IN THIS BOOK, Frank Lehman has composed a brilliant, at times coruscating, piece of scholarship. Its pages exhibit two enviably long suits of mastery. First, Lehman leverages a panoply of extensive examples and quick citations—many transcribed, all expertly—of over a hundred years' worth of film music, chronologically ranging from one of the first feature films to include an original film score—Camille Saint-Saëns's music for L'Assassinat du duc de Guise (1908)—to many examples released during the same decade of the book's publication. Second, Lehman uses, and in some cases critiques, a wide array of sophisticated analytical techniques, also developed during the long twentieth century, from linear-reductive graphs infused with Heinrich Schenker's distinctive graphic symbols to several ideas published during the same decade of the book's publication. Lehman freely shares his hand and its two long suits with his readers through patient instruction and well-grounded musicianship. This book well exceeds a mere...
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