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date: 03 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapterexamines the connections between music, particularly classical music, and the representation of the human body in narrative films. It evaluates the validity of several relevant theories, including the theses that cinema is about moving images of bodies, that classical music is particularly adept at enabling the cinematic embodiment that screen images alone cannot, and that cinematic bodies are “primarily or originarily erotic.” It contends that musical embodiment in cinema goes beyond the framing of erotic energy and that music is the animate substance that completes the transformation of the image from the mimetic to the virtual.

Keywords: narrative films, classical music, cinematic embodiment, cinematic bodies, musical embodiment, animate substance, screen images

Lawrence Kramer

Lawrence Kramer is Distinguished Professor of English and Music at Fordham University, the editor of 19th-Century Music, and a composer whose works have been performed internationally. His most recent books are Why Classical Music Still Matters (2007), Interpreting Music (2010), and Expression and Truth (2012). His song cycle Another Time premiered in New York city and A Short History (of the Twentieth Century) for soprano and percussion in Krakow, Poland, both in 2012.

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