Anonymous Sounds

The first comprehensive academic study of library music practices in the 1960s and the 1970s, recovering their little-know history and enduring cultural significance.

I have dreamed of a book like Anonymous Sounds for years. This collection approaches the fascinating phenomena of “library music” with a powerful combination of rigorous research and theoretical insight. The international scope of the book is very welcome and each chapter is a gem of sharp analysis and fascinating detail.

Anonymous Sounds: Library Music and Screen Cultures in the 1960s and 1970s contains a treasure trove of information about the use of library music in film and television around the globe and provides essays on library music’s use in a variety of genres and styles. It will doubtless be my go-to reference source on the topic.

This book is very welcome! As a significant addition to the small amount of critical writing about library music, Sexton, Roy and Johnston have assembled a rich and varied collection, addressing a form of music that everyone will have heard although very few will have registered its origin. For far too long, library music has been considered insignificant for those analyzing modern music and audiovisual culture, but this collection goes a long way toward remedying that, helping us to understand music as recording rather than idealized notes and highlighting the crucial importance of production modes and procedures, in almost invisible industries making low prestige music.

Anonymous Sounds offers an outstanding collection of essays on a vital yet unjustly overlooked—even maligned—musical oeuvre: library music. The editors have brought together an impressive roster of experts, who shed light on the composition, applications and cultural significance of this music in its connection to moving images. Through in-depth studies of companies, recordings, catalogs and composers, the volume uncovers how library music has invisibly supported screen narratives for over a century, with special attention to the “golden era” of the late 1960s and the 1970s. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to understand the “anonymous” music that fills our screens on a daily basis.

Nessa Johnston is Lecturer in Screen Studies and Digital Media at the University of Liverpool, UK and author of The Commitments: Youth, Music and Authenticity in 1990s Ireland (2021). Her research is in sound and music in screen media, cult cinema, media technologies, and media industries. She is co-investigator on the Leverhulme funded research project ‘Anonymous Creativity: Library Music and Screen Cultures in the 1960s and 1970s’ and a 2020 Fellow of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas (Austin).

Jamie Sexton is Associate Professor in Film and Television Studies at Northumbria University, UK with research interests in music and media, and cult cinema. Recent publications include Freak Scenes: American Indie Cinema and Indie Music Scenes (2022).

Elodie A. Roy is a media and material culture theorist with a specialism in the history of recorded sound. Her publications include Media, Materiality and Memory: Grounding the Groove (2015) and Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture: Unsettled Matter (2023).