Guido Heldt

Bio: Guido Heldt is an academic researcher from University of Bristol. The author has contributed to research in topics: Musicology & Music theory. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 19 publications receiving 126 citations.

Music and Levels of Narration in Film: Steps across the Border

Abstract: This is the first book-length study of the narratology of film music. It brings together work on film music theory and analysis and the literature of narratology and film narratology. It proposes a narratological toolkit for the description and analysis of music in film. It is an indispensable resource for anyone researching or studying film music or film narratology. The first book-length study of film music narratology, "Music and Levels of Narration in Film" brings together the so-far piecemeal scholarly contributions on the subject. Extending the discussion beyond the current fixation on the diegetic/non-diegetic distinction (music that is or is not understood as part of the story world of a film), Heldt systematically discusses music on different levels of narration: from the extra-fictional to 'focalizations' of subjectivity, and music's movement between them. Heldt proposes a toolkit of narratological concepts for understanding film music and introduces the reader to the less widely known French and German language literature on the subject. Including a study of genres and of the narrative strategies of music in individual films, this book is an indispensable resource for anyone researching or studying film music or film narratology.

Introduction: Trailers, Titles, and End Credits

Abstract: This special issue has grown out of a small conference on music in Titles, Teasers and Trailers at the University of Edinburgh in April 2013, organized by Annette Davison, who has also contributed an article to the issue. The conference has also spawned another special issue, for Arts Marketing. An International Journal, co-edited by Keith M. Johnston, another of the contributors to this MSMI special issue, and to be published in 2015. That a rapidly expanding field of research such as screen media musicology casts its nets increasingly widely is the common course of things: scholars are always looking for unploughed furrows, for fresh material to study, and as screen media musicology has moved beyond film music on to music in television, video games, the internet, and mobile devices, it is also moving beyond core texts to look (and listen) more closely at ancillary material, at paratexts (more about which below). But it would be churlish to suggest that the interest in filmic paratexts (and in the role of sound and music in them) is merely driven by the desperate search for fresh things to write about. They deserve the attention because they do things and are structured in specific ways, and use sound and music in specific ways too. Trailers and title and credit sequences are, in different ways, parts of the connective tissue of the cinematic body. Title and credit sequences link the inside and outside of fictional texts, the acknowledgement of the real-world origin of a film with its story and storyworld. In doing so, they also connect the institutional and economic reality of a film to its story. Trailers, in advertising their films, do this yet more openly. And all of these ‘small forms’ have also developed rich landscapes of solutions for complex knots of economic, legal, formal and aesthetic requirements, often compressing a range of audiovisual fragments and layers into assemblages that open up spaces for ‘aesthetic variations, play room’, spaces for the display of filmic ‘epideixis’ (Stanitzek 2009: 49–50), or, more down-to-earth, ‘showmanship’ (Allison 2006). Work on trailers (and to a lesser degree on title and credit sequences) has relied heavily on Gérard Genette’s category of the paratext, by which he means any element ‘not materially appended to the text within the

Was uns die Töne erzählen: Narratologie und Filmmusik

Abstract: Der Artikel widmet sich erzahltheoretischen Perspektiven auf Musik im Film, die in der Forschung der letzten 30 Jahre eine grose, aber unsystematische Rolle gespielt haben. Um einen systematischeren Zugang zu gewinnen, fragt der Artikel zuerst, was es uberhaupt heist, eine Geschichte zu erzahlen, arbeitet dann sechs Spezifika des Geschichtenerzahlens im Film heraus (das Verhaltnis von Narration und Monstration; impersonale Erzahlung; externe Fokalisierung als Grundeinstellung; die Illusion von Unmittelbarkeit; das Verhaltnis von Kontinuitat und Diskontinuitat; das Mehrkanalige des Mediums) und untersucht dann in der Hauptsache, welche Rollen Musik im Rahmen dieser sechs Eigenarten filmischen Erzahlens spielen kann.

The reconstruction of post-war West German new music during the early allied occupation (1945-46), and its roots in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich (1918-45)

Abstract: This thesis is an analysis of the development of new music in occupied Germany from the end of World War Two, on 8 May 1945, until the end of 1946, in terms of the creation of institutions for the propagation of new music, in the form of festivals, concert series, radio stations, educational institutions and journals focusing on such a field, alongside an investigation into technical and aesthetic aspects of music being composed during this period. I argue that a large number of the key decisions which would affect quite fundamentally the later trajectory of new music in West Germany for some decades were made during this period of a little over eighteen months. I also argue that subsequent developments up to the year 1951, by which time the infrastructure was essentially complete, were primarily an extension and expansion of the early period, when many of the key appointments were made, and institutions created. I also consider the role of new music in mainstream programming of orchestras, opera houses, chamber music societies, and consider all of these factors in terms of the occupation policies of the three Western powers – the USA, the UK and France. Furthermore, I compare these developments to those which occurred in during the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, of which I give an overview, and argue as a result that the post-war developments, rather than being radically new, constituted in many ways a continuation and sometimes distillation of what was in place especially in the Weimar years. I conclude that the short period at the centre of my thesis is of fundamental importance not only for the course of German new music, but that in Europe in general.

Discourses of unity and purpose in the sounds of fascist music: a multimodal approach

Abstract: This article, taking a social semiotic approach, analyses two pieces of music written, shared and exalted by two pre-1945 European fascist movements – the German NSDAP and the British Union of Fascists. These movements, both political and cultural, employed mythologies of unity, common identity and purpose in order to elide the realities of social distinction and political–economic inequalities between bourgeois and proletarian groups in capitalist societies. Visually (through art, sculpture, architecture, the aesthetics of dress, uniform and gesture) and inter-personally (through political marches, parades and rallies), the fascist cultural project communicated a machine-like certainty about a vision for a new society based on discipline, conformity and the might of the nation. In this article, we are interested in the ways that these very same discourses are also communicated through sound and music in two songs: The Horst Wessel Lied and the BUF marching song, two songs that used the same melody. We an...

Cyber Wars: A Paradigm Shift from Means to Ends

Abstract: The last couple of decades have seen a colossal change in terms of the influence that computers can have on the battlefield, with defence pundits claiming it to be the dawn of a new era in warfare. Under these circumstances, there has been a gradual paradigm shift in military thinking and strategies from the strategic aspect to the tactical aspect of cyber warfare, laying more emphasis on it being a potent force multiplier. The author believes this is wrong and rather than cyber warfare being an enhancement of traditional operations, the latter will be force multipliers of cyber warfare. This article tries to shatter myths woven around cyber warfare so as to illuminate the strategic aspects of this relatively misinterpreted notion, thus identifying a paradigm shift, making cyber war the primary means of achieving grand strategic objectives in the contemporary world order.

Understanding Video Game Music

Abstract: Understanding Video Game Music develops a musicology of video game music by providing methods and concepts for understanding music in this medium. From the practicalities of investigating the video game as a musical source to the critical perspectives on game music - using examples including Final Fantasy VII, Monkey Island 2, SSX Tricky and Silent Hill - these explorations not only illuminate aspects of game music, but also provide conceptual ideas valuable for future analysis. Music is not a redundant echo of other textual levels of the game, but central to the experience of interacting with video games. As the author likes to describe it, this book is about music for racing a rally car, music for evading zombies, music for dancing, music for solving puzzles, music for saving the Earth from aliens, music for managing a city, music for being a hero; in short, it is about music for playing.