This book offers a groundbreaking exploration of how music represents enigma in film, shedding light on a subject that is both elusive and under-researched. Enigmatic phenomena, which are often inaccessible and hard to define, are regularly depicted in cinema.  With its intrinsic connection to emotion, music enhances the representation and interpretation of these mysteries, creating, intensifying, and addressing the inscrutable and providing emotional understanding where science and logic may fall short.

Music and Enigma in Film categorizes enigmas into four main themes: religion, mythology, the paranormal, and the inexplicable, which serve as the structural foundation for the discussion. Through a musicological lens, chapters investigate how film music presents and invokes these enigmatic themes, analyzing the role of different music genres, sonic elements, and the relationship between sound and image. The book also explores the psychological mechanisms of musical perception—such as synaesthesia and Gestalt perception—that facilitate the comprehension of mysterious parameters in film music, inviting readers to consider the similarities between these mechanisms and specific musical attributes. Readers will also discover how music expresses ideological meaning by exploring the historical and cultural connotations that underpin the enigmatic undertones of film music.

Music and Enigma in Film is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of film studies, musicology, and cultural studies, as well as filmmakers and composers fascinated by the mysterious interplay of sound and image in cinema

Dr. Jady Jiang is lecturer in the Literature and Media Department at the Wenzhou University of Technology, China. Her research interests include film music, audio-visual culture, horror cinema, and Chinese cinema. She has published a number of articles about music in film.