A collaborative volume
Musical Communication (2005) edited
by Dorothy Miell, Raymond Macdonald, David J.Hargreaves discusses the ways in which music communicates “specific physical,
cognitive, social, and/or emotional messages” (Miell et. al. 2005: 3). The development of cognitive psychology reconceptualised the concept of
communication resulting into the replacement of a simple transmission model by more complex interactive models that take into account the active role of both the performer and the listener, as well as the context and environment within which the process of communication takes place. This growing constructive tendency is meaningful for all types of musical communication, film music included, and unquestionably might enrich both theoretical background and practical analyses undertaken in the field of film studies.
For instance, Miell, Macdonald, and Hargreaves’s ‘reciprocal feedback’ model is created by combining two parallel component models: “one attempts to specify the main personal, musical, and situational variables which give rise to a musical
performance, and the other attempts the same task to explain the
response top music in a specific situation” (ibid.: 7). Researchers also start to pay attention to the emotional effects of music, with the physiological level included, which is beneficial in cognitive processing. “Music . . . appears to play a significant role in the achievement or enhancement of cognitive and social capacities,” points out Cross, “and it seems feasible to propose that music emerged with modern humans and helped to stabilize our cognitive and socio-cultural capacities” (ibid.: 39). Sawyer also stresses that in order “to understand musical communication, we need a theory of communication as a fundamentally social and collaborative activity” (ibid.: 57). In his paper “From Mimesis to Catharsis: Expression, Perception, and Induction of Emotion in Music” comes to a conclusion that music both serves as a means of expression for musicians and is capable to communicate emotions to listeners (ibid.: 90). The scholar also stresses the fact that “as long as we realize that the transmission model is only part of the story, applicable to only some music phenomena (cases of
genuine com-n), the model is a highly valuable tool to describe how humans express, perceive, and induce emotions in music” (ibid.: 108).
However, obviously the most compelling ideas for further productive development of film studies, communication studies and musicology can be found in Lipscomb and Tolchinsky’s article “The Role of Music Communication in Cinema” (383-404). Likewise the other contributors to the volume, Lipscomb and Tolchinsky adopt a cognitive approach to the study of musical communication. The authors strive for a more inclusive definition of the term “film music” by regarding it as “one component of a spectrum of sound that includes the musical score, ambient sound, dialogue, sound effects, and silence” (ibid.: 384). Acknowledging Cohen’s “congruence-associationist framework for understanding film music communication” as the most complex and fully developed model of film music perception proposed to date, Lipscomb and Tolchinsky express reservation about her assumption of visual primacy. They proceed from the idea that “in order for a film to make the greatest possible impact, there must be an interaction between the verbal dialogue (consummated symbol), the cinematic images (also a consummated symbol), and the musical score (unconsummated symbol)” (ibid.: 389). Combining some concepts from Gorbman’s (1987) and Cook’s (1998) models, while rejecting Gorbman’s “inaudibility” principle, Lipscomb and Tolchinsky make up their own list of film music functions.
The researchers consider that cinematic soundtrack can communicate from director to audience, as the authors themselves point out it “represents the various ways a soundtrack can elicit emotional response and/or convey the dramatic intentions of the film narrative” (ibid.: 392), namely – music can convey the general mood of a film (the
scope of a film, the
quality and size of a space, a sense of
energy,
the overall perspective or message intended, a narrative’s
placement in time), convey the internal life, thoughts, and feelings of a character (for instance,
character, more often by means of the
leitmotif), convey narrative structure (can clarify – or even establish – a sense of order by presenting a clearly perceived formal structure, the shape of the music determines – or assists in determining – the shape of the narrative,
provide or clarify the narrative structure of the film,
emphasize beginnings or endings, establish a sense of structural
unity, convey messages about where in the frame the audience should
focus attention, convey
pace,
facilitate the continuity of or
provide background filler for the narrative) (ibid.: 393-396). An intentional mismatch between the audio and visual components music can convey
irony,
invite intellectual processing and active participation. Another constructive aspect of Lipscomb and Tolchinsky’s theorising that they also discuss the
absence of music or, as Gorbman labels it, “
nondiegetic silence”. Undeniably the applied approach can serve as a useful analytical tool for a practical analysis of film scores and deserve proper attention of both film theoreticians and practitioners.