BOOK TALK | Film Music: Cognition to Interpretation
About this Event
265 Aragon Avenue, Coral Gables, FL 33134
https://humanities.as.miami.edu/public-programs/booktalks/index.html"Film Music: Cognition to Interpretation"
The Center for the Humanities invites you to the first Book Talk of the 2025-2026 academic year with Juan Chattah, Professor of Music Theory.
Film music can transform a single voice into a chorus, a whispered song into a rallying cry. This talk draws on “The Hanging Tree” from The Hunger Games, to trace how music draws us closer to characters, turns motifs into memories, and lends weight to scenes that words or images alone could not express. Far from being a background layer, film music emerges here as a powerful force that shapes meaning, deepens empathy, and pulls us into the heart of a revolution.
Film Music: Cognition to Interpretation explores the dynamic counterpoint between a film’s soundtrack, its visuals and narrative, and the audience’s perception and construction of meaning. Adopting a holistic approach covering both the humanities and the sciences—blending cognitive psychology, musical analysis, behavioral neuroscience, semiotics, linguistics, and related fields—the author examines the perceptual and cognitive processes that elicit musical meaning in film and breathe life into our cinematic experiences.
Juan Chattah is Professor of Music Theory at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami. As theorist, his research interests concern music’s impact on cognitive capacities and the exploration of musical multimedia through the lenses of neuropsychology and semiotics. As composer, his music ranges from film-inspired concert music to interactive electroacoustic dance pieces, to children’s songs for radio dramas. As pianist, he has performed extensively in Europe and Latin America, and his students have won prestigious national and international competitions.
Event Details
See Who Is Interested
User Activity
No recent activity
