It seems the cultural meaning of classical music in current times is declining, we rarely hear it in our everyday lives. And yet it is still showing it's presence in some contemporary movies at the Cannes film festival in France and the American Academy Awards. This master's thesis focuses on where classical music can still be found, how it appears, and it's potential effects. With this I want to show it's tenacious presence and importance in modern society. My focus will be the use of this kind of music in films as non-diegetic, which means heard by the viewers/listeners and at the same time inaudible to the action and characters in the film. The method I will use belongs to the broader framework of text analysis, where the goal is to decipher meanings. I will be specifically interested in how music contributes to the construction of the meaning of individual scenes where it appears. The aim of this analysis is to find possible differences in the use of classical music in more artistic films and commercial films. I am interested in what these differences might be and if they in any way affect our perception of the scene and consequently the entire film.
|