Film/Music Analysis I: Music, Gestalt, and Audiovisual Isomorphism

Abstract

The theories of Leonard B. Meyer are offered as a way to account for the emotional and semantic agency of music that does not require sophisticated musicological tools and musical skills, thus allowing film scholars with no deep musical education to address music more comfortably. Gestalt Psychology is introduced as the theoretical framework of choice to conceptualise the way in which music and visuals combine—through the production of a macro-configuration that is the result of the multiplying combination of the micro-configurations of the single elements.