Book Review

Hollywood Musicals, The Film Reader. Edited by Steven Cohan. London: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415-23559-6 (cloth); ISBN 0-415-23560-X (pbk.). Pp. viii, 212. $80.00 (cloth), $23.95 (pbk.)

Movie Music, The Film Reader. Edited by Kay Dickinson. London: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-28159-8 (cloth); ISBN 0-415-28160-1 (pbk.). Pp. viii, 207. $75.00 (cloth), $22.95 (pbk.).

In the field of film and media studies, the books Hollywood Musicals and Movie Music of the In Focus: Routledge Film Readers series offer sorely needed collections of critical essays on topics relating to the presence and use of music in films. Considering that no comparable anthologies exist for either area and that there is an expanding interest in film-music studies, these readers fill noticeable gaps in the literature. As with any volume that samples existing scholarship, the value of these books comes not as much from the content of the readings themselves, but rather how they are chosen, organized, and presented. The articles in both books date from the last thirty years (the excerpt from Hanns Eisler and Theodor Adorno's Composing for the Films [1947] is the only exception), as scholarly interest in film music and musicals has amplified considerably during this period. Of course, one cannot create a reader if a critical mass of material does not already exist. As Kay Dickinson, editor of Movie Music points out, however, the ubiquitous complaint in texts that film music has somehow been overlooked or ignored is finally no longer applicable. Her sentiment was mirrored recently in Robynn Stilwell's essay on the state of film-music studies, –Music in Films: A Critical Review of Literature, 1980-1996,” Journal of Film Music 1, no. 1 (2002): 19-61.