Description
Focal Press, Published 1961. Hardcover, 128 pp.; 19 cm; Second Edition; illustrated with black-and-white diagrams. A Focal Cinebook.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In acceptable condition, no dust jacket. Cream, yellow and black illustrated paper over boards, moderate to heavy rubbing and soiling to the cream ground, bumping to corners, wear along the joints. Binding tight. Previous owner's name in ink on front pastedown, dated 1963, with a small label remnant at lower corner; facing endpaper has ink spotting. Five lines of ink notes on rear free endpaper. Pages toned with occasional light spotting. Otherwise unmarked. Rawlings catalogues several hundred commercial gramophone records by dramatic mood, giving 78, 45 and 33-1/3 catalogue numbers for each: Dainty, Comic, Eccentric, Pursuit, Tempestuous, Foreboding, Mysterious, Desolation, Sordid, then national categories, sound effects, and a closing section of recorded film music covering Walton's Hamlet and Henry V, Bliss's Baraza, Rozsa's Spellbound and Copland's Our Town. The scheme descends from the silent-era mood-music anthologies of Rapee and Becce, and Lejeune's foreword says so, noting that Rawlings substitutes records for sheet music while keeping the old categories. What results is a record of what a British amateur could actually buy in 1961, of more use now to film-music historians and library-music collectors than to filmmakers. Foreword by C. A. Lejeune, film critic of the Observer from 1928 to 1960 and one of the first women in British film criticism; she notes she knew the author only as an occasional correspondent and a voice on the telephone. The owner who signed this copy in 1963 listed five works on the rear endpaper, among them Ketelbey, Eric Coates and Saint-Saens, all catalogued in these pages. Contents: Foreword; Background Music; The Role of Equipment; Applying Mood Music; Recorded Mood Music; International Music; Sound Effects; Useful Miscellaneous Records; Incidental Film Music; Copyright Restrictions; Record Identification; Indexed Glossary.