Integrated methodologies for film musicology

Catherine Haworth’s current project continues her focus on 1940s film music and identity, but also aims to develop more holistic approaches to film soundtrack analysis that encourage researchers to address both critical/textual concerns and studies of process, materials, and personnel in their work. An increasing array of source materials available for film musicologists to draw on (including production documentation, musical scores and sketches, papers and ephemera, and audiovisual materials. These play a significant, yet problematic, role in the expansion of film musicology: not only can these materials be difficult to access, but they frequently reveal working practices that challenge traditional notions of autonomy, authorship, and creativity in music studies.

These and related issues were explored in the British Academy-funded international symposium Sources and Archives in Screen Sound Studies, which fostered dialogue and collaboration around the challenges of access, study, and integration of source materials in all aspects of sound and moving image research, including film and television musicology, ludomusicology, voice and sound studies, and practice research. Further work in this area, focused specifically on the output of the Hollywood studio RKO Radio Pictures, has been funded by a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship from 2019-2021.