Metafilm Music in Jean-Luc Godard's Cinema

by Baumgartner, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780190497163
• ISBN10: 0190497165
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2022-06-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Hailed as a leading innovator of visual montage, unique storytelling style, and ground-breaking cinematography, Jean-Luc Godard is a prominent pioneer in sculpting complex soundtracks altering the familiar relationship between sound and image, but his achievements in sound have been largely overlooked. Such a lacuna in the extensive research on Godard's work is unfortunate, as Godard's lifelong preoccupation of exploring self-reflexively all aspects of filmmaking particularly affects film music. With the novel approach of metafilm music, extrapolated from Jean-Luc Godard's oeuvre, this book not only closes up a crucial gap in Godard research, but also offers detailed analyses of the music as metafilm music in Contempt, Alphaville, Band of Outsiders, Pierrot le fou, First Name: Carmen, Histoire(s) du cinéma, among other films and video productions. The innovative scholarly concept of metafilm music, enriching the burgeoning field of music in audio-visual media, describes how Godard thinks about film music with film music. This book thus provides a thorough examination of Godard's self-reflexive approach to film music which has resulted in a lifelong creation of multi-layered soundtracks pushing the envelope of film music and sound to the limit.

Author Biography

Michael Baumgartner teaches at Cleveland State University in Ohio. His research comprises music in relation to the other arts (cinema, theatre, and visual arts), music of the twentieth and twenty-first century (Kurt Weill, Alfred Schnittke, and Duke Ellington), and the exploration of the narrative
capacity of music. He is the author of the monograph Exilierte Göttinnen: Frauenstatuen im Bühnenwerk von Kurt Weill, Thea Musgrave und Othmar Schoeck (2012). Together with Ewelina Boczkowska, he is also the co-editor of Music, Collective Memory, Trauma, and Nostalgia in European Cinema after the
Second World War (2020) and Music, Ideology, and Production Conditions in European Cinema of the Cold War Era (forthcoming).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgment
Introduction: "For Ever Metafilm Music"
Chapter 1: Gapped Music in Godard's 1960s Films: Dissection of the Musical Unity as a Self-Reflexive Exercise
Chapter 2: Leitmotif Technique Revisited: Indexical Function of Multiply Repeated Musical Fragments in Godard's 1960s Films as Manifestations of Metafilm Music
Chapter 3: The Undoing of the Leitmotif Technique: Quotation, Fragmentation, and Repetition in Godard's 1960s Films with Beethoven, Schumann, and Pseudo-Bach as Metafilm Music
Chapter 4: Quoting Popular Songs: Chanson and Canzone as Metafilm Music in Godard's Work
Chapter 5: Referencing Silent Film Music: Metafilm Music, Mise-en-scène, Acting, and Storytelling
Chapter 6: Referencing Music-Specific Genres and Genre-Specific Music: Metafilm Music, "Cinéma-en-kit" Musical, and Pastiched Film Noir Music
Chapter 7: Referencing Film Music as a Genre: Metafilm Music, Prototypes of Film Music as Genre Mash-Up, and Melodramatic Commutation
Chapter 8: Music-Making as Metaphor for Filmmaking i: Metafilm Music in One Plus One and Prénom: Carmen
Chapter 9: Music-Making as Metaphor for Filmmaking ii: Metafilm Music in Soigne ta droite (Une place sur la terre)
Conclusion: "Two or Three Things I Know about Metafilm Music(s)"
Works Cited
Index