Contemporary Film Music

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Lindsay Coleman, Joakim Tillman

   Pages 1-15

3. A.R. Rahman Interview

   • Lindsay Coleman

   Pages 17-25

4. The ‘Alternate Space’ of A.R. Rahman’s Film Music

   • Felicity Wilcox

   Pages 27-55

5. Zbigniew Preisner Interview

   • Jonathan Godsall

   Pages 57-62

6. Music by Zbigniew Preisner? Fictional Composers and Compositions in the Kieślowski Collaborations

   • Jonathan Godsall

   Pages 63-86

7. Carter Burwell Interview

   • Lindsay Coleman

   Pages 87-96

8. Burwell and Space: Inner, Outer, Environmental and Acoustical

   • Andrew Waggoner

   Pages 97-118

9. Rachel Portman Interview

   • Lindsay Coleman

   Pages 119-124

10. Eero Tarasti and the Narratological Construction of Rachel Portman’s Emma

    • Lindsay Coleman

    Pages 125-138

11. Dario Marianelli Interview

    • Lindsay Coleman

    Pages 139-153

12. Solo Instruments and Internal Focalization in Dario Marianelli’s Pride & Prejudice and Atonement

    • Joakim Tillman

    Pages 155-186

13. Mychael Danna Interview

    • Lindsay Coleman

    Pages 187-193

14. Mychael Danna: Music as Metaphor

    • Peter Golub, Katy Jarzebowski

    Pages 195-219

15. John Williams and Contemporary Film Music

    • Emilio Audissino

    Pages 221-236

16. Musical Syntax in John Williams’s Film Music Themes

    • Konstantinos Zacharopoulos

    Pages 237-262

17. Back Matter

    Pages 263-272

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The purpose of this book, through its very creation, is to strengthen the dialogue between practitioner and theorist. To that end, a film academic and musicologist have collaborated as editors on this book, which is in turn comprised of interviews with composers alongside complementary chapters that focus on a particular feature of the composer’s approach or style. These chapters are written by a fellow composer, musicologist, or film academic who specializes in that element of the composer’s output. In the interview portions of this book, six major film composers discuss their work from the early 1980s to the present day: Carter Burwell, Mychael Danna, Dario Marianelli, Rachel Portman, Zbigniew Preisner, and A.R. Rahman. The focus is on the practical considerations of film composition, the relationship each composer has with the moving image, narrative, technical considerations, personal motivations in composing, the relationships composers have with their directors, and their own creative processes. Contemporary Film Music also explores the contemporary influence of electronic music, issues surrounding the mixing of soundtracks, music theory, and the evolution of each composer’s musical voice.

• cinema
• composition
• film music
• music
• A.R Rahman
• John Williams
• Mychael Danna
• orchestration techniques

• Melbourne, Australia

  Lindsay Coleman

• Stockholm, Sweden

  Joakim Tillman

Lindsay Coleman is an independent film academic, journalist and educator. He is the author of Transnational Cinematography Studies (2017) and Sex and Storytelling in Modern Cinema (2015). Coleman is working on a series of books on modern cinema and also a documentary series on the history of visual effects.

Joakim Tillman is Associate Professor in Musicology at Stockholm University, Sweden. His research has appeared in numerous scholarly journals and edited volumes, for instance the essay Topoi and Intertextuality: Narrative Function in Hans Zimmer’s and Lisa Gerrard’s Music to Gladiator in Music in Epic Film: Listening to Spectacle (2017).

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