Metafilm Music in Jean-Luc Godard's Cinema

Michael Baumgartner teaches at Cleveland State University. His research focuses on music in relation to cinema, theater, and visual arts, music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the exploration of the narrative capacity of music. He is the author of the monograph Exilierte Göttinnen: Frauenstatuen im Bühnenwerk von Kurt Weill, Thea Musgrave und Othmar Schoeck (2012) and the co-editor of the three anthologies Music, Collective Memory, Trauma, and Nostalgia in European Cinema after the Second World War; Music, Ideology, Commerce, and Popular Cinema in Europe: 1940s to 1980s; and Music, Process, Narration, and Art Cinema in Europe: 1940s to 1980s (2020-22).

• Introduction: For Ever Metafilm Music PART I: METAFILM MUSIC, FRAGMENTATION, REPETITION, AND QUOTATION1. Gapped Music in Godard's 1960s Films: Dissection of the Musical Unity as a Self-Reflexive Exercise2. Leitmotif Technique Revisited: Indexical Function of Multiply Repeated Musical Fragments in Godard's 1960s Films as Manifestations of Metafilm Music3. The Undoing of the Leitmotif Technique: Quotation, Fragmentation, and Repetition in Godard's 1960s Films with Beethoven, Schumann, and Pseudo-Bach as Metafilm Music4. Quoting Popular Songs: Chanson and Canzone as Metafilm Music in Godard's Work PART II: METAFILM MUSIC AND GENRE REFERENCE5. Referencing Silent Film Music: Metafilm Music, Mise en Scène, Acting, and Storytelling6. Referencing Music-Specific Genres and Genre-Specific Music: Metafilm Music, "Cinéma-en-kit" Musical, and Pastiched Film Noir Music7. Referencing Film Music as a Genre: Metafilm Music, Prototypes of Film Music as Genre Mash-Up, and Melodramatic Commutation PART III: METAFILM MUSIC, MUSIC MAKING, AND FILMMAKING 8. Music-Making as Metaphor for Filmmaking I: Metafilm Music in One Plus One and Prénom: Carmen9. Music-Making as Metaphor for Filmmaking II: Metafilm Music in Soigne ta droite (Une place sur la terre) Conclusion: Two or Three Things I Know about Metafilm Music(s)NotesWorks CitedIndex

Brilliantly informed and boldly written, this magisterial study gets to the heart of Godard's pioneering, multilayered practice of 'metafilm music'. Baumgartner reveals in rich and fascinating detail the remarkable consistency of Godard's self-reflexive musical strategies and their significance for understanding both the ontology of film music and the critical challenges of audioviewing.