Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema. By Frank Lehman. New York: University of Oxford Press, 2018

[...]Lehman joins a growing number of music theorists devoted to illuminating film music's chordal contours.1 Although few would argue that “in Hollywood, harmony is a deeply expressive resource” (4), harmony is often unheard in many film music analyses, with emphasis placed instead on recurring melodic motives. [...]composers’ and listeners’ expectations in film are cultivated through surface effects, such as moment-to-moment chordal shifts, rapid changes in orchestration, and brief melodic motives. [...]it is for these reasons—the need to make expressive points succinctly without recourse to self-contained musical forms—that Lehman sees neo-Riemannian theory as particularly attractive for film music analysis. [...]the value of Lehman's overview chapter is not limited to matters of chords, as many of his observations apply to film music more generally. [...]passages connect Lehman's insights on harmony to other musical facets of cinema while also illustrating that consideration of harmony stands to change how we perceive other elements of the cinematic experience.