Emotion and Music in Narrative Films: a Neuroscientific Perspective

While writing these sentences the composer Weill remained skeptical about the working process and the pressure put on the composers in the film industry (Weill, 1946), but at the same time he admired the knowledge and the work of the composers in developing and integrating an audio-visual composition. This chapter will explore our recent knowledge of how (film) music modulates affective responses to films and the neural basis of these. A theoretical starting point is the question of the relationship between visual images and music in audiovisual communication of emotions.