The rich and deeply moving sounds of film music are as old as cinema itself. Even the very first projected moving images were accompanied by music in many places as a variety of performers - from single piano players to small orchestras - brought images to life through musical accompaniment. Film mu[...]

James Stewart once said, "For John Ford, there was no need for dialogue. The music said it all." This lively, accessible study is the first comprehensive analysis of Ford's use of music in his iconic westerns. Encompassing a variety of critical approaches and incorporating original archival research[...]

Music in the Western: Notes from the Frontier presents essays from both film studies scholars and musicologists on core issues in western film scores: their history, their generic conventions, their operation as part of a narrative system, their functioning within individual filmic texts and their i[...]