Alex Ludwig: Hearing Death at the Movies, Gebunden
Hearing Death at the Movies
- Film Music and the Long History of the Dies Irae
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature Switzerland, 05/2025
- Binding:
- Gebunden
- Language:
- Englisch
- ISBN-13:
- 9783031787942
- Item number:
- 12286244
- Volume:
- 268 Pages
- Weight:
- 461 g
- Format:
- 216 x 153 mm
- Thickness:
- 20 mm
- Release date:
- 1.5.2025
- Note
-
Caution: Product is not in German language
Blurb
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 . Itis 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.
