Name: Music in Films about the Shoah
ISBN: 978-3-031-46196-5

Overview

Authors:

Elias Berner ⁰

Elias Berner
1. University of Music and Performing Arts, Viena, Vienna, Austria
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Offers a musicological contribution to the interdisciplinary discourse on holocaust memory in popular media
Examines music in films as mediator of time
Combines detailed analysis of music and sound in films with a cultural studies perspective

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture (PSAVC)

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Keywords

Cultural Memory
Holocaust
Audio-visual culture
Film
Schindler's List
Inglorious Basterds
Musicology

About this book

This book focuses on the aural and musical sphere of fictional audio-visual reconstructions of the Holocaust, a defining event in the history of the 20th century. Musicology has seen an increasing number of works on the function of film music and the construction of identity in media contexts in recent years. This project analyses the use of music in feature films about the Shoah. The analysis of 'the sound of Nazi violence', as well as the escape from and resistance against it, not only reveals a lot about the construction of the filmic characters' emotive states, but also tells us more about our own relationship to the past. The author understands the soundtrack of these films as an affective mediator of time, which connects filmic representations of the past with the present. Analysis focuses on the soundtracks of four films: Schindler's List, The Pianist, Taking Sides and Inglourious Basterds.

Reviews

“The Shoah has moved into popular cinema, and film musicology needs to engage with this trend. Elias Berner does that in subtle and careful analyses of the music of key films from the 1990s and 2000s, analyses that do justice to what the music does in and for these films.” (Guido Heldt, Senior Lecturer, Programme Director, Department of Music, University of Bristol, UK)

“For a long time, research on cinematic memory of the Shoah has concentrated on narrative and visual aspects. It focused on historical images, not on the mood created through historical films. Elias Berner's study closes this gap by focusing on the music in films about the Holocaust. He demonstrates how musical forms support the visual narrative and contribute to the formation of images of memory.” (Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Communications and Journalism Department)

“Elias Berner has written an inspiring and moving book, a study of close listening that re-shapes theories of film music, and entangles them with the ongoing discourse on the memory of the Shoah. What this book thus
beautifully brings to the fore is the relational power of music to regulate feelings of distance and closeness with a projected past.” (Thomas Macho, Professor for Cultural Hitory at the Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. Head/Director of the International Research Center for Cultural Studies University of Art and Design Linz, Austria)

Authors and Affiliations

University of Music and Performing Arts, Viena, Vienna, Austria

Elias Berner

About the author

Elias Berner is a Post-doc Researcher at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria. In 2020 he obtained his PhD at the Department of Musicology at the University of Vienna. From 2015–2017, he was a Junior Fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK).

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Music in Films about the Shoah
Book Subtitle: Commemoration, Comfort, Provocation
Authors: Elias Berner
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-46196-5Due: 06 August 2024
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-46199-6Due: 06 August 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-46197-2Due: 06 August 2024
Series ISSN: 2634-6354
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6362
Edition Number: 1
Number of Illustrations: 17 b/w illustrations, 51 illustrations in colour

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Music in Films about the Shoah