Music and Image in Concert

Book excerpt: In 'Music and Image in Concert' composer, graphic designer and writer Meghan Stevens explores the implications to music when images are presented in music concerts. But how do artistic directors ensure that listeners aren't more engaged by the images than the music? Stevens presents a number of concepts that aim to maintain musical salience over added image in the instrumental music concert. This is to avoid the situation that occurs in film where the music is backgrounded and often not heard or not remembered. These concepts cover a range of music-image characteristics including narrative, synchronisation, rhythm, tempo, meaning, emotion, structure, genre, integration, interpretation, voice and text. As there is little research in this new field, these original concepts draw on a number of other disciplines including film, music-video, multimedia, cognitive psychology, psychomusicology, education and music philosophy. This book provides a practical approach for adding image to the music concert.