The “Spatial Perceptive Function” of Film Music : When Music Tells You What and Where to Look

• In my book Film/Music Analysis I claim that film music mainly operates in films under three (overlapping) types of agency: emotive function (micro and macro), perceptive function (spatial and temporal), and cognitive function (denotative and connotative), depending on which of the viewer’s three dimensions of activity is most triggered by music. In this paper I would like to focus on the “spatial perceptive function”, which is when music is designed to attract the viewer’s attention to some movement within the film’s space, or to increase the prominence of a visual event. For example, in a crowded scene a fast descending scale of the strings, played simultaneously to someone falling down a flight of stairs in the background, would point the viewer’s attention to that “isomorphic configuration” and thus isolate an action in the space that might otherwise have gone unnoticed in that visually packed shot. In horror films, the sudden appearance of the monster is typically coupled with a “stinger”, a sudden sforzando dissonant chord that has not only the function of “scaring” the viewer (emotive function) but also that of boosting the “startle response” by adding to the sudden violent movement in the visuals an isomorphic sudden violent movement in the music. This function is also identifiable with the so-called “Mickey Mousing” used in old-fashioned Hollywood scoring, widely considered one of the types of musical intervention of least interest and least worth of analysis. Film music is, instead, amply discussed as to its contribution in shaping the emotional response or in communicating meaning. Employing Gestalt Theory and Leonard B. Meyer’s scholarship, I will go against the tide and bring the attention to this “spatial perceptive function”, to highlight music’s important contribution in pointing the viewer’s attention to the desired action or visual detail inside the filmic space. 

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Filmvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Studies on Film (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Musikvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Musicology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Film Studies

Filmvetenskap

Musikvetenskap

Musicology

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