Torn Music

A film is finished and almost ready to make its way into theaters, but one or more of its prime movers (producer, director, studio brass) contends that it doesn't feel right. What can be almost instantaneously changed to give it a new "feel"? The last element that was added--its music! So, often regardless of whether a film actually needs a new score, a new composer is hired at the last minute to quickly replace a previous composer's often-heartfelt work. In Hollywood and around the world, scores have been rejected and replaced for every conceivable reason--style, quality, composer's name recognition, test-audience's reaction, a picture's reediting, etc. Sometimes new music improves a film; sometimes it doesn't. Such score replacements, which are more common than one might imagine, affect the work of the most famous and respected composers in the business as much as they do novice and unknown composers. In Torn Music (which takes its title from one of the most famous score replacements, the film Torn Curtain, which put an end to the long and fruitful collaboration of director Alfred Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann), author Gergely Hubai presents the often strange, and sometimes wild, stories behind 300 rejected and replaced film scores from the 1930s through the 2000s. In these pages are behind-the-scenes tales about the music for popular films and forgotten films, high cinema art and lowbrow exploitation movies, as well as television programs and even a video game.

literary narrative domestic violence memoir; powerful literary symbolisms and metaphors, well developed characterizations and powerful emotional impact

Nineteenth-century British periodicals for girls and women offer a wealth of material to understand how girls and women fit into their social and cultural worlds, of which music making was an important part. The Girl's Own Paper, first published in 1880, stands out because of its rich musical content. Keeping practical usefulness as a research tool and as a guide to further reading in mind, Judith Barger has catalogued the musical content found in the weekly and later monthly issues during the magazine's first thirty years, in music scores, instalments of serialized fiction about musicians, music-related nonfiction, poetry with a musical title or theme, illustrations depicting music making and replies to musical correspondents. The book's introductory chapter reveals how content in The Girl's Own Paper changed over time to reflect a shift in women's music making from a female accomplishment to an increasingly professional role within the discipline, using 'the piano girl' as a case study. A comparison with musical content found in The Boy's Own Paper over the same time span offers additional insight into musical content chosen for the girls' magazine. A user's guide precedes the chronological annotated catalogue; the indexes that follow reveal the magazine's diversity of approach to the subject of music.