Musical borrowing is discussed within the context of a theoretical discourse on film music, particularly in part I (chapters 1-5). Early and contemporary film music has drawn on several 19th-century genres, including English musical theater (for melodrama) and Wagnerian opera (for leitmotif). Two different yet complementary theories can be used to consider the affective roles of music in film: the semiotic concept of ancrage, in which music anchors the instability of visual signification, and the psychoanalytic theory of suture, which explains the ability of film music to create subjectivity in spectators. The late-19th-century musical aesthetic in the film scores of Max Steiner proves particularly significant in the effect his scores have had on subsequent film composers.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: David Oliver