Nous sommes heureux de vous transmettre le programme du prochain colloque MaM auquel vous participez et qui aura lieu à Evry et à Paris du 19 au 21 juin 2023.
The Music and Media Study Group meeting of 2022 coincided with the quinquennial IMS conference, which took place in August in Athens, Greece. In the multipurpose room of the impressive concert hall building Μέγαρον Μουσικής Αθηνών, MaM hosted its 13th conference as a hybrid meeting throughout the morning of 23 August. Combining in-person and on-line presentations was the go-to, not only due to time zone differences, but also because Greece was still considered a Covid danger zone according to diverse foreign organizations.
Where MaM normally convenes multiple day, annual conferences, we now opted within the possibilities of the overall IMS conference for a smaller roundtable session, discussing the topic of Music in Comedy Cinema. This time, as well, no international open call for papers was published, but all invited speakers are involved in the upcoming Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema, edited by Emilio Audissino and Emile Wennekes.
Dr. Chloé Huvet (Université d’Évry Paris-Saclay, France) opened the panel with her live talk ‘From E.T. to Tintin: John Williams’ Humorous Touches in Non-Comedy Films’. Dr. Emilio Audissino (Linnaeus University, Sweden) continued on the Williams theme with his on-line presentation ‘John Williams, from Comic to Humour: The pre-Star Wars Period’. Next up was Dr. Michael Baumgartner (Cleveland State University, Cleveland, USA) who gave an on-line, and partly pre-recorded presentation entitled ‘Self-Reflexive Music and the Comic Incongruity in the Golden Age of French Comedies’. Prof. Emile Wennekes (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) then brought the overarching topic ‘(Under)scoring Laughs: Theoretical ingredients for a Handbook Introduction’ to the table, live from the Athens Concert Hall. Prof. James Deaville (Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada) closed the line-up of Handbook contributors with the online presentation ‘Taking Mancini’s Comedy Scores Seriously’.
The papers were amply discussed, after which the round table meeting was closed by unveiling location and topic of the 2023 annual MaM meeting.
MaM’s 14th annual conference will be hosted by Université d’Évry Paris-Saclay, and will take place in Paris (France) on 19-21 June, 2023. The topic will be Music and Sound in Francophone Audiovisual Media.
Prof. dr. Emile Wennekes, chair of the Study Group MaM
14th Annual Meeting of the Study Group MaM (Music and Media)
The Music and Media (MaM) Study Group of the International Musicological Society (IMS) invites proposals for its 14th annual international conference. The meeting will be hosted by Université d’Évry Paris-Saclay, and is scheduled to take place on 19-21 June, 2023.
We welcome proposals that examine the theoretical and practical implications of Francophone audiovisual media. ‘Media’ here covers both classic audiovisual media (cinema, television – series, shows, advertisements, etc.) and new media (internet, streaming, video and audio platforms, social networks [Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook…]). We therefore encourage scholarship from a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches—musicology, film studies, ludomusicology, composition, etc.
Conference topics may include, but are not limited to:
1) Music, sound and genre in French fiction (film, television), for example:
· extreme French cinema (Alexandre Bustillo, Julien Maury, Claire Denis, Xavier Gens, Pascal Laugier…), fantasy and horror (Julia Ducourneau, Coralie Fargeat…)
· dramas and thrillers (Henri-Georges Clouzot, Henri Verneuil, René Clément, Xavier Legrand, Dominik Moll, Cédric Jimenez, Xavier Giannoli, Xavier Dolan…)
· musical films, musicals and comedies (Xavier Dolan, Jean-Marc Vallée, Christophe Honoré, Leos Carax, Alain Resnais, Michel Hazanavicius…)…
2) Music and sound in the French documentary film:
· direct cinema or “cinéma vérité” (Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Louis Malle, Peter Wintonick, Michel Brault, Pierre Perrault…)
· experimental documentaries and audiovisual essays (François Bel and Gérard Vienne, Frédéric Dallaire…)
· animal documentaries (Claude Nuridsany, Marie Pérennou, Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats…)
· committed social cinema (Denys Arcand, Raymond Depardon, Alice Diop, Nicolas Philibert, Sébastien Lifshitz, Thierry Michel, Dieudo Hamadi, Hassen Ferhani, Gilles Perret, Jean-Gabriel Périot…)…
3) New Audiovisual Waves (Belgium, France and Overseas, Quebec, Maghreb countries, West Africa, Gulf of Guinea, South Africa…)
4) Approach and dissemination of music and sound in new French-language media
5) Sound and adaptation in foreign languages (questions of translation, dubbing and subtitling)
Invited keynote speakers are Dominique Nasta (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) and James Deaville (Carleton University, Canada).
