Sounding American
Hollywood, Opera, and Jazz
Jennifer Fleeger
Reviews and Awards
"Jennifer Fleeger has produced nothing less than a thorough re-theorization of the early history of music for films. She is now the peer of the most revered scholars in the field of film music studies." --Krin Gabbard, author of Hotter Than That: The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture
"Essential scholarship not only explaining the coming of sound to Hollywood cinema, but also a major contribution to the role music plays in the Classic text. Brilliantly brings together technological history and musical analysis." --Douglas Gomery, author of The Coming of Sound: A History
"An intellectually robust work, Sounding American not only makes an important contribution to histories of film music, but also revises in significant ways our accepted definition of the classical Hollywood score. Best of all, it makes way for additional questions about the many forms and functions of music heard by moviegoers during a privileged period of technological change." -- Journal of the Society for American Music
"Sounding American holds a unique position within the current literature on film music in that its treatment of jazz and opera as genres to be addressed together proves equally significant for both musicology and cinema studies, not only because the two styles are generally separated in scholarship but also because Fleeger does not neglect either field in favor of the other. Musicologists, film scholars, and film-music enthusiasts in general are all provided with significant and engaging material that enhances the current state of scholaship for all."-- Journal of Film and Video