Biography
James Denis Mc Glynn is a scholar of music and sound in screen media, with specialist interests in film music, rearrangement, film/TV adaptations, and video game music. He is currently a Research Fellow in Screen Studies at Trinity College Dublin, where he is part of the Irish Research Council Laureate Award project (2022-2026) "From Cinematic Realism to Extended Reality" led by Dr. Jennifer O'Meara. His doctoral thesis, completed in 2020, explores the rearrangement of pre-existing music in recent film and television scores. His recent research outputs include publications in The Journal of Popular Music Studies, Music and the Moving Image, The Journal of Sound and Music in Games, and the anthology After Midnight: Watchmen After Watchmen. He is currently completing invited contributions for several forthcoming publications, including The Oxford Handbook of Music and Television.
Publications and Further Research Outputs
Peer-Reviewed Publications
"The Adaptation of Akira Yamaoka's music from the Silent Hill series (1999-2004) in Christophe Gans' Silent Hilll (2006)" in, editor(s)Richard Anatone and Andrew S. Powell , Remedial Storytelling: The Convergence and Divergence of Music in Video Games and Film, New York, Routledge (forthcoming), 2025, [James Denis Mc Glynn]
"Cantor Mortis: Singing Bodies, Pre-existing Music, Death and Life in Swiss Army Man (2016)" in, editor(s)Kate Galloway, Katherine Reed and Reba Wissner , Adaptation, Rearrangement, and Music Across Screen Media, New York, Routledge (forthcoming), 2024, [James Denis Mc Glynn]
"Scoring TV Adaptations: From the Silver Screen to the Small Screen" in, editor(s)James Deaville, Ronald Rodman and Jessica Getman , The Oxford Handbook of Music in Television, Oxford, Oxford University Press (forthcoming), 2024, [James Denis Mc Glynn]
James Denis Mc Glynn, "The 'Cinematic Promise' of Video Game Music: Stylistic Convergence, Current-Generation Remakes and the Case of Final Fantasy VII", Journal of Sound and Music in Games, 4, (4), 2023
Stefan Greenfield-Casas and James Denis Mc Glynn, "'We are what they grow beyond': Visions (and Sounds) of a Transnational Star Wars", 2023, -
"The Adaptation of Narrative and Musical Source Material in HBO's Watchmen" in, editor(s)Drew Morton , After Midnight: Watchmen after Watchmen, Jackson, MS, University Press of Mississippi, 2022, pp199 - 215, [James Denis Mc Glynn]
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Revisiting Vangelis: Sonic Citation and Narration in the Score for Blade Runner 2049 (2017)", Sonic Scope: New Approaches to Audiovisual Culture, 2020
Non-Peer-Reviewed Publications
James Denis Mc Glynn, "The Sound of 'A.I. Films': Considerations of Style, Authorship and Erasure of Labour in a Recent Online Trend", Storytellers + Machines 2024, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, 4 July 2024, 2024
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Screen Music, Sound, and the 'Dominant Imaginary' of A.I. in Filmmaking", Music and the Moving Image XX, NYU Steinhardt, 28 May, 2024
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Transnational Collaboration in Contemporary Screen Scoring: Hopeful Examples from Recent Animated and Interactive Media", DCU Department of Music Seminar Series 2023-24, Dublin City University, 6 February, 2024
James Denis Mc Glynn, "A.I. and Screen Music: Popular (Mis)perceptions, Ethical Ramifications, and Obfuscation of Labour in a Recent Online Trend", Sociotechnical Consequences of A.I. Interdisciplinary Workshop, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 13 September, 2024, 2024
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Postgraduate Publishing (Without Perishing): Realistic Options for Scholarly Contributions and Collaborations while Dissertating", 17th Annual SMI / ICTM-IE Postgraduate Conference, Maynooth University, 13 January, 2024
Richard Anatone, James Denis Mc Glynn and Andrew S. Powell, "Introduction: Final Fantasy VII's Musical Legacy", Journal of Sound and Music in Games, 4, (4), 2023, p1 - 14
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Radiohead's Impossible Museum: Representing Abstract Musical Phenomena and Ephemeral Listening Experiences in KID A MNESIA EXHIBITION (2021)", 10th Annual North American Conference on Video Game Music, Stetson University, DeLand, Florida, 4 February, 2023
James Denis Mc Glynn, Scoring TV Adaptations: Taking Pre-existing Musical and Sonic Identities to the Small Screen, Music and the Moving Image XIX, NYU Steinhardt, New York, 27 May, 2023
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Return to the Forgotten Forest: Collaborative Scoring Practices and Shaping the Fictional Geography of Kena: Bridge of Spirits (2021)", 89th Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Denver, Colorado, 9 November, 2023
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Serialising Cinema: Music for Small-Screen Adaptations in the 'Peak TV' Era", Music for Stage and Screen: Celebrating SMI at 20, National Opera House, Wexford, 11 March, 2023
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Peak TV Adaptations: Recent Trends in Screen Music, Sound Design, and Sonic Citation", Approaches to Music and Sound in Contemporary Narrative Television (Seminar), Queen's University Belfast, UK, 29 November, 2023
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Communicating Screen Music Research through Videographic Criticism", The 18th Annual Irish Screen Studies Seminar, Trinity College Dublin, 11 May, 2023
James Denis Mc Glynn, "The Pleasures (and Displeasures) of Adaptation: Intertextual Modes of Audience Engagement with the Music of The Rings of Power (2022) and The Last of Us (2023)", Annual Plenary Conference of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, TU Dublin Conservatoire, 9 June, 2023
James Denis Mc Glynn, "The Growing Potential of Videographic Criticism in Film Music Studies, Ludomusicology and Beyond", Sound on Screen II, , Oxford Brookes University, Oxford UK and Hybrid, 5 July, 2023
