Overview

This widely acclaimed book enables readers to understand and practice the language of music composed for film, video games, and other visual media. Film and television music veteran Andy Hill offers an insider’s view of what goes into the creation of the musical score for major motion pictures and other works of screen entertainment, including video games. This unique text provides deeply informed, measure-by-measure analysis of highly detailed reductions of music cues from more than two dozen films composed by the top composers, among them Howard Shore, Danny Elfman, Ennio Morricone, and Bernard Herrmann, as well as trailblazers of today. New chapters in the second edition tackle: - Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - The Music of the Disney Renaissance, featuring analyses of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King - Women in film music, featuring interviews with Rachel Portman, Pinar Toprak, Natalie Holt, and Stephanie Economou - Adaptive music for games, featuring analyses of game scores by Austin Wintory (Journey and Abzu), Garry Schyman (Bioshock), and Mikolai Stroinski (The Witcher) Hill’s powerful insights informed by music theory and the scenes of composition, as well as first-hand input from many of the artists themselves, enables readers to witness the composition of the score from the first motive to the last bar. This indispensable resource provides a close-up look at the musical conventions and tricks-of-the-trade that composers use to express the full range of human (and sometimes non-human) experience, allowing music students, practicing composers, and aficionados of the craft to better understand and hone its power.

Full Product Details

Author:   Andy Hill
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Imprint:   Rowman & Littlefield
Edition:   2nd edition
ISBN:  

9781538163481

ISBN 10:   1538163489
Pages:   384
Publication Date:   14 May 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

A Word on How to Use This Book Acknowledgments Foreword. The Greatest Gig in the World Introduction. Ancient & Modern: An Appreciation of James Newton Howard’s The Sixth Sense 1. The Tales That Really Matter: Howard Shore’s The Two Towers 2. From Among the Dead: Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo 3. Boo Radley’s Porch: Elmer Bernstein’s To Kill a Mockingbird 4. Signs and Meaning: From Rózsa to Desplat 5. Perfume: The Scent of Murder 6. A Tale As Old As Time: The Music of the Disney Renaissance 7. Feed Your Head: Don Davis’s The Matrix 8. Such a Long, Long Way to Fall: Danny Elfman’s Alice in Wonderland 9. Surgical Precision: Alberto Iglesias’s La piel que habito 10. The Strength of the Righteous: Ennio Morricone’s The Untouchables 11. Toward a New Aesthetic of Music for the Screen 12. Through a Glass, and Darkly: Anatomy of a Cue from Jerry Goldsmith’s Patton 13. Stand Up! Two Cues from Elliot Goldenthal’s Michael Collins 14. John Powell Slays a Dragon 15. Outsiders On The Inside: Women In The Bunkhouse 16. The Game Has Just Begun: The Infinite Promise Of Adaptive Music 17. Against the Odds: The Road to Kraków Music Permissions Index

Reviews

A beautifully detailed treatise. -- Howard Shore * Grammy and Academy Award-winning composer, The Lord of the Rings * From the first page to the last, the first edition of Scoring the Screen was a must read for anyone interested in film scoring. This second edition beautifully expands on the insights shared in the original edition. Hill’s ability to synthesize his thoughts, through careful analysis of the music into a coherent theory on the techniques shared by many of the greatest scores is a gift to the field. -- Jay Weigel * Grammy award-winning composer and producer *

A beautifully detailed treatise. -- Howard Shore * Grammy and Academy Award-winning composer, The Lord of the Rings * From the first page to the last, the first edition of Scoring the Screen was a must read for anyone interested in film scoring. This second edition beautifully expands on the insights shared in the original edition. Hill’s ability to synthesize his thoughts, through careful analysis of the music into a coherent theory on the techniques shared by many of the greatest scores is a gift to the field. -- Jay Weigel * Grammy award-winning composer and producer * Going back to my earliest days writing scores for Disney Animation, Andy Hill has impressed me as a passionate and knowledgeable spokesman for those of us who create music. I couldn’t imagine a better guide to explore the world of film music, and I’m delighted that he has written this thoughtful and informative book. -- Alan Menken * EGOT-winning composer, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast *

From the first page to the last, the first edition of Scoring the Screen was a must read for anyone interested in film scoring. This second edition beautifully expands on the insights shared in the original edition. Hill’s ability to synthesize his thoughts, through careful analysis of the music into a coherent theory on the techniques shared by many of the greatest scores is a gift to the field. -- Jay Weigel * Grammy award-winning composer and producer *

Author Information

Andy Hill is a veteran of the film and television music industry, former Vice-President of Music Production for Walt Disney Studios, Grammy Award-winning music producer, founder of the MFA program in Music Composition for the Screen at Columbia College Chicago, USA, and author of five published novels of speculative fiction. Films for which he served as executive in charge of music production have earned nine Academy Awards in music categories. He has served as Dean of the Film Scoring Academy of Europe, Bulgaria, since 2019.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions