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VERSION:2.0
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CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
X-WR-CALNAME:“The Stories Keys Can Tell: A New Approach to Film Soundtrac
 ks” - Táhirih Motazedian\, Vassar College 
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Mountain Time (US & Canada)
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20261009T081152Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_53702207239035
DTSTART:20260905T010000Z
DTEND:20260905T020000Z
DESCRIPTION:Key is one of the simplest building blocks of music and a centr
 al property of a work’s musical identity—we refer to “Beethoven’s 
 Fifth Symphony in C Minor\,” not “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in Four
  Movements and 34 Minutes” or “Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony With the V
 ery Iconic Motive.” But for a variety of reasons\, key has always been i
 gnored as a significant parameter in film music. This talk will show how k
 eys can tell stories in film. The concept of soundtrack is expanded beyond
  just original scoring to include pre-existing music and sound effects\, w
 hich represents a paradigm shift in how we perceive films since sound effe
 cts aren’t normally heard as “music.” Studying the keys traversed in
  a film can reveal fascinating insights and hidden layers of narrative mea
 ning\, granting new ways to engage with our favorite films.\n\nTáhirih Mo
 tazedian is an Associate Professor of Music at Vassar College.  Her book\,
  Key Constellations: Interpreting Tonality in Film (University of Californ
 ia Press\, 2023) was awarded the Society for Music Theory’s Emerging Sch
 olar Book Award.  She has published on a variety of topics\, including Sov
 iet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s politically explosive production of Wa
 gner’s Die Walküre\, the history and science behind the poignancy of th
 e “heartstring schema” in film and nineteenth-century music\, a radica
 l new interpretation of Holst’s Planets as a fantasy of death\, a psycho
 logical reading of the film Black Swan in which Tchaikovsky plays a phanta
 smagorical role in the downfall of a ballerina\, and an analysis of Shosta
 kovich’s unpopular second violin concerto as a quiet anthem of victory t
 hrough perseverance.  Táhirih earned her PhD in music theory from Yale Un
 iversity.  Before that\, she was a planetary scientist at NASA\, working w
 ith lunar samples\, solar samples\, and serving as a Downlink Operations L
 ead for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
GEO:35.666732;-105.912107
LOCATION:Santa Fe Campus\, Great Hall
SUMMARY:“The Stories Keys Can Tell: A New Approach to Film Soundtracks”
  - Táhirih Motazedian\, Vassar College 
URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.sjc.edu/event/the-stories-keys-can-tell-a-new-
 approach-to-film-soundtracks-tahirih-motazedian-vassar-college
CATEGORIES:Lectures & Presentations
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