The topic theory applied to film music, a possible adaptation?
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Abstract
The music topic theory was introduced by Leonard Ratner in 1980. Framed in musical semiotics, it tries to demonstrate the relationship between elements of eighteenth-century music and the meaning they acquire thanks to the conventions of use at the time. The music that has been written for cinema has a clear influence of the past, therefore, some of these clichés can be found in it. The silent film catalogs show this, such as Ernö Rapée's Encyclopedia of Film Music (1925). This paper tries to investigate the possibility of applying these theories to film music, starting from musical semiotics. In order to do so, it is discussed whether it is possible to identify these topics in different genres, and how, thanks to the conventions of audiovisual language, the spectator endows them with meaning.
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