Hearing Death at the Movies

TheDies Iraeis a melody that composers of film music have employed in hundreds of films, ranging from Metropolis toThe Shining,andStar Wars. Itis a product of more than 800 years of musical transformation, finding purchase in a variety of musical environments, including the church, the concert hall, and the cinema. Based on a corpus of nearly 300 films,Hearing Death At the Moviesmodels two new ways of thinking about theDies Irae. First, it identifies three different versions of the melody, each of which signifies a different function of film music. Second, it traces the semantic shift of theDies Iraefrom its religious roots to its secular perception as a symbol of death. This study of the most widely-used theme in film music history will change how you listen to movies.