... that, in sound film, music's “autonomy” would free it from the burden of mimesis. Instead, the images on screen would teach listeners about music's abstract “reality.” In practice, however, in Rapt , mimetic music and musicalized sound effects bridge the gap between aesthetic goals of hybridity and practical...

... and representation, and of diegesis and mimesis, in this complex repertory. Of all the catchphrases associated with music from around 1600 (then as now), Claudio Monteverdi's claim for his “second practice”—in which the music serves the words rather than the words the music—is the most resonant, presumed to mark...