Deadline for proposals: 31 January, 2023.
Each speaker will have 20 minutes for the paper (in French or English) plus 10 minutes for discussion.
Please include as PDF or Word file: an abstract of no more than 250 words, a biographical note of no more than 150 words, contact details including academic affiliation, if applicable. Proposals should be for papers that have not been previously presented or published. Please send proposals to: chloe.huvet@univ-evry.fr.
The Program Committee includes Chloé Huvet and Grégoire Tosser (Université d’Évry Paris-Saclay), Jérémy Michot (Université de Perpignan Via Domitia) and Emile Wennekes (Utrecht University; Chair MaM).
Appel à communications
Musique et son dans les médias audiovisuels francophones
14e Congrès annuel du groupe de recherche MaM (Music and Media)
Le groupe de recherche Music and Media (MaM) de l’International Musicological Society (IMS) lance un appel à propositions pour son 14e congrès annuel international. Le colloque se tiendra à l’Université d’Évry Paris-Saclay du 19 au 21 juin 2023.
Nous accueillons les propositions dans lesquelles une réflexion s’articule autour des implications théoriques et pratiques des médias audiovisuels francophones. Le terme « média » recouvre ici les médias audiovisuels classiques (cinéma, télévision – séries, émissions, publicités…) et les nouveaux médias (internet, plateformes streaming, vidéo et audio, réseaux sociaux [Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook…]). Nous encourageons par conséquent les travaux issus d’un large éventail d’approches interdisciplinaires – musicologie, études cinématographiques, ludomusicologie, composition, etc.
Axes proposés (non exhaustifs) :
1) Musique, son et genre dans la fiction francophone (cinéma, télévision) :
· Cinéma social engagé (Denys Arcand, Raymond Depardon, Alice Diop, Nicolas Philibert, Sébastien Lifshitz, Thierry Michel, Dieudo Hamadi, Hassen Ferhani, Gilles Perret, Jean-Gabriel Périot…).
3) Nouvelles Vagues audiovisuelles (Belgique, France et Outre-mer, Québec, pays du Maghreb, Afrique de l’Ouest, golfe de Guinée, Afrique du Sud…)
4) Approche et diffusion de la musique et du son dans les nouveaux médias francophones
5) Son et adaptation en langues étrangères (questions de la traduction, du doublage et du sous-titrage).
Deux conférences plénières seront assurées par Dominique Nasta (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgique) et James Deaville (Carleton University, Canada).
Date limite des propositions : 31 janvier 2023.
Chaque communication (en français ou en anglais) aura une durée de 20 minutes et sera suivie de 10 minutes de discussion.
Les résumés de communication (250 mots maximum) devront être envoyés en format PDF ou Word à chloe.huvet@univ-evry.fr. Merci de joindre à votre proposition une notice biographique de 150 mots maximum et de mentionner votre affiliation universitaire.
Le comité scientifique et organisateur est composé de Chloé Huvet et Grégoire Tosser (Université d’Évry Paris-Saclay), Jérémy Michot (Université de Perpignan Via Domitia) et Emile Wennekes (Université d’Utrecht ; président MaM).
Due to Covid-19, the 12th annual meeting of the Music and Media Study Group (MaM) had to be postponed last year. With no end of the pandemic in sight, we decided to schedule the conference of 2021 from the start as a virtual meeting, taking place on June 10-11. The meeting was hosted from two venues: Cleveland State University and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland. Theme of the meeting was Pre-existing Music in Screen-Media: Problems, Questions, Challenges.
