Focus
Publications
Services
Auteurs
Éditions
Shop
Promotion de Pâques : Jusqu’au 30.4.2025, profite d'une réduction de 20% sur les produits suivants. Code: NEST25
Hearing Death at the Movies

Hearing Death at the Movies

Film Music and the Long History of the Dies Irae

Contenu

The Dies Irae is a melody that composers of film music have employed in hundreds of films, ranging from Metropolis to The Shining, and Star Wars. It is a product of more than 800 years of musical transformation, finding purchase in a variety of musical environments, including the church, the concert hall, and the cinema. Based on a corpus of nearly 300 films, Hearing Death At the Movies models two new ways of thinking about the Dies Irae. First, it identifies three different versions of the melody, each of which signifies a different function of film music. Second, it traces the semantic shift of the Dies Irae from its religious roots to its secular perception as a symbol of death. This study of the most widely-used theme in film music history will change how you listen to movies.

Alex Ludwig is Associate Professor of Music at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

 

Informations bibliographiques

mai 2025, env. 239 pages, Anglais
Springer International Publishing
978-3-031-78794-2

Sommaire

Mots-clés

Autres titres sur ce thème