Musique Fantastique: 100 Years of Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror Film Music Second Edition

Randall Larson merilis buku sejarah lengkap musik film Musique Fantastique: 100 Years of Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror Film Music Second Edition. Edisi pertamanya dirilis tahun 1985 dan mencakup sejarah musik film sampai awal dekade '80an. Edisi kedua ini dilengkapi sampai dengan film-film tahun 2011 (2012?). Berikut kutipannya:

Announcing: Musique Fantastique, Second Edition
100+ Years of Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror Film Music
By Randall D. Larson
Creature Features Press: 2012

This thoroughly re-written and massively expanded new edition of Larson’s seminal 1985 book will be spread over a landscape of four large volumes, covering every aspect of music for fantastic films from the Silents through the Summer Blockbusters of 2011. Focusing on the composers whose work has enlivened the movies of monsters and madmen, fantastic lands and distant worlds, Larson analyzes fantasy, science fiction, and horror film music around the world, from A TRIP TO THE MOON in 1902 to TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON in 2011. Eschewing criticism for commentary, Larson incorporates interviews with hundreds of composers along with his own perceptive analytic commentary and the perspectives of a myriad of other reviewers, writers, and commentators, providing in Musique Fantastique, Second Edition a comprehensive historical overview of how music has been used in the fantastic genre.

Totaling 34 Chapters and more than 1700 pages, featuring a new introduction by film composer Christopher Young, Musique Fantastique, Second Edition offers a definitive historical context for the evolution and development of film music within science fiction, fantasy, and horror cinema.

Sejarah musik film ini terbagi menjadi empat buku:

• Book One: Beginnings and The First Golden Age (1900-1959)
• Book Two: Post Classical Cinema and Music Beyond Hollywood (The 1960s)
• Book Three: The Symphonic Resurgence and the Rise of the Machines (1970-1989)
• Book Four: The Turning of a New Millennium & the Explosion of Fantastic Cinema (1990-2010).

Baru buku pertama yang dirilis. Danny Elfman baru akan mulai disebut di buku ketiga dan keempat. Dari daftar isinya, Elfman mendapat beberapa subsection yaitu "Danny Elfman’s Big Adventure" di buku ketiga, Chapter 23: Resurgence: Fantasy Film Music in the ‘70s and ‘80s – Part Two, "The Decade of Danny Elfman" di buku keempat, 28: Fantasy & Fusion: The Hybrid Horror & Fantasy Music of the 1990s – Part 1 dan "Elfman 2000" di Chapter 30: New Styles For The Musical Millennium – The Evolving Dynamics of Fantastic Film Music. Berikut kutipannya:

If any single composer defines mischievous mayhem in 1990s cinema music it was Danny Elfman, who carved out an entirely memorable and extraordinarily effective new career as a film composer out of what had been a comfortable life in rock and roll. Elfman began his rise in the film musical community in the late 1980s (see Chapter 22), crafting a slightly lunatic style that was perfect for the emerging mix of humor and horror that embodied many of these films… [He] continued his association with director Tim Burton throughout this decade and the next, the two continuing to share a common creative bond. “The hardest part of being a film composer is not writing the score, it’s climbing inside the director’s head and seeing the movie through their eyes, and yet still giving it your own identity,” said Elfman. “One of the great joys of working with Tim is that climbing inside his head is not that much different than being inside my own head. There are definitely a lot of common links there.” When Burton filmed his Gotham City sequel, Batman Returns (1992), Elfman found the opportunity to expand his original 1989 Batman score and create some deliciously devilish music for the Penguin and Catwoman characters, whose origins are introduced in this film. “Tim and I made a decision to hear the Batman melody played straight and simple, or you’d lose the connection with the first picture,” Elfman told Daniel Schweiger. “The Catwoman needed a more complex theme than the Penguin, because she’s a victim. Felina’s schizophrenic, so her music had to be twisted, fun, and bittersweet…. The Penguin is a broad, twisted, and evil little character, but one that we love. His music is more theatrical, because whenever he walked on the stage, I saw the Penguin as an opera singer who was about to deliver an aria. I gave his melodies a grand, overblown quality that was sometimes just plain sinister.”

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