Exploring how music is used to portray the past in a variety of media, this book probes the relationship between history and fantasy in the imagination of the musical past. The volume brings together essays from multidisciplinary perspectives, addressing the use of music to convey a sense of the past in a wide range of multimedia contexts, including television, documentaries, opera, musical theatre, contemporary and historical film, videogames, and virtual reality. With a focus on early music and medievalism, the contributors theorise the role of music and sound in constructing ideas of the past. In three interrelated sections, the chapters problematise notions of historical authenticity on the stage and screen; theorise the future of musical histories in immersive and virtual media; and explore sound’s role in more fantastical appropriations of history in television and videogames. Together, they pose provocative questions regarding our perceptions of ‘early’ music and the sensory experience of distant history. Offering new ways to understand the past at the crossroads of musical and visual culture, this collection is relevant to researchers across music, media, and historical and cultural studies.

"Exploring how music is used to portray the past in a variety of media, this book probes the relationship between history and fantasy in the imagination of the musical past. The volume brings together essays from multidisciplinary perspectives, addressing the use of music to convey a sense of the past in a wide range of multimedia contexts, including television, documentaries, opera, musical theatre, contemporary and historical film, video games, and virtual reality. With a focus on early music and medievalism, the contributors theorise the role of music and sound in constructing ideas of the past. In three interrelated sections, the chapters problematise notions of historical authenticity on the stage and screen; theorise the future of musical histories in immersive and virtual media; and explore sound's role in more fantastical appropriations of history in television and video games. Together, they pose provocative questions regarding our perceptions of 'early' music and the sensory experience of distant history. Offering new ways to understand the past at the crossroads of musical and visual culture, this collection is relevant to researchers across music, media, historical and cultural studies"--

This book brings a new perspective to secular music sources from the Middle Ages and early modernity by viewing them as media communication tools, whose particular features shape the meaning of their contents. Ranging from the eleventh to seventeenth centuries, and across countries and genres, the chapters offer innovative insights into the historical relationship between music and its presentation in a wide variety of media. The lens of media enables contributors to expand music history beyond notated music manuscripts and instruments to include images, furniture, luxury items, and other objects, and to address uniquely visual and material aspects of music sources in books and literature. Drawing together an international group of contributors, the volume pays close attention to the medial and material dimensions of musical sources, considering them as multifaceted objects that not only contain but also determine the nature of the music they transmit. Transforming our understanding of musical media, this volume will be of interest to scholars of musicology, art history, and medieval and early modern cultures.

Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China traces the complex history of lutes as they moved from the far west into China, and how these instruments became linked to various forms of social, cultural, ethnic, and religious marginality within and at China’s borders. The book argues that the lute, a musical instrument that likely originated in the Near East or Central Asia, became a highly charged object replete with associations of ethnic and political identity, social status, and gender in China across the third to seventeenth centuries, and as such, offers a crucial vehicle for understanding interactions between the Chinese center and periphery. Using a richly interdisciplinary perspective that brings together music history, performance studies, archaeology, and art history, the author draws together the visual evidence for the history of Chinese lutes and analyzes the political and cultural dimensions of their depictions in art. In exploring the lute’s reception across time and space, this book illuminates the shifting relationships between China and cultures along its frontier, as well as the dynamics of gender and social status within China’s center. Comprehensive in scope, Lutes and Marginality in Pre-Modern China offers new insights for scholars of pre-modern China, art history, archaeology, music history, ethnomusicology, and Silk Road and frontier studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media surveys the contemporary landscape of audiovisual media. Contributors to the volume look not only to changes brought by digital innovations, but to the complex social and technological past that informs, and is transformed by, new media. This collection is conceived as a series of dialogues and inquiries by leading scholars from both image- and sound-based disciplines. Chapters explore the history and the future of moving-image media across a range of formats including blockbuster films, video games, music videos, social media, digital visualization technologies, experimental film, documentaries, video art, pornography, immersive theater, and electronic music. Sound, music, and noise emerge within these studies as integral forces within shifting networks of representation. The essays in this collection span a range of disciplinary approaches (film studies, musicology, philosophy, cultural studies, the digital humanities) and subjects of study (Iranian documentaries, the Twilight franchise, military combat footage, and Lady Gaga videos). Thematic sections and direct exchanges among authors facilitate further engagement with the debates invoked by the text.

This new series aims to explore the area of "e;screen music"e;. Volume topics will include multimedia music, music and television, Hollywood film music, and the music of Bollywood cinema.Music and other sound effects have been central to a whole host of media forms throughout the twentieth century, either as background, accompaniment, or main driving force. Such interactions will continue to mutate in new directions, with the widespread growth of digital technologies. Despite the expansion of research into the use of music and sound in film, the investigation of sonic interactions with other media forms has been a largely under-researched area. Music, Sound and Multimedia provides a unique study of how music and other sounds play a central part in our understandings and uses of a variety of communications media. It focuses on four areas of sound and music within broader multimedia forms - music videos, video game music, performance and presentation, and production and consumption - and addresses the centrality of such aural concerns within our everyday experiences. Charting historical developments, mapping contemporary patterns, and speculating on future possibilities, this book is essential for courses on sound and media within media and communications studies, cultural studies and popular music studies.Key features* Charts a number of key developments in music and multimedia interactions* Provides both historical overviews and theoretical analyses* Features a number of in-depth case studies of important issues.

"This is a very strong, thought-provoking [volume] . . . " —George Marcus As home photographs shift from the print format to digital technology and as video moves from the television screen to multimedia, it is crucial to develop new strategies of interpreting and analyzing these images. Visit the author's World Wide Web site: (2/19/03: Link is no longer active) http://www.facl.mcgill.ca/burnett/englishhome.html