British Film Music

Musical Traditions in British Cinema, 1930s–1950s

verfasst von: Paul Mazey

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buchreihe : Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book offers a fresh approach to British film music by tracing the influence of Britain’s musical heritage on the film scores of this era. From the celebration of landscape and community encompassed by pastoral music and folk song, and the connection of both with the English Musical Renaissance, to the mystical strains of choral sonorities and the stirring effects of the march, this study explores the significance of music in British film culture. With detailed analyses of the work of such key filmmakers as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Laurence Olivier and Carol Reed, and composers including Ralph Vaughan Williams, William Walton and Brian Easdale, this systematic and in-depth study explores the connotations these musical styles impart to the films and considers how each marks them with a particularly British inflection.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction

Abstract

Noting British film music’s ability to act as a marker of Britishness in a film, Mazey proposes that this is the result of films of this era embracing styles of music that are culturally significant in the history of British music. Mazey contends that the British industry draws upon its national musical heritage and this influences the aesthetic practices and approach to film scoring that develop in the British industry. The chapter explains the importance of this period in British film culture, introduces contemporary debates among film music practitioners, and places this study in the context of these and more recent research. It concludes by outlining the overall argument of the study.

Paul Mazey

Chapter 2. Aesthetic Conventions: Distinctiveness and Diversity

Abstract

Mazey provides an overview of the aesthetic diversity of British film music and investigates the industry conditions that give rise to its distinctive nature. The chapter opens with a brief outline of the key differences between British and Hollywood film music before focusing more closely on the British industry. It introduces the music directors and composers working in the British industry, and explores how their musical education aligns them with the historical mission that resulted in the English Musical Renaissance. The chapter concludes with multiple examples of the restrained use of music in British cinema that illustrate the poetic and expressive potential that was possible within the British system.

Paul Mazey

Chapter 3. Pastoral Music: Representations of Landscape

Abstract

Mazey relates the use of pastoral music in British films to its predominant position in British concert music in the wake of the English Musical Renaissance, and considers how films that combine pastoral music with landscape imagery accentuate the natural environment and harvest its symbolic connotations. Drawing on the work of Powell, Pressburger and others, he demonstrates how these audiovisual combinations promote a rural myth of the British countryside as a locus of tradition, history and closely knit communities and how they lay claim to a shared sense of national identity. The chapter concludes by investigating representations that resist this rural myth and instead depict their landscapes either as bleak places or as examples of overwhelming natural environments that imperil those who seek to tame them.

Paul Mazey

Chapter 4. Folk Song: National and Regional Music

Abstract

Supported by close analyses of British documentaries and feature films, Mazey argues that both consistently use folk song on their soundtracks in a way that exploits its connotations and aligns it with the concert music of the British composers associated with the English Musical Renaissance. Taking Michael Powell’s The Edge of the World (1937) as a key film and contrasting it with other titles, Mazey discusses folk song’s ability to impart a charge of documentary authenticity to the images it accompanies. The chapter concludes by illustrating how folk song’s authenticating quality operates even in comic films that parody the documentary movement, such as Whisky Galore! (Alexander Mackendrick, 1949).

Paul Mazey

Chapter 5. Choral Music: Christian and Pantheistic Mysticism

Abstract

Mazey explores the varied use of choral voices in British film scores, and relates these to the heritage of the British choral tradition and to the work of composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Brian Easdale. This chapter analyses how choral sonorities are employed on film soundtracks and the particular spiritual effect they create. It takes account of the Christian associations of choral music and goes on to consider the broader mystical qualities of wordless choral sonorities and the way they are often associated in British cinema with natural forces, notably in the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Paul Mazey

Chapter 6. The March: Military and Ceremonial Music

Abstract

In considering the effects of the march rhythm in film scores, Mazey demonstrates a historical continuity between the development of British military bands, the march in British art music and its subsequent use, notably in British war films. The chapter contains detailed analyses of classic films including Ice Cold in Alex (J. Lee Thompson, 1958) and The Dam Busters (Michael Anderson, 1955). It considers how the march is deployed on a film soundtrack and how it can inflect a film with a particularly British resonance. The chapter concludes by analysing the different effects created by the use of a slower elegiac march in such key films as Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) and Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947).

Paul Mazey

Chapter 7. Conclusion

Abstract

This concluding chapter draws together the strands of the argument contained in the preceding chapters. In it, Mazey reiterates the interrelated areas of British musical traditions, documentary influences, and notions of restraint that mark the scores, and the films themselves, with a British inflection. The parallels, Mazey finds, between the mission of the English Musical Renaissance and the later movement to elevate the standard of British film music reveal a shared impulse and allow us to view the desire to raise the quality of music in the British film industry as a late-flowering branch of the musical renaissance that had earlier revitalised British art music.

Paul Mazey

Backmatter

Titel: British Film Music
verfasst von: Paul Mazey
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-33550-2
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-33549-6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33550-2