is Professor of Film Studies, Rhode Island College. She is the author of numerous books on film music, including Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film (1992); How the West Was Sung: Music in the Westerns of John Ford (2007); Film Music: A Very Short Introduction (2010), translated into multiple languages, and Richard Hageman: From Holland to Hollywood (2020, co-authored with Nico de Villiers and Asing Walthaus).