Books on Film Music

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Sounds like a fascinating book.

The last non-fiction book I read was HOT SEAT: THEATER CRITICISM FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES, 1980-1993 by Frank Rich. Great stuff.

Before that was FILM MUSIC: A NEGLECTED ART by Roy M. Prendergast. Some interesting points and ideas, but some of his observations about how cinema functions I found quite questionable.

Harmsway wrote:

Before that was FILM MUSIC: A NEGLECTED ART by Roy M. Prendergast. Some interesting points and ideas, but some of his observations about how cinema functions I found quite questionable.

It's a bit of a disappointment. The best book on film scoring's got to be ON THE TRACK: A GUIDE TO CONTEMPORARY FILM SCORING. It's quite technical (lots of reproduced sketches), but very thorough. That said, most of its subjects are from the Silver Age onwards.

You need to get A FIRE AT HEART'S CENTER: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF BERNARD HERRMANN, Harms. It's a very engaging but ultimately tragic read. Every time I come back to it, I can't help thinking his life would make a great film. Sadly most biopics are fairly lame.

Maybe the last few film scoring posts posts could be split off into a thread of their own.

Was James Bernard the only composer to win an Oscar for best story?