Within the context of an examination into film music as a component equally crucial to the film as the images on the screen, musical borrowing is discussed with special attention paid to the musical cliché. The use and creation of musical clichés in film music derives first and foremost from the recontextualization of "classical" music in film. The musical cliché is analogous to the literary. In some cases, the classifications and associations assigned to the musical cues of the silent films derive from already established semiotic codes, but in most cases film composers were creating and re-creating cultural and psychological points of reference in the ears and minds of the film spectators. In the process of recognizing the real social importance of these musical clichés, their respective archetypes are uncovered.

Index Classifications: 1900s, Film

Contributed by: David Oliver