[Commlist] Call for Book Chapters: Scoring Laughs. Styles and Functions of Music in Comedy Cinema

Call for Book Chapters

*Scoring Laughs. Styles and Functions of Music in Comedy Cinema*


Edited by Emile Wennekes and Emilio Audissino

Historically, the examination and theorisation of the use of music in 
films has addressed its presence in dramas – ‘serious’ films – while 
fewer accounts are available on what types of music is utilised in 
comedies and what functions it performs. As Hollywood cinema has been 
the benchmark and principal terrain of inquiry, this factual unbalance 
can be partly due to the scarce presence of music in the classical 
Hollywood comedies – for example, the iconic 1930s screewballs – 
compared to the fantasy/adventure/drama films of the same era, in which 
the fathers of Hollywood music – Steiner, Korngold, Newman… –  thrived 
and set the foundations of the practice, and from which the first 
film-music scholars launched the discipline. The lack of scholarly 
attention, can also be due to the fact that comedies, having to deal 
with laughter and lighter situations instead of the graver and more 
existentially compelling narratives of dramas, have been seen as less 
reputable objects of study, less worthy of being taken seriously by 
academics – a point raised by Brett Mills in his monograph on the sitcom 
(Mills 2008). Recent analyses of the music’s agency in cinema in general 
have, as per tradition, preferred dramas – for example, Audissino 2017 
and Lehman 2018 – while comedy is taken into consideration mostly in 
focussed publications – for example, Lochner 2018 or Evans & Hayward 
2016. This collection of essays aims at investigating the presence, 
nature, and function of music in the comedy film from fresh 
perspectives, in order to contribute to a re-evaluation of film-music 
studies by casting more light on the more neglected comedic department.

By the term ‘comedy’, this book adopts a wide definition, welcoming 
contributions ranging from farce, slapstick and physical comedy, 
absurdist comedy, parodies, rom-com, to dark-humoured dramedies. The 
music addressed is equally non-discriminative in terms of genre, style, 
pre- or newly composed. The book’s focus is on cinematic comedy, thus 
excluding comedy for television – given the recent contribution on this 
area (Giuffre & Hayward 2017) – and it is focussed on music, not on 
sound/sound design more generally. The book, also because of its Film 
Studies/Musicology editorial duo, aims at adopting an interdisciplinary 
approach. Three overarching and interwoven questions are subtended to 
its general design:

             1) What cinematic devices produce humour?

             2) What musical devices produce humour?

             3) In what ways do musical and cinematic devices interact 
within film comedy?

Ideally, contributions are encouraged to consider all three aspects in 
their reciprocal interaction. Yet, chapters are also sought that engage 
specifically in questions of music theory and analysis, addressing 
primarily the second question or more film-studies-oriented chapters 
that tackle the other two combined questions – What cinematic devices 
produce humour and how musical and cinematic devices can interact in 
producing film comedy?

The book aims at covering two main areas, ‘Taxonomies and Theories’ and 
‘Case Studies.’ In the former, contributions are welcomed that address 
how music can employ its devices to (a) depict humour and the comic 
(e.g., the use of pizzicato strings, syncopated rhythm, timbres and 
colours like those of the bassoon and the tuba, the orchestra’s 
‘clowns’, or the use of unusual instruments, scored surprises, parody, 
etc.) or (b) how music creates humour and the comic by teaming up with 
the cinematic devices (for example, the use of ‘serious’ repertoire or 
original music combined with editing to create comic effects, as in 
Kubrick’s sardonic use of ‘We’ll Meet Again’ at the end of Dr. 
Strangelove, or the quotation of the Jaws theme in  the fake-excrement 
scene in Caddyshack). In the ‘Case Studies’ section, contributions are 
encouraged to focus the analysis on exemplary films, composers, or 
directors, as well as the use of music in national cinemas other than 
Hollywood, to provide a much welcome international outlook.