A new open Call for Papers was widely distributed. Accepted papers from the previous year were automatically incorporated in the new program. We welcomed proposals that examined the theoretical and practical implications of pre-existing music in a variety of screen media—with special emphasis on cinema, music videos, and digital technologies.
The two day conference with 24 speakers in total was scheduled in six panels: ‘Redefining the Use of Pre-Existing Music through Bricolage’, ‘Auteur Cinema and Opera’, ‘Hollywood, European Mainstream, and Pre-Existing Music’, ‘Prototypical Film Genres and Pre-Existing Music’, ‘Incongruency, Isomorphism, and Rearrangement’, and ‘Advertising, Branding, Franchising’.
The participants were offered two keynote presentations, streamed from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The first was given by dr. James Buhler (University of Texas at Austin) and entitled ‘Composing for the Films in the Age of Digital Media’. The second key note talk by dr. Carol Vernallis (Stanford University) entitled ’Music Video and the Multisensory’ was streamed at a later moment due to technical challenges.
The program conference committee included both keynote speakers, as well as Michael Baumgartner (Cleveland State University & co-organizer), Ewelina Boczkowska (Youngstown State University & co-organizer), Jason Hanley (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & co-organizer), Chloé Huvet (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon), Tobias Pontara (Gothenburg University), and Emile Wennekes (Utrecht University & co-organizer).
The study group meeting of 2022 will coincide with the quinquennial IMS conference, which will take place in August in Athens, Greece. https://pcoconvin.eventsair.com/ims22/
We will host a round table on the topic of Music in Comedy Cinema. The papers presented here will form parts of the upcoming Palgrave Handbook of Music in Comedy Cinema, edited by Emilio Audissino and Emile Wennekes. Invited speakers include Mervyn Cooke, James Deaville, members of last year’s program committee (Chloé Huvet, Ewelina Boczkowska, Michael Baumgartner), as well as the two editors of the Handbook.
Robynn Stilwell: “Creating Anew: The Mash-Up as Performance, Collaboration, Independent Work”
Chair: Emile Wennekes
11:00 AM–12:30 PM Panel 2: Auteur Cinema and Opera (CSU)
Justin Mueller: “The Remediated Soundscape of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Parsifal”
Scott Murphy: “Reappropriation Enlists Contingency: A Rogue Note in Melancholia”
Pascal Rudolph: “The Musical Idea Working Group: Production vs. Reception of Pre-existing Music”
Chair: Tobias Pontara
12:30–1:30 PM Break for Refreshments
1:30–2:30 PM Keynote Address I (R&HoF)
James Buhler: “Composing for the Films in the Age of Digital Media”
Chair: Jason Hanley
3:00–4:30 PMPanel 3: Hollywood, European Mainstream, and Pre-Existing Music (CSU)
Gillian Anderson: “Pre-existing Music in Way Down East (Griffith, 1920) and Ben Hur (Niblo, 1926)”
Richard Anatone: “Pre-Existing Music as Leitmotif in Groundhog Day: Breaking the Cycle of the Endless Rondo through Transformative Variation”
Kate McQuiston: “Half Past Duke: Gondry’s Jazz Clock in Mood Indigo“
Chair: Mark Durrand
Friday, 11 June 2021
8:50–9:00 AM Opening Remarks (CSU)
Professor Heather Russell, Director of School of Music, CSU
9:00–10:30 AM Panel 4: Prototypical Film Genres and Pre-Existing Music (CSU)
Julin Lee: “Staging a Synthetic Western: Instrumental Covers of Pre-Existing Music in HBO’s Westworld:The Maze (2016)”
Michiel Kamp: “Drive, Synthwave, and the Audiovisual Imaginaries of Neo(n)-Noir”
Roberto Calabretto: “The Melodramatic Imagination of Visconti’s Cinema”
Chair: Rebecca Fülöp
10:45 AM–12:15 PMPanel 5: Incongruency, Isomorphism, and Rearrangement (CSU)
David Ireland: “What a Wonderful World? Investigating the Evolution and Effect of Incongruent Post-Existing Film Music”
Dominique Nasta and Thomas Van Deursen: “Structural Isomorphism and Double-Bind Receptivity: The Affective Nexus of Classical and Popular Music Quotes in Five Contemporary Films”
James Mc Glynn: “Rearrangement of Pre-existing Music in the Film Score: Narratological Possibilities, Deliberate Ambiguities and Questions of ‘Originality’”
Chair: Chloé Huvet
