Sounds of Fear and Wonder : Music in Cult TV

The first full and focused guide to music's contribution to popular tv drama. Characters and plot developments, similarly, are enhanced by their musical accompaniment. The different scoring strategies employed in supernatural and horror-based genres, comprising for example True Blood and Supernatural, are considered alongside cult shows set in our reality, such as Dexter, The Sopranos and 24. These discussions are complimented by in-depth case studies of musical approaches in two high-profile series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Hannibal. Written from a musicological standpoint but fully accessible to non-musicologists, the book significantly advances television and music studies How does music enrich and define cult television series? Analyzing theme tunes and scoring on television, the book reveals how composers construct a series' identity using musical idioms and instruments, and how characters and plot developments are enhanced by their musical accompaniment. The different scoring strategies employed in science fiction and horror-based genres, whose shows include Star Trek or Dr. Who , are considered alongside cult shows set in our reality, such as Dexter , The Sopranos , and Queer as Folk . These discussions are complimented by in-depth case studies of musical approaches in three high-profile series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Battlestar Galactica , and Lost . Overall, the book provides a guide to the main types of scoring, including theme music, final scene music, end credit music, and recurring narrative themes. Whereas films typically extend for two or three hours, a television programme-and particularly cult TV series-may span more than a hundred hours of episodes released over several years. Complex and idiosyncratic scores develop to accommodate these elongated time spans and their evolving narratives. The book presents the Buffy/Angel love theme on Buffy the Vampire Slayer as an exemplar, showing how music links elements of a series across episodes and seasons, and often presages plot revelations. It furthermore explores the work of television composers, Aaron Copland and Jerry Goldsmith, unpacks how singing is a cue for fantasy in "real world" dramas, such as Ally McBeal and Desperate Housewives , and explains how musical elements such as timbre, tonality, and the triton can evoke powerful abstract concepts like evil. Prior studies have privileged the analysis of popular music in television. Music in Cult TV redresses this imbalance by focusing primarily on composed scores, while nevertheless considering certain important uses of popular music. Written from a musicological standpoint but fully accessible to non-musicologists, the book is a significant contribution to the study of television, music, and their interconnection. Cover Half-title Endorsement Title page Copyright information Dedication Series Editor Table of contents Figures and Tables Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Music and its Means of Production 2 Early Cult Television Scoring Strategies The music of Star Trek Cult TV scoring in the early 1990s And onwards ... 3 Intros and Outros Title sequences Fixed sequences Ident titles Long, fixed titles Deviant sequences Variant sequences End credits 4 Listening to Buffy the Vampire Slayer Beck’s thematic scoring Buffy, love and loss: Beck’s big theme The Loss theme in season three 5 Scoring Television Vampires Cellos by moonlight: music and the romantic vampire Musical yearning 6 The Bells of Hell go Tingalingaling Singing as we go: supernatural musicals ‘Once More, with Feeling’ The special case of Supernatural 7 Music, Fantasy and Subjectivity in ‘Real World’ Dramas Quality television’s fantastic musical moments Ally McBeal Six Feet Under Sound and subjectivity Normalizing the aberrant Other Dexter 8 The Rest is Noise The soundscapes of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham Will Graham and noise Hannibal and classical music Music as sound design Conclusion Works Cited TV and Filmography TV Film Works Cited TV and Filmography TV Film Index "How does music enrich and define cult television series? This book analyzes theme tunes and scoring on television to reveal how composers construct a series' identity using musical idioms and instruments. Characters and plot developments, similarly, are enhanced by their musical accompaniment. The different scoring strategies employed in science fiction and horror-based genres, comprising for example Star Trek or Dr. Who, are considered alongside cult shows set in our reality, such as Dexter, The Sopranos and Queer as Folk. These discussions are complimented by in-depth case studies of musical approaches in three high-profile series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica and Lost. Written from a musicological standpoint but fully accessible to non-musicologists, the book significantly advances television and music studies."--Back cover. How does music enrich and define cult television series? The book analyses theme tunes and scoring on television to reveal how composers construct a series' identity using musical idioms and instruments.