Silva, Liane (2024) Authenticity and Authentication in Music for Media. In: 2024 Annual Doctoral Students' Conference, 12 Jul 2024, University of West London, London, UK.

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Abstract

Film music studies have focused widely on music’s functions in relation to a film’s narrative and the cinema auditorium itself. These functions can include: imitating, commenting, or evoking (Spottiswoode, 1950; Kracauer, 1997); synchronising with what is happening onscreen, or not (Eisenstein, 1949; Clair, 1953); empathising or reinforcing an on-screen emotion or theme, or not (Spottiswoode, 1950; Chion, 2019); creating new meaning through
metaphorical concepts and interactions with the on-screen events (Cooke, 1998); and others.
Meanwhile, popular music studies have also been concerned with function and meaning, as can be exemplified by Allan Moore’s ‘authenticity as authentication’ (2002). Moore proposes that an artist’s authenticity is not an inherent property of the artist, but rather an ascribed
characteristic by their audience.
In this paper, I interrogate the two theoretical concepts of ‘suturing’ (drawn from the field of psychology, to explain music’s ability to simultaneously ‘world-build’ and draw audiences into a fictional on-screen world) and ‘anchorage’ (suggested by Barthes, 1977, to explain the way
in which image captions can direct a viewer to certain parts of a message within an image, whilst ‘repressing’ others), to incorporate film music research into the mediums of television and videogames. I expand this discussion by bringing Moore’s authenticity into the field of
media music studies, with the aim of reframing the theory and practice of music composition for media. By investigating media music composition in this way and connecting it with the composition practice, I propose a new and complementary way of thinking of music for
media, to better understand the roles that music can play in different mediums, as well as how we as composers can harness these theories and conceptions to improve our own practice.

Indicative Bibliography:
Barthes, R. (1990) Image Music Text. (6th reprint) Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.
Buhler, J. (2014) ‘Ontological, Formal, and Critical Theories of Film Music and Sound’, in
Neumeyer, D. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Cooke, N. (2004) Analysing musical multimedia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Girina, I. (2015) Cinematic Games: The aesthetic influence of cinema on video games.
Unpublished PhD Thesis. University of Warwick, Department of Film and Television Studies.
Gorbman, C. (1987) Unheard Melodies. London: The British Film Institute.
Greene, M. (1952). ‘Authenticity: An Existential Virtue’, Ethics, 62(4), pp.266-274. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Moore, A. F. (2002). 'Authenticity as Authentication', Popular Music, 21(2), pp.209-223.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Subjects:	Music
Depositing User:	Marc Forster
Date Deposited:	16 Oct 2024 07:15
Last Modified:	16 Oct 2024 08:00
URI:	https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/12781

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