Visual Music: A History and Theory of the Abstract Moving Image (New Approaches to Sound, Music, and Media) - Hardcover

Balme, Henry

Hardcover

ISBN 13: 9798765128701

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2026

Synopsis

This book traces the evolving relationship between the abstract moving image and music, from the eighteenth century to the present, across media including film, concert projections, and kaleidoscopes. Although the term visual music has become widespread among artists, curators, and scholars over the past three decades, its meaning remains unsettled. Is it a translation of musical form into visual representation, or a musical response to images? This book offers a critical redefinition of the term, grounding visual music in the category of the abstract moving image. Close readings of seminal films by Mary Ellen Bute, Jordan Belson, Oskar Fischinger, Walter Ruttmann, and James Whitney are complemented by analyses of contemporary work by Joanna Priestley, Takashi Ohashi, and Clayton McCracken. These films are examined through multiple critical lenses, including middlebrow modernism, mysticism, transmediality, and the relation of abstract art to music. By bringing theoretical precision and historical depth to the subject, the book offers fresh perspectives on visual music and provides a valuable foundation for students and scholars in musicology, film studies, and art history, as well as those working in the growing field of audiovisual studies. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the fertile terrain where music and the visual arts converge.

About this title

About the Authors

Henry Balme is an independent scholar and received his PhD in music history from Yale University, USA. His research focuses on visual music, a transmedial art form combining abstract moving images, and is funded by the American Musicological Society and a John F. Enders Fellowship.

Carol Vernallis is Affiliated Researcher in Music at Stanford University and Visiting Professor of Music at University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Experiencing Music Video (2004) and Unruly Media (2013). She is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics (2013) and The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media (2013), and on the editorial board of The Journal of Popular Music Studies.

Lisa Perrott is Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Screen and Media Studies at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She is co-editor, with Holly Rogers and Carol Vernallis, of the Bloomsbury book series New Approaches to Sound, Music and Media, and the collected volume Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and New Audiovisual Aesthetics. Lisa is also co-editor, with Ana Cristina Mendes, of David Bowie and Transmedia Stardom. Her interests include music video, animation, documentary and transmedia, with an emphasis on the relations between sound, music and visual media. Lisa is currently completing her second Bloomsbury monograph David Bowie and the Transformation of Music Video (1984-2016 and Beyond).

Holly Rogers is Professor of Music and Director of Research at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, where she runs the MA Music (Audiovisual Cultures). She is author of Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music (2013) and co-author of Studying Twentieth-Century Music in the West (2022). She has edited several books on audiovisual culture, including Music and Sound in Documentary Film (2014), The Music and Sound of Experimental Film (2017), Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and New Audiovisual Aesthetics (Bloomsbury, 2019), Cybermedia (Bloomsbury, 2021), YouTube and Music (Bloomsbury, 2022) and Remediating Sound (Bloomsbury, 2023). Holly is one of the founding editors for Bloomsbury book series New Approaches to Sound, Music and Media and the Goldsmiths journal “Sonic Scope: New Approaches to Audiovisual Culture”..

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798765128701
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 260