Jonathan Godsall on pre-existing music

Jonathan Godsall has written a very good blog post for The Avid Listener (a publisher's blog from W. W. Norton). Link to "Listening to Beethoven in and through The King’s Speech" (2010).  [link updated on 3-08-2024]   Godsall focuses on the use of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, second movement, for the film's climactic scene. Compact and accessible, the post has film and music clips. It even has questions at the end.

All in all, the post as it stands would make an excellent lesson plan, and might be used as early as Chapter 1 in connection with the commutation test (pp. 30-33). Godsall's second discussion question, in fact, is "Can you think of another real or hypothetical use of pre-existing music that might be considered inappropriate? What are the arguments for and against this?"

Link to a complete list of "Music and Media" posts to The Avid Listener.