Abstract

Film score composers are searching for unusual timbres to help define their work in a growing market. Concurrently, film scores for world cinema are gaining greater popularity while Western composers’ interest in the instruments available outside of the traditional symphony orchestra or contemporary popular ensemble increase. Film scoring is moving beyond the use of ethnographically appropriate instrumentation to enhance the audience perception of time and place. Increasingly, film score composers are turning to world music instruments without creating a sense of appropriate ethnographic association for the listener. This study explores the notion of “othering” that use of an exotic timbral palette provides. The choice of alternative sonorities for the sake of novelty is also discussed. The effect of globalisation on the modern film composer has allowed an enriched palette of instruments and timbres, but consideration of world instruments in film scores enhancing a utopian view of globalisation and the negative perception of corporate culturalism is advocated.