12:15–1:15 PM Break for Refreshments
1:15–2:15 PM Keynote Address II (R&RHoF)
Carol Vernallis: “Music Video and the Multisensory”
Pre-existing Music in Screen-Media: Problems, Questions, Challenges
12th Meeting of the Music and Media (MaM) Study Group of the IMS, Cleveland
The Music and Media (MaM) Study Group of the International Musicological Society (IMS) invites proposals to its twelfth annual international conference. Due to Covid-19, the conference was postponed last year.We will now host a virtual meeting on June 10-11, 2021. The meeting will be hosted by Cleveland State University and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
We welcome proposals that examine the theoretical and practical implications of pre-existing music in a variety of screen media—with special emphasis on cinema, music videos, and digital technologies. We encourage scholarship from a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches—musicology, film studies, ludomusicology, composition, etc.
Conference topics may include, but are not limited to:
The definition of pre-existing music in screen media; What is pre-existing music? What are the specific characteristics of pre-existing music?
Pre-existing music and socio-cultural representations in cinema
Pre-existing music, cultural coding and “recodification” in specific cinematic contexts
Pre-existing music and intertextuality
Re-appropriation of pre-existing music in screen media
Pre-existing classical, jazz, and popular music in screen media
Pre-existing music in video games and non-fictional cinema (documentary films, television)
Pre-existing music vs. commissioned music
Pre-existing music and auteur cinema
Licensing of pre-existing music for film, television, and other media.
Pre-existing music, post-existing music, and cinematic listening
Keynote speakers are Carol Vernallis (Stanford University) and James Buhler (University of Texas at Austin).
Deadline: April 15, 2021. Participants will be notified by May 15, 2021.
Each speaker will have 20 minutes for the paper plus 10 minutes for discussion.
Please include as pdf or Word file: an abstract of no more than 250 words, a biographical note of no more than 150 words, contact details including academic affiliation, if applicable. Proposals should be for papers that have not been previously presented or published.
Scholars who have submitted a proposal last year will be notified separately and given the opportunity to revise their abstracts.
In agreement with the President and Provost of the university as well as with their pandemic specialist (former Surgeon General of the US Navy), Cleveland State University has decided that we must cancel our June MaM meeting. We fully understand that the protection of all participants and also of the local community should be leading in decisions made in these times of crisis.
We are now investigating possibilities of postponing our meeting until next year, but then convening somewhat earlier. We will now commence work on rescheduling the two-day meeting for April 2021. This is as yet unconfirmed so please watch this space for updates and details.
An update in December 2020 will be sent to all those who were planning to attend this year, to inquire if there is still interest in joining us in 2021.
Thank you for your understanding as we navigate these unique circumstances.
Emile Wennekes, Chairman MaM
Ewelina Boczkowska (co-organizer)
Michael Baumgartner (co-organizer)
Jason Hanley, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (co-organizer)
IMS meets IMS:
Annual Report Study Group Music & Media (MaM), 2019:
In 2019, IMS Study group MaM organized its 11th annual meeting at the Linnæus University Växjö (LNU), Sweden, from June 7 to 9.
The meeting was hosted by the LNU research center “Intermedial and multimodal studies” (also known as IMS). The topic this year was Sounds of Mass Media: Music in Journalism and Propaganda. The conference committee consisted of Dr. Tobias Pontara (Gothenburg University), Dr. Tobias Plebuch, (Uppsala University), Dr. Ulrik Volgsten (Örebro University), Dr. Martin Knust (Linnæus University Växjö), and Prof. Emile Wennekes (Utrecht University / Chair of MaM). Keynote speaker was Dr. Emilio Audissino (University of Southampton).
