Settling the Score

Beginning with the earliest experiments in musical accompaniment carried out in the Edison Laboratories, Kathryn Kalinak uses archival material to outline the history of American music and film. Focusing on the scores of several key composers of the sound era, including Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Captain Blood, Max Steiner's The Informer, Bernard Herrmann's The Magnificent Ambersons, and David Raksin's Laura, Kalinak concludes that classical scoring conventions were designed to ensure the dominance of narrative exposition. Her analyses of contemporary work such as John Williams' The Empire Strikes Backand Basil Poledouris' RoboCopdemonstrate how the traditions of the classical era continue to influence scoring practices today.Kalinak, Kathryn is the author of 'Settling the Score', published 1992 under ISBN 9780299133641 and ISBN 0299133648.