ABSTRACT
Some 12 years ago, I wrote a short article about the use of music in documentary film and television, which considered both the positive and negative consequences of various types of application. 1 In this chapter, I want to revisit some of the issues raised there in the light of what has been happening to documentary since, as well as in respect of my own further thinking about documentary form. I shall start with some general observations and then try to develop my ideas further by looking at a number of quite recent, and very different, examples of music at work within the documentary frame. Most of my examples involve, among other things, a consideration of music’s role in shaping the manner and mood in which key events are anticipated by exposition and narrative, given audiovisual portrayal within a temporal frame and positioned for retrospective assessment.
