PhD Information Session: Dr. Gernot Preusser – Familiar Sounds, New Worlds
2026-07-02 The music of great movies often sounds familiar—even when the images are new. Dr. Gernot Preusser’s dissertation explores why this is the case and how film music simultaneously shapes modern myths, while also explaining how this art form is currently transforming. The monograph on Romantic traditions in 21st-century film music has now been published as open access by De Gruyter.
When the aliens in “Avatar” race through the air on mythical creatures, stylized “ethnic”-sounding drums and choirs accompany them, marking cultural otherness. The soundtrack to “Ben-Hur” employs stereotypical “Oriental” soundscapes. For “The Lord of the Rings,” Howard Shore composed in an almost leitmotif-like manner: “The way music characterizes figures or ‘peoples’ still follows principles such as leitmotifs and musical characterization, which are strongly influenced by Richard Wagner,” explains Dr. Gernot Preusser. In his dissertation, he examined how film music actively contributes to the construction of modern myths and the stabilization of narrative world models.
While the history of European art music has been marked by major ruptures, the past continues to shape film music: “Central techniques and conceptual models of Romanticism remain effective to this day and have been transferred into new media contexts,” explains Gernot Preusser. This is particularly evident in composers such as Wagner, whose influence extends all the way to modern soundtracks. But Puccini, Richard Strauss, and Rimsky-Korsakov are also influential.
The problem is that, often unconsciously, film music still draws on historically developed “exotic” sound patterns that mark—and frequently oversimplify—cultural differences. This practice can be traced back to Romantic-era music and has been perpetuated over decades. Well-known examples from the world of opera include “Madame Butterfly” and “Aida.” Both are heavily marked by clichéd exoticism—regarding Asia and Egypt.
Yet awareness of this imbalance is growing: “Since the 2010s, it has become clear that composers are dealing with stereotypical representations in a more reflective manner, thereby taking current social debates into account—yet these stereotypes do not disappear; rather, they are often recontextualized,” explains Gernot Preusser. A well-known example of this is the film “Dune,” with music by Hans Zimmer. Here, the perspective is deliberately shifted: “What is supposedly foreign becomes the starting point of the narrative, while traditional Western soundscapes are called into question,” describes the musicologist.
Methodologically, too, the work reflects the idea of transformation. Instead of relying solely on classical musical analysis, the researcher combined various approaches: qualitative interview analyses with film composers, musical analyses of soundtracks, and detailed examinations of individual film scenes.
Partly due to its interdisciplinary nature, the doctoral candidate’s path to Leuphana University Lüneburg was no coincidence. Gernot Preusser studied musicology at the University of Cologne. After several years in the music and media industry, he developed the idea for a dissertation topic. Ultimately, his exchange with Prof. Dr. Michael Ahlers, a professor of music education specializing in popular music, proved decisive: “He was particularly open to my idea of combining a historical perspective with contemporary relevance,” explains Gernot Preusser.
The father of a family completed his doctorate while working full-time. “The flexible structure of the doctoral program made this possible, and the supervision was very close-knit,” he recalls. He experienced Leuphana as a place where research does not take place in isolation but is strongly linked to social issues: “Here, work is interdisciplinary, and the question of how research is relevant to the present is always asked.”