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Sounding American
Hollywood, Opera, and Jazz
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Book Presentation:
Sounding American: Hollywood, Opera, and Jazz tells the story of the interaction between musical form, film technology, and ideas about race, ethnicity, and the nation during the American cinema's conversion to sound. Contrary to most accepted narratives about the conversion, which tend to explain the competition between the Hollywood studios' film sound technologies in qualitative and economic terms, this book argues that the battle between disc and film sound was waged primarily in an aesthetic realm. Opera and jazz in particular, though long neglected in studies of the film score, were extremely important in defining the scope of the American soundtrack, not only during the conversion, but also once sound had been standardized. Examining studio advertisements, screenplays, scores, and the films themselves, author Jennifer Fleeger concentrates on the interactions between musical form and film technology, arguing that each of the major studios appropriated opera and jazz in a unique way in order to construct its own version of an ideal American voice. Traditional histories of Hollywood film music have tended to concentrate on the unity of the score, a model that assumes a passive spectator. Sounding American claims that the classical Hollywood film is essentially an illustrated jazz-opera with a musical structure that encourages an active form of listening and viewing in order to make sense of what is ultimately a fragmentary text.
About the Author:
Jennifer Fleeger is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Ursinus College. Her second book, Mismatched Women: The Siren's Song Through the Machine, will also appear in Oxford's Music/Media Series.
Press Reviews:
"Jennifer Fleeger has produced nothing less than a thorough re-theorization of the early history of music for films. She is now the peer of the most revered scholars in the field of film music studies." --Krin Gabbard, author of Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture
"Essential scholarship not only explaining the coming of sound to Hollywood cinema, but also a major contribution to the role music plays in the Classic text. Brilliantly brings together technological history and musical analysis." --Douglas Gomery, author of The Coming of Sound: A History
"An intellectually robust work, Sounding American not only makes an important
contribution to histories of film music, but also revises in significant ways our
accepted definition of the classical Hollywood score. Best of all, it makes way
for additional questions about the many forms and functions of music heard by
moviegoers during a privileged period of technological change." -- Journal of the Society for American Music
"Sounding American holds a unique position within the current literature on film music in that its treatment of jazz and opera as genres to be addressed together proves equally significant for both musicology and cinema studies, not only because the two styles are generally separated in scholarship but also because Fleeger does not neglect either field in favor of the other. Musicologists, film scholars, and film-music enthusiasts in general are all provided with significant and engaging material that enhances the current state of scholaship for all."-- Journal of Film and Video
See the publisher website: Oxford University Press
> From the same author:
Mismatched Women (2014)
The Siren's Song Through the Machine
> On a related topic:
Soundtrack Available (2001)
Essays on Film and Popular Music
Dir. Arthur Knight and Pamela Robertson Wojcik
After the Silents (2014)
Hollywood Film Music in the Early Sound Era, 1926-1934
Saying It with Songs (2013)
Popular Music and the Coming of Sound to Hollywood Cinema
Horse Opera (2002)
The Strange History of the 1930s Singing Cowboy
Music for Superheroes (2025)
Film and Television Scores Since 1940
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