From the publisher's website: Hearing the Movies: Music and Sound in Film History offers a new, concepts-based approach to the study of film music that not only considers the film's score but also examines how the music interacts with sound and dialogue. Film is a technology-dependent medium that relies on reproduced sound, and the aesthetics of film sound have changed over time with changes in technology. In the cinema, music is positioned in the sound track. Accordingly, we focus on music in the context of the film sound track and on the sound track in the context of a history of film technology. 

The publisher: Oxford University Press USA. Link for: Higher Education Division. Here is a link to the book.

From the book's preface: Hearing the Movies is laid out in three Parts and fifteen chapters, a design intended to facilitate use on its own as the textbook for a semester course on film music and film sound. (See a table of contents under Classroom resources.) The book may also serve effectively as a substantial supplementary or reference text in film introductory courses, courses on sound design and aesthetics, courses on film music composition, courses on twentieth-century and contemporary music, courses on music and media, or even seminar courses on specific repertoires -- for example, science fiction films after 1970, composers (Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, etc.), or periods (such as Hollywood in the 1930s; film and rock and roll in the 1950s and 1960s). In addition to its main functions as a text, Hearing the Movies can also assist courses that incorporate a substantial writing requirement: at the ends of Part I & II, chapter-sized Interludes provide information and guidelines for writing about films in terms of their sound and music.

This site has supplementary and pedagogical materials, in particular basic syllabi for 10 and 15 week courses in which Hearing the Movies is the principal textbook. We also provide suggestions for using the book in other courses of the kind described above. The site contains electronic copies of selected screen stills (but not other graphics) from the book, a list of the DVD editions we used for timings in the book, links to relevant film and film music websites, supplementary scene analyses, and ideas for assignments. All these materials have been gradually added to the site, starting with syllabi (to facilitate course planning),and most were in place by August 2009. It is our intention that the site will be regularly updated with new or revised material.In particular, we hope eventually to provide annotated film music bibliographies as well as commentary on articles we particularly recommend for class readings.

In addition, we have established an authors' blog, which can be accessed here and which has more than one hundred entries since March 2009. The blog has source materials for early film sound and performance practices, additional scene analyses, and pedagogical suggestions.

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Site created on 27 November 2008; home page last updated 28 September 2009. 

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