Thematic Sessions > Music and Film

a. Experimental Music and Cinema: The Multisensory and the Multimodal

From the advent of visual music by Hans Richter (1888-1976) and Viking Eggeling (1880-1925) to the most contemporary hybrid films, including the practices of found footage and structural cinema, the encounter between cinema, documentary, and experimental sound forms has redefined the traditional frameworks of audiovisual narration. By integrating atypical sound textures, non-linear structures, and spaces of indeterminacy, these intersecting practices question the relationship between sound and image, alter the viewer's perception, and propose new forms of artistic expression.

What reciprocal influences exist between cinematic fiction, documentary, and experimental sound forms? How have experimental music practices transformed filmmaking? To what extent do these unconventional sounds influence the perception of time and duration in cinema? Are we witnessing a true co-creation of sound and image in films that adopt or generate so-called experimental music?

Excerpt from Symphonie Diagonale, an experimental film by Viking Eggeling (1923), reconstructed by Hans Richter. In 2007, Olga Neuwirth composed a contemporary soundtrack to accompany this work.

b. Archives and Heritage Preservation of Film Music

Film music has only relatively recently attracted the interest of musicology. Over the past few decades, this field has expanded significantly as an area of study, particularly in France, where it has been the subject of various and constantly evolving methodological approaches (Huvet, 2016). However, a recurring problem in film music research remains: archives, whether musical (scores) or sound (recording rushes), are often difficult to access. In recent years, this issue has led to initiatives aimed at protecting, preserving, and progressively making available essential collections for the study of film music history. Among these projects, we can highlight the platform of the Misraki Archives (AMU CNRS / SATT Sud-Est / IDEAS / PRISM / PASSAGE XX-XXI Lyon 2), the Maurice Jarre Archives (Association Jean Vilard / Wyoming University), and the Marcel Pagnol Endowment Fund (IDEAS / CNRS / SATT Sud-Est). In this context, musicology, through its analytical tools, offers a unique approach to film production (Rossi, 2021). This discipline also benefits from advances in digital technologies, which facilitate data identification and analysis. The interdisciplinary dialogue between arts and sciences, particularly between musicology and sound studies, undoubtedly offers new and promising perspectives for the study of these collections.

Paper proposals are invited in this context, including the presentation of specific collections, the exploration of archival techniques, or musical and multimodal analyses (for example, through artificial intelligence or innovative analytical approaches — Couprie, 2018). It is also possible to address the central question of the creative process through comparative studies on notation and phonographic regimes (Rossi, 2021). Finally, issues related to interpretation and the reconstruction of musical corpora are also welcome.