Music in propaganda and journalism can serve both educational and demagogic features and functions. It is this border area between information and disinformation of the masses that the 11th MaM meeting was aiming for and which could, for example, be detected when analyzing the music on newsreel soundtracks of the 1930s and 1940s, in TV reports about war and conflict in the 1990s or in documentaries about and produced by the political far right in the 2010s. The degree of truthfulness in audio-visual journalism is sometimes difficult if not impossible to determine when looking at so-called infotainment journalism. Journalist segments can be – or appear to be – biased, involuntarily or voluntarily. The presentation of facts in journalism can become partisan or manipulative and in such contexts, music plays a crucial role.
The recent thirty years have seen a quantitative rise in the use of music in journalist formats on radio, TV and the web. As a matter of fact, music has been a part of journalism from the onset of the audio and audio-visual mass media of the 1910s, for instance, in the newsreel. Moreover, the design of journalism and of propaganda have intersected on many occasions. Mass media propaganda, for instance, in film, relied – and still relies – on employing music. Neither journalism or media scholars, nor musicologists have paid attention to music in journalism to a significant extent. There is only a handful of research publications concerning this topic. Given the recent and ongoing rise of music use in journalism, a discussion about the implications of music in non-fictional contexts is overdue.
MaM XI addressed this topic via Emilio Audissino’s key note talk ‘Sound-logos, Olympics, Presidents, and Other Celebrations. When John Williams Scores for Mass Media’, as well as through the following sub-topics: ’Music and Nationalist Agendas’, ’Propagandistic Writing about Music’, ‘Propagandist Film Music’, ‘Music and Fascist Propaganda’, ‘Music in Journalism’, and ‘Music in Documentaries’. Papers were presented by Stefan Sandmeier, Juan Liu, Deniz Ertan, Andrea van der Smissen, Signe Kjær Jensen & Beate Schirrmacher, Daniele Palma, Paolo Somigli, Jörg Holzmann, Martin Knust, Anna Eveliina Hänninen, Javier Rivas Rodríguez, Svetlana Toivakka & Henna Tujula, Heidi Hart, and Emile Wennekes. Special thanks goes to Martin Knust for hosting a well-organized event.
The next MaM meeting will take place in Cleveland, Ohio (USA) on June 5 and 6 at Cleveland State University and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The topic this year will be Pre-existing music in screen-media: Problems, questions, challenges. The call for papers is still open.
Prof. Dr. Emile Wennekes,
Chair MaM
e.wennekes@uu.nl
Call for Papers: Pre-existing music in screen-media: Problems, questions, challenges
The Music and Media (MaM) Study Group of the International Musicological Society (IMS) invites proposals to its twelfth annual international conference to be held at Cleveland State University and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame from June 5-6, 2020. We welcome proposals that examine the theoretical and practical implications of pre-existing music in a variety of screen media—with special emphasis on cinema, music videos, and digital technologies. We encourage scholarship from a wide range of interdisciplinary approaches—musicology, film studies, ludomusicology, composition, etc. Conference topics may include:
• The definition of pre-existing music in screen media; What is pre-existing music? What are the specific characteristics of pre-existing music?
• Pre-existing music and socio-cultural representations in cinema
• Pre-existing music, cultural coding and “recodification” in specific cinematic contexts
• Pre-existing music and intertextuality
• Re-appropriation of pre-existing music in screen media
• Pre-existing classical, jazz, and popular music in screen media
• Pre-existing music in video games and non-fictional cinema (documentary films, television)
• Pre-existing music vs. commissioned music
• Pre-existing music and auteur cinema
• Licensing of pre-existing music for film, television and other media.
• Pre-existing music, post-existing music and cinematic listening
Keynote speakers are Carol Vernallis (Stanford University) and James Buhler (University of Texas at Austin).
Deadline: Wednesday March 1, 2020. Participants will be notified by March 15, 2020.
Each speaker will have 20 minutes for the paper plus 10 minutes for discussion.
Please include as pdf or Word file: an abstract of no more than 250 words, a biographical note of no more than 150 words, contact details including academic affiliation, if applicable, and any technological requirements that exceed the standard. A projector, stereo and internet access will be provided.
