Mellifluous Terror

This chapter explains horror's musical conventions in light of their aesthetic and discursive components. It describes not only the way horror films make use of different types of music for generically specific ends, but also how such music works to solicit generically specific listening practices by drawing upon prior audience knowledge and certain cultural associations. The chapter focuses on the broader stylistic norms that govern horror scoring practice, the critical debates that underwrite these approaches, and the generic assumptions that motivate the use of various types of music in horror films. The discursive dynamics of music and horror entails not only aesthetic strategies for shaping mood, atmosphere, and identification; it also involves routine audiovisual articulations that affect the codes, competencies, and affective terrains that organize our investments in and evaluations of specific musical styles and genres.