Title: Saying it with songs : popular music and the coming of sound to Hollywood cinema /
Authors: Spring, Katherine
Year: 2013
Subjects: Motion picture music United States History and criticism; Popular music United States History and criticism.; Motion picture music; Popular music; Filmmusik; Unterhaltungsmusik; Film; Sound in motion pictures.; United States; USA; Los Angeles-Hollywood
Abstract: "Hollywood's conversion from silent to synchronized sound film production not only instigated the convergence of the film and music industries but also gave rise to an extraordinary period of songs in American cinema. Saying It With Songs considers how the increasing interdependence of Hollywood studios and Tin Pan Alley music publishing firms influenced the commercial and narrative functions of popular songs. While most scholarship on film music of the period focuses on adaptations of Broadway musicals, this book examines the functions of songs in a variety of non-musical genres, including melodramas, romantic comedies, Westerns, prison dramas, and action-adventure films, and shows how filmmakers tested and refined their approach to songs in order to reconcile the spectacle of song performance, the classical norms of storytelling, and the conventions of background orchestral scoring from the period of silent cinema. Written for film and music scholars alike as well as for general readers, Saying It With Songs illuminates the origins of the popular song score aesthetic of American cinema." -- Publisher's description.
Contents: Singing a song : the culture and conventions of popular music in the 1920s -- Owning a song : the restructuring of Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley -- Plugging a song : the discrete charm of the popular song, from Broadway to Hollywood -- Integrating a song : the threat to narrative plausibility -- Curtailing a song : toward the classical background score.