ABSTRACT
Film criticism has historically been concerned with the visualand narrative aspects of fiction film, for the most part omit-ting any serious discussion of the score and its relationship to the film as a whole. I have argued elsewhere (Kassabian 1994) that-in part because of film studies’ visual bias-the groundwork has been laid for the serious study of film music in the English language only in recent years.1 The important textual, historical, and theoretical studies of Gorbman, Kalinak, Flinn, Brown, Marks, and Smith make it possible and fruitful now to consider other kinds of questions about film music, such as what film perceivers hear. In particular, this chapter turns to the range of relations perceivers may hear in a single event of film musicrelations among image track, narrative, sound effects, dialogue, and music.
