Exploring the Film Soundtrack: The Role and Aesthetics of Movie Music

How do film composers influence the audience’s emotional response, and in what ways do they create music that elicits a particular location or time period? How do they balance the music with dialogue? This course will investigate the development of movie music from the early improvised organ playing of musicians like Fats Waller for silent films, to more recent music from the biggest composers in Hollywood, including Erich Korngold, Max Steiner, Henry Mancini, Bernard Herrmann, John Williams, Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman, James Horner, Alan Silvestri, Randy Newman, and Howard Shore. We will investigate how the specific musical elements of melody, harmony, counterpoint, tempo, rhythm, and orchestration can be used to enhance scenes that deal with themes such as romance, sadness, chase, horror, magic, and fantasy. As a final projects, students will create their own sound track to an original movie that they record throughout the session, and make an original board game of film music trivia. A field trips will be taken to the Kirksville movie theater for a class screening of a new release, and to the Truman Television/Radio Station for a tour of the media equipment.