Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear (review)

The frequency with which books on film music are being published has been increasing dramatically in the last decade. Not only do readers have a wide selection of new books from which to choose, but the parameters of this interdisciplinary field are gradually becoming more clearly defined. Some recent texts are comprehensive chronologies of film music during the sound era, such as James Wierzbicki's insightful Film Music: A History. Others take a less chronological and more methodological approach, such as James Buhler, David Neumeyer and Rob Deemer's versatile Hearing the Movies: Music and Sound in Film History. Still others, such as Scarecrow Press's diverse series of Film Score Guides, are each a monograph that deals with one particular composer and one particular film. Routledge's new Music and Screen Media Series is original in that each volume of the series is designed as a collection of essays on a particular genre of visual media, including both film and television. According to the 'Series Foreword' by Neil Lerner, this series 'offers collections of original essays written for an interdisciplinary audience of students and scholars of music, film and media studies in general, and interdisciplinary humanists who give strong attention to music' (vii). Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear, the first entry in the series, accomplishes this goal by offering a range of approaches that will appeal to a diverse audience. Undergraduate and postgraduate students of music and media studies will find this to be an enjoyable read; and teachers of music theory, music literature and media studies will find this volume to be worth their time and suitable for adoption in a course on film musicology. According to Routledge's website, an upcoming volume in this series, edited by James Deaville (a contributor to the present anthology), will focus on music for television, and yet another, edited by Kathryn Kalinak, will be dedicated to music in the western.

For readers who are familiar with film musicology, but who might be somewhat unfamiliar with this particular genre, this volume serves as a well-conceived introduction that only occasionally leaves the reader overwhelmed with specific jargon. Each author offers a unique perspective on the genre, some more musicological than others, but the order of essays and the transition from one essay to the next is always coherent.

Many of the essays in Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear deal more with how pre-existing music is used in horror film, as opposed to how a composer composes new music for a film. As a result, there is less emphasis of the compositional process. It would have been useful if Lerner had articulated whether this was by design, as I found it to be a noticeable, if not distracting, trend throughout the volume.

Although not well acquainted with all the films discussed, I had little trouble following the authors' discourse on these unfamiliar films. If the reader is a musician, he or she will most likely find the essays by Halfyard, Code and Whitesell to be very enjoyable to read without encountering very many unfamiliar terms. Film scholars who do not have a strong musical background might likewise enjoy the contributions by Link, Tompkins and Buhler.

As described in the volume's 'Preface',

the first three chapters take a more thematic approach (e.g. the presence of organs, tritones, and children's music) while the remaining nine delve into a particular film or group of films with an eye – and ear! – towards finding new understandings of these filmic texts through a careful reflection upon the music.

(x)

This organisation seems to work well. Not being an expert on horror film, I found that after the first three essays – those by Brown, Halfyard and Link – I was well prepared for a detailed discussion of specific films and some key subgenres, such as slasher films and vampire films.

Julie Brown's 'Carnival of Souls and the Organs of Horror' was a pleasant read, although lacking musical examples...