Anonymous Sounds

Nessa Johnston is Lecturer in Screen Studies and Digital Media at the University of Liverpool, UK and author of The Commitments: Youth, Music and Authenticity in 1990s Ireland (2021). Her research is in sound and music in screen media, cult cinema, media technologies, and media industries. She is co-investigator on the Leverhulme funded research project ‘Anonymous Creativity: Library Music and Screen Cultures in the 1960s and 1970s’ and a 2020 Fellow of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas (Austin). Jamie Sexton is Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies at Northumbria University, UK with research interests in music and media, and cult cinema. Recent publications include Freak Scenes: American Indie Cinema and Indie Music Scenes (2022).Elodie A. Roy is a media and material culture theorist with a specialism in the history of recorded sound. Her publications include Media, Materiality and Memory: Grounding the Groove (2015) and Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture: Unsettled Matter (2023).

• Introduction 1. Carlo Nardi and Elodie A. Roy. ‘Industrial Panorama: Visualising Labour Practices in Library Music.’ 2. Maurizio Corbella. ‘Film Music Publishing and the Rise of Library Music Records in Italy: Between Authorship and Anonymity.’ 3. Niccolò Galliano. ‘These Titles Do Not Mean Anything: Meaning-Making as Industrial Practice in Italian Library Music Records from the 1970s.’ 4. Kaarina Kilpiö. ‘“Towards this Western, American set-up”: Library music in Finnish commercials of 1968.’ 5. James Leggott. ‘The Benny Hill Waltz and the Blackmail Theme: Library Music and Television Comedy in the 1970s.’ 6. Hussein Boon. ‘The Sweeney – Library Music Use, Re-use and Cultural Association in the British TV Police Procedural.’ 7. Nessa Johnston. ‘“Funky Fanfare”, a Cult Library Music Track.’ 8. Alexis Bennett. ‘Avant-Stock: Bernard Estardy, Tele Music, and Experimentation in French Library Music.’ 9. Mark Goodall. ‘Empty Horizons: Library Music and the Occult.’ 10. Jamie Sexton. ‘Sampling the Obscure: The Recontextualization and Increased Value of Library Music.’11. Júlia Durand. ‘Golden Age Genius and Nameless Hack: Contemporary Views on Past and Present Library Music.’ Endnotes

I have dreamed of a book like Anonymous Sounds for years. This collection approaches the fascinating phenomena of “library music” with a powerful combination of rigorous research and theoretical insight. The international scope of the book is very welcome and each chapter is a gem of sharp analysis and fascinating detail.