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Cantor Mortis: Singing Voices, Bodies, Life and Death in Swiss Army Man (2016)", Music and the Moving Image XVIII, NYU Steinhardt, New York (held remotely due to COVID-19), 28 May, 2022
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Musical Remakes: Re-envisioning the Rearrangement of Pre-Existing Music in Contemporary Screen Scoring." Presented as part of panel "`Play It Again:" A Panel on Remaking Pre-existing Music in Screen Media", British Audio-Visual Research Network, Virtual Colloquium, 3 March, 2022
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Befriending Spirits: Jason Gallaty and Gamelan Çudamani's score for Kena: Bridge of Spirits (2021).", 9th Annual North American Conference on Video Game Music, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Louisiana (held remotely due to COVID-19), 3 April, 2022
Elsie Walker, Gillian B. Anderson, Ronald H. Sadoff, Kevin J. Donnelly, Liz Greene, Randolph Jordan, James Denis Mc Glynn, Miguel Mera, Aimee Mollaghan, and Katherine Spring, "The Life and Legacy of Danijela Kulezic-Wilson", Music and the Moving Image XVIII, NYU Steinhardt, New York (held remotely due to COVID-19), 27 May, 2022
James Denis Mc Glynn, "'Never Gonna Dance Again': Transformations of Pre-existing Music and the Communication of Trauma in Watchmen (2019).", Music and the Moving Image XVII (held remotely due to COVID-19), NYU Steinhardt, New York, 27 May, 2021
James Denis Mc Glynn, "The Proliferation of 'Musical Remakes' in Film and Television scores", 87th Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Virtual Conference (held remotely due to COVID-19), 11 November, 2021
James Denis Mc Glynn, "I am no longer afraid: a Case Study on the Musical Communication of Trauma in Narrative Film and Television", Journal of Popular Music Studies, 33, (4), 2021, p43 - 49
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Rearrangement of Pre-existing Music in the Film Score: Narratological Possibilities, Deliberate Ambiguities and Questions of Originality", 12th Meeting of the IMS Music and Media Study Group, Cleveland, Ohio (held remotely due to COVID-19), 11 June, 2021
James Denis Mc Glynn, "I am no longer afraid: a Case Study on the Musical Communication of Trauma in Narrative Film and Television", Music, Sound, and Trauma: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana (held remotely due to COVID-19), 13 February, 2021
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Rearranging Popular Music and Composite Scoring in the films of Baz Luhrmann", The 16th Annual Irish Screen Studies Seminar, Ulster University, Magee Campus, Derry (held remotely due to COVID-19), 7 May, 2021
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Crisis? What Crisis?: Film Music Studies as a Hopeful Paradigm of Interdisciplinarity in Musicology", Young Musicology Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia (held remotely due to COVID-19), 26 September, 2020
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Carraway, Kanye and Dubious Descendants of Beethoven: Narrative Functions of Rearrangement in Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby (2013)", Music and the Moving Image XVI, NYU Steinhardt, New York, 29 May, 2020
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Rearrangement and Narration in the Film Score: Pre-existing Musical Content, Narrative Communication and Examples from the Blade Runner series", Fuaim lecture series, Department of Music, University College Cork, 17 January, 2019
James Denis Mc Glynn, "The Transient Film Score: Audience Subjectivities, Sonic Storytelling and Cultivating Imagined Worlds", The 5th Annual Rev. Liam Swords Foundation Lecture, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 6 February, 2019
James Denis Mc Glynn, "(Re)arranged Marriages: Industry Demands, Citation and Narration in Blade Runner 2049 (2017)", Music and the Moving Image XV, NYU Steinhardt, New York, 31 May, 2019
James Denis Mc Glynn, "A Murder Weapon In Plain Sight: Manipulating Cinematic Conventions, Duplicitous Narration and Asynchronous Sound", The 15th Annual Irish Screen Studies Seminar, Galway University, 9 May, 2019
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Scoring Realities: Sonically Conveying Narrative, Temporality and Characterisation in HBO's Westworld (2016)", 11th Annual SMI / ICTM-IE Postgraduate Conference, Maynooth University, 19 January, 2018
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Transient Composing - Subjectivities and Sonic Storytelling in the Film Score", The 5th Annual Rev. Liam Swords Foundation Lecture, Irish Cultural Centre, Paris, 19 November, 2018
James Denis Mc Glynn, "Scoring Realities: Sonically Conveying Narrative, Temporality and Characterisation in HBO's Westworld (2016)", Identity (Re)construction: The CACSSS Annual Aigne Postgraduate Conference, University College Cork, 11 December, 2017
Research Expertise
Recognition
Awards and Honours
Excellence Scholarship (PhD), CACSSS, University College Cork
Rev. Liam Swords Foundation Bursary 2018, Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris, FR)
1st Prize, 11th CHMHE/ICTM Undergraduate Musicology Competition
Staf Gebruers Memorial Prize 2017
The Mary V. Hart Memorial Prize in Music
Global Undergraduate Awards, Highly Commended
UCC College Scholar award (highest score in degree year)
Quercus Creative & Performing Arts Scholarship
UCC College Scholar award
National University of Ireland (NUI) Award
UCC College Scholar award
Memberships
Society for Musicology in Ireland (SMI): National Council member and Hon. Membership Secretary (2022 - present)
Society For Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS)
Society for the Study of Sound and Music in Games (SSSMG)
American Musicological Society (AMS)
Sonic Scope: New Approaches to Audiovisual Culture - Editorial board member
Émergence·s (journal) - Editorial Board member