Please send proposals to: Ewelina Boczkowska (eboczkowska@ysu.edu).
The program conference committee consists of:
Carol Vernallis, Stanford University
James Buhler, University of Texas at Austin
Chloé Huvet, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon
Tobias Pontara, Gothenburg University
Emile Wennekes, Utrecht University (chair of MaM)
Ewelina Boczkowska, Youngstown State University (co-organizer)
Jason Hanley, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (co-organizer)
Michael Baumgartner, Cleveland State University (co-organizer)
Call for Book Chapters
Scoring Laughs.
Styles and Functions of Music in Comedy Cinema
Edited by Emile Wennekes and Emilio Audissino
Historically, the examination and theorisation of the use of music in films has addressed its presence in dramas – ‘serious’ films – while fewer accounts are available on what types of music is utilised in comedies and what functions it performs. As Hollywood cinema has been the benchmark and principal terrain of inquiry, this factual unbalance can be partly due to the scarce presence of music in the classical Hollywood comedies – for example, the iconic 1930s screewballs – compared to the fantasy/adventure/drama films of the same era, in which the fathers of Hollywood music – Steiner, Korngold, Newman… – thrived and set the foundations of the practice, and from which the first film-music scholars launched the discipline. The lack of scholarly attention, can also be due to the fact that comedies, having to deal with laughter and lighter situations instead of the graver and more existentially compelling narratives of dramas, have been seen as less reputable objects of study, less worthy of being taken seriously by academics – a point raised by Brett Mills in his monograph on the sitcom (Mills 2008). Recent analyses of the music’s agency in cinema in general have, as per tradition, preferred dramas – for example, Audissino 2017 and Lehman 2018 – while comedy is taken into consideration mostly in focussed publications – for example, Lochner 2018 or Evans & Hayward 2016. This collection of essays aims at investigating the presence, nature, and function of music in the comedy film from fresh perspectives, in order to contribute to a re-evaluation of film-music studies by casting more light on the more neglected comedic department.
By the term ‘comedy’, this book adopts a wide definition, welcoming contributions ranging from farce, slapstick and physical comedy, absurdist comedy, parodies, rom-com, to dark-humoured dramedies. The music addressed is equally non-discriminative in terms of genre, style, pre- or newly composed. The book’s focus is on cinematic comedy, thus excluding comedy for television – given the recent contribution on this area (Giuffre & Hayward 2017) – and it is focussed on music, not on sound/sound design more generally. The book, also because of its Film Studies/Musicology editorial duo, aims at adopting an interdisciplinary approach. Three overarching and interwoven questions are subtended to its general design:
1) What cinematic devices produce humour?
2) What musical devices produce humour?
3) In what ways do musical and cinematic devices interact within film comedy?
Ideally, contributions are encouraged to consider all three aspects in their reciprocal interaction. Yet, chapters are also sought that engage specifically in questions of music theory and analysis, addressing primarily the second question or more film-studies-oriented chapters that tackle the other two combined questions – What cinematic devices produce humour and how musical and cinematic devices can interact in producing film comedy?
The book aims at covering two main areas, ‘Taxonomies and Theories’ and ‘Case Studies.’ In the former, contributions are welcomed that address how music can employ its devices to (a) depict humour and the comic (e.g., the use of pizzicato strings, syncopated rhythm, timbres and colours like those of the bassoon and the tuba, the orchestra’s ‘clowns’, or the use of unusual instruments, scored surprises, parody, etc.) or (b) how music creates humour and the comic by teaming up with the cinematic devices (for example, the use of ‘serious’ repertoire or original music combined with editing to create comic effects, as in Kubrick’s sardonic use of ‘We’ll Meet Again’ at the end of Dr. Strangelove, or the quotation of the Jaws theme in the fake-excrement scene in Caddyshack). In the ‘Case Studies’ section, contributions are encouraged to focus the analysis on exemplary films, composers, or directors, as well as the use of music in national cinemas other than Hollywood, to provide a much welcome international outlook.
