Sound Scripts
The Nth Art: The State of the Sonic Image at the Second Totally Huge New Music Festival Conference
Abstract
The following is an edited transcription of the oral presentation which Philip Brophy gave as his keynote address within the second Totally Huge New Music Festival on the 30th April 2007. Brophy outlines how his publications and work on conferences such as Cinesonics (RMIT, 1997-2001) has led to his current position. Brophy characterises most film music as derived from Wagnerian, operatic principles of emotional synchronicity to such a degree that it becomes tautological and repellently humanist. Brophy counters by proposing a relationship between sound and image which allows “things to cohabit in time, whilst responding to the fact that these things which are cohabiting have no determinative power upon each other or upon you as an audience member.” Brophy closes by discussing the concept of “distended shaping” in film composition, where one bases the musical structure on the movie’s dramaturgy, rather than simply upon synchronic cuing. Brophy cites as an example his novel score to Philippe Garrel’s silent, 1968 film Le révélateur. Brophy titled this project Aurevelateur (Melbourne: Sound Punch, 2005). He and guitarist Dave Brown performed the piece to a projection of the film as part of the Totally Huge New Music Festival 2007.
Recommended Citation
Hope, C.
(2009).
The Nth Art: The State of the Sonic Image at the Second Totally Huge New Music Festival Conference.
Sound Scripts, 2(1).
Retrieved from
https://ro.ecu.edu.au/soundscripts/vol2/iss1/5
