FILM MUSIC: THE NEW CLASSICAL?
Grant Innes McLachlan, composer, Department of Music, University of Cape Town
Thursday 19–Friday 20 January
9.15 am
COURSE FEES R220
After two hundred years of the age of the concert, and with the invention of recorded sound, music reinvented itself in the twentieth century, particularly as the film industry burgeoned. Music is now more often heard recorded than live, and for new composers, classical musical forms now survive more within film music than in the concert hall. The relationship that composers such as Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven had with their patrons has a parallel in the relationships film composers have with their directors. Moreover, the vast majority of the most popular Hollywood composers have a traditional classical background. Is film music the new classical music?
This course will consider how music in the twentieth century becomes the chief narrative partner in the new media of film. It will also look at how music tells us what we should feel when we watch a film, and why classical music is so effective in achieving this.
Lecture titles
1. The other sense
2. Manipulating the emotions