Indicative areas and topics are the following (though they are not 
limited to these):

- Comedy film composers (e.g. Elmer Bernstein, Theodore Shapiro, John 
Morris, Mark Shaiman…)

- Non-comedy film composers writing for comedy (e.g. Jerry Goldsmith or 
Hans Zimmer)

- Case studies of single films

- Music and the theories of Humour (Superiority Theory, Release Theory, 
Incongruity Theory, Cue Theory…)

- Psychomusicology and humour in film music

- The musical depiction of the Comic and Humour: how musical structures 
convey humour

- ‘Serious’ music for comic effects

- Repertoire music, affiliating identification, and comical effects

- Cartoon music

- Involuntary comical music (e.g., today’s perception of the classical 
Mickey-Mousing in dramas)

- Musical parody and film parody

- Pop music and comedy

- Comic music in musicals

- National music, national cinemas, national comedies

- Monty Python and music (and songs)

- Music in Mel Brooks’s cinema

- Music and the Marx Brothers

- Music in the films of Louis De Funès

- Music in the films of Totò

- Music in the Carry On… films

- Comedy Italian-style and music

- Music in the films by Álex de la Iglesia

- Music in the Fantozzi film cycle

- Historical pastiche in Rustichelli’s music for L’armata Brancaleone

- Music in the films by John Landis

- Laurel and Hardy and music (songs)

- The use of original comic songs (e.g., Monty Python’s ‘Penis Song’)

- Music and the rom-com

- …

Palgrave MacMillan has expressed a strong interest for the project, 
which will be featured in their series ‘Palgrave Studies in Audiovisual 
Culture’ (Series Editor, K. J. Donnelly). We are preparing a formal book 
proposal, and we are now looking for submissions in the form of 300-word 
abstract. The final chapters should have a length in-between 5,000/6,000 
words.

Timetable:

- Deadline for abstract submission: 1 November 2019.

- Communication of selected contributors:  31 December 2019.

- Delivery of the first draft: 1 September 2020.

- Communication of editorial reviews: 1 November 2020.

- Deadline for final draft: 31 December 2020.

- Publication is projected in Autumn 2021.

*Please send your 300-word abstract (also indicating an estimate of the 
number of illustrations/figures you would plan to include, if any) plus 
a 150-word bio *_*to both*_*(e.wennekes /at/ uu.nl) and 
(emilio.audissino /at/ soton.ac.uk) by 1 November 2019.*



Editors’ Biographies


EMILE WENNEKES: Prof. dr. Emile Wennekes is Chair Professor of 
Musicology: Music and Media at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He 
has written on a broad range of subjects, including a co-published book 
on contemporary Dutch music available in six languages. His work has 
been published, among others, by Oxford University Press, Routledge, 
Michigan University Press, and Brepols. Most recently, he edited the 
volume Cinema Changes: Incorporation of Jazz in the Film Soundtrack 
(Brepols 2019) together with Emilio Audissino. Wennekes founded and 
chairs the Study Group Music and Media (MaM) under the auspices of the 
International Musicological Society. He coordinates its annual conferences.


EMILIO AUDISSINO: A film scholar and a film musicologist, Emilio 
Audissino (University of Southampton) holds one PhD in History of Visual 
and Performing Arts and one PhD in Film Studies. He specialises in 
Hollywood and Italian cinema, and his interests are film analysis, 
screenwriting, film style and technique, comedy, horror, and film sound 
and music. Notably, he is the author of John Williams's Film Music 
(University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), the first book-length study in 
English on the composer, and Film/Music Analysis (Palgrave MacMillan, 
2017), a method for audiovisual analysis that blends Neoformalism and 
Gestalt Psychology. He is also an active and award-winning screenwriter.



References:

Audissino, Emilio. 2017. /Film/Music Analysis. A Film Studies Approach/. 
Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.

Evans, Mark and Hayward, Philip (eds.). 2016. /Sounding Funny: Sound and 
Comedy Cinema/. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.

Giuffre, Liz and Hayward, Philip (eds.). 2017. /Music in Comedy 
Television: Notes on Laughs/. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.

Lehman, Frank. 2018. /Hollywood Harmonies. Musical Wonder and the Sound 
of Cinema/. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

Lockner, Jim. 2018. /The Music of Charlie Chaplin/. Jefferson NC: 
McFarland & Company.

Mills, Brett. 2009. /The Sitcom/. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.



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