Indicative areas and topics are the following (though they are not limited to these):
– Comedy film composers (e.g. Elmer Bernstein, Theodore Shapiro, John Morris, Mark Shaiman…)
– Non-comedy film composers writing for comedy (e.g. Jerry Goldsmith or Hans Zimmer)
– Case studies of single films
– Music and the theories of Humour (Superiority Theory, Release Theory, Incongruity Theory, Cue Theory…)
– Psychomusicology and humour in film music
– The musical depiction of the Comic and Humour: how musical structures convey humour
– ‘Serious’ music for comic effects
– Repertoire music, affiliating identification, and comical effects
– Cartoon music
– Involuntary comical music (e.g., today’s perception of the classical Mickey-Mousing in dramas)
– Musical parody and film parody
– Pop music and comedy
– Comic music in musicals
– National music, national cinemas, national comedies
– Monty Python and music (and songs)
– Music in Mel Brooks’s cinema
– Music and the Marx Brothers
– Music in the films of Louis De Funès
– Music in the films of Totò
– Music in the Carry On… films
– Comedy Italian-style and music
– Music in the films by Álex de la Iglesia
– Music in the Fantozzi film cycle
– Historical pastiche in Rustichelli’s music for L’armata Brancaleone
– Music in the films by John Landis
– Laurel and Hardy and music (songs)
– The use of original comic songs (e.g., Monty Python’s ‘Penis Song’)
– Music and the rom-com
– …
Palgrave MacMillan has expressed a strong interest for the project, which will be featured in their series ‘Palgrave Studies in Audiovisual Culture’ (Series Editor, K. J. Donnelly). We are preparing a formal book proposal, and we are now looking for submissions in the form of 300-word abstract. The final chapters should have a length in-between 5,000/6,000 words.
Timetable:
– Deadline for abstract submission: 1 November 2019.
– Communication of selected contributors: 31 December 2019.
– Delivery of the first draft: 1 September 2020.
– Communication of editorial reviews: 1 November 2020.
– Deadline for final draft: 31 December 2020.
– Publication is projected in Autumn 2021. Please send your 300-word abstract (also indicating an estimate of the number of illustrations/figures you would plan to include, if any) plus a 150-word bio to both e.wennekes@uu.nl and emilio.audissino@soton.ac.uk by 1 November 2019.
Editors’ Biographies
EMILE WENNEKES: Prof. dr. Emile Wennekes is Chair Professor of Musicology: Music and Media at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He has written on a broad range of subjects, including a co-published book on contemporary Dutch music available in six languages. His work has been published, among others, by Oxford University Press, Routledge, Michigan University Press, and Brepols. Most recently, he edited the volume Cinema Changes: Incorporation of Jazz in the Film Soundtrack (Brepols 2019) together with Emilio Audissino. Wennekes founded and chairs the Study Group Music and Media (MaM) under the auspices of the International Musicological Society. He coordinates its annual conferences.
EMILIO AUDISSINO: A film scholar and a film musicologist, Emilio Audissino (University of Southampton) holds one PhD in History of Visual and Performing Arts and one PhD in Film Studies. He specialises in Hollywood and Italian cinema, and his interests are film analysis, screenwriting, film style and technique, comedy, horror, and film sound and music. Notably, he is the author of John Williams’s Film Music (University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), the first book-length study in English on the composer, and Film/Music Analysis (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), a method for audiovisual analysis that blends Neoformalism and Gestalt Psychology. He is also an active and award-winning screenwriter.
References:
Audissino, Emilio. 2017. Film/Music Analysis. A Film Studies Approach. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Evans, Mark and Hayward, Philip (eds.). 2016. Sounding Funny: Sound and Comedy Cinema. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.
Giuffre, Liz and Hayward, Philip (eds.). 2017. Music in Comedy Television: Notes on Laughs. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.
Lehman, Frank. 2018. Hollywood Harmonies. Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Lockner, Jim. 2018. The Music of Charlie Chaplin. Jefferson NC: McFarland & Company.
Mills, Brett. 2009. The Sitcom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
IMS MAM Studygroup 