In 1925, MGM produced a screen version of Lew Wallace's best-selling novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which became a classic of silent cinema. Nearly 25 years later, the biblical epic was remade by William Wyler and received an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards, including one for Miklós Rózsa's music. Indeed, the score for Ben-Hur is one of the greatest achievements in Hollywood film music. In this book, Roger Hickman focuses on the confluence of traditions, trends, and innovations that shaped Rózsa's score. Hickman provides an overview of Rózsa's music into the 1960s, looks at the composer's musical influences and the development of his distinctive style, and examines how Rózsa applied these compositional techniques to film scoring. The author then explores the Ben-Hur phenomenon and traces the development of the story and its musical traditions from the original novel into the 21st century. Hickman also examines the conventions of epic films and ties these influences together with a detailed analysis of the score. Miklós Rózsa's Ben-Hur pays tribute to not only one of the great film scores but also to one of Hollywood's most influential composers.

Alfred Hitchcock was once so famous he was the only film director whose name appeared on the cinema marquee above the title. He disparaged actors and loathed location shooting since both threatened the precise realisation of the film he had already made in his mind. Yet, in his Hollywood heyday he forged some creative collaborations he truly valued: those with composers. From the start, Hitchcock knew that music was an invaluable aid to any director of suspense movies who wanted to put his audience through the emotional wringer. From Arthur Benjamin’s pivotal cantata in the 1934 version of 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' to Bernard Herrmann’s jagged soundtrack for the landmark shocker 'Psycho', the music was usually a visceral part of any Hitchcock movie. By the time John Williams scored Hitchcock’s final film 'Family Plot' (1976), a whole generation of moviegoers would always remember their favourite Hitchcock film with, as it were, the soundtrack attached. Here, arranged for Piano, are some of the most evocative themes from some of Hitchcock’s most unforgettable films.

Christopher Palmer discusses the life and work of eleven great Hollywood composers -- Steiner, Korngold, Newman, Waxman, Tiomkin, Webb, Rozsa, Herrmann, North, Bernstein, and Rosenman -- analyzing the scores of many well-known films. Each chapter is written in clear non-technical language for the general reader as well as film and music enthusiasts.

Functional simplicity, structural complexity: the best life for all. That's the maxim of Olympus, the utopian city that sprung from the ashes of World War III. But Deunan and Bri, a young woman and her cyborg companion just entering the rose-tinted society, find that so long as there are different kinds of people there will be differences among them. Such is the story of Appleseed, the masterwork of manga storyteller Masamune Shirow. Beautiful art and a complex and fully realized future world rank this title among the best comics available.