Analysing Musical Multimedia

by Nicholas Cook

This book is the first to put forward a general theory of the manner in which different media--music, words, moving picture, and dance--work together to create multimedia. Beginning with a study of the way in which meaning is mediated in television commercials, the book concludes with in-depth readings of Disney's Fantasia , Madonna's video Material Girl , and Armide (Godard's sequence from the collaborative film Aria ). Analysing Musical Multimedia not only shows how approaches deriving from music theory can contribute to the understanding of multimedia, but also seeks to draw conclusions from the practice and further development of musical analysis.

Paperback

First published June 16, 1998

About the author

Nicholas Cook is a British musicologist and writer. In 2009 he became the 1684 Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge, where he is a Fellow of Darwin College. Previously, he was professorial research fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he directed the Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM). He has also taught at the University of Hong Kong, University of Sydney, and University of Southampton, where he served as dean of arts.

He is a former editor of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2001.

Reviews

[Alexa Schwartz · Rating 3 out of 5]

“the words and the pictures present a counterpart of images…they tell a story. but by themselves, they tell it incoherently; what ties [them] together into a convincing whole is the music” (Cook 22)

[Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful compendium of essays dedicated to laying down the foundations of musical multimedia analysis. Includes analyses of music videos, film, and commercials.