University of Cambridge

Alumna, Music

Musicologist

Gonville & Caius College

Thesis Title: Listening to the French New Wave: The Film Music and Composers of Postwar French Art Cinema

About

Orlene Denice McMahon is a musicologist specialising in film and media music.

Before obtaining her Doctorate in Musicology from the University of Cambridge, Orlene completed a Bachelor’s Degree in Music and a multidisciplinary Master’s Degree in Film at University College Cork (Ireland) where she was awarded the Title of College Scholar from 2004 to 2006. Combining her two passions, music and cinema, the subject of her Master’s thesis was the audiovisual collaboration of Dublin-based experimental composer Roger Doyle and Irish filmmaker Bob Quinn. After a year out of academia in Paris, she commenced her PhD as a member of Gonville & Caius College in 2007.

Orlene’s research at Cambridge was primarily interdisciplinary, focusing on the music and composers of post-war modernist French film. Funded by the AHRC, she spent the second year of her PhD in Paris, giving her the opportunity to carry out primary research, both archival and ethnographic, interviewing the composers who make up the key protagonists of her doctoral dissertation and working with prominent film sound theoretician Michel Chion.

Apart from her main research topic on French film music, other interests lie in late 20th century music, sound and music in alternative film and video art, Electronic Dance Music Culture (EDMC), and music’s relationship to literature, the visual arts, and other performing arts.

Whilst at Cambridge, she held a Travelling Studentship from the National University of Ireland, an AHRC Doctoral Award, and a Robert Gardiner Memorial Scholarship.

Contact Information