Abstract

This thesis argues that various processes based in the social dimensions of our lives affect film accompanists, composers, and their work in a direct and pertinent fashion. Mediating social influences act upon the relationships between film musicians and the institutions or formations within which they function, and reflect the economic and political preoccupations of those collective bodies. These same factors also produce effects in the realm of social subjectivity, informing the internal attitudes of film accompanists and composers toward their metier and toward the individuals and groups with whom they interact in the course of making music for motion pictures. Social considerations further affect the processes in which film musicians produce the actual notes, timbres and styles heard in live accompaniments and on soundtracks, shaping the structures, idioms, instrumental media, and conventions that have evolved in mainstream film music over its century-long history. Finally, various residual and emergent elements are shown to challenge and redefine dominant film musical practice in different ways. In the former case, the coexistence of live performance and reproduced motion pictures during the silent era, and the echoes of live musical reception sensed when attention-demanding background music or commercial tunes are heard on soundtracks, are seen as bringing residual influences to the fore at times in Hollywood movies. In the latter case, general cultural shifts in postmodern society, indicating the evolution of more actively engaged forms of reception and participation and a related desire for greater personal expression and participation among a critical mass of people, are explored as emergent trends transforming standard film musical practice and reception in a number of respects.