Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2013-12-02 13:16
The various sides of this issue might plaster every side of a dodechedron with a few issues to spare -- appropriately, since one of those issues is the dodecaphonic music that made a lot of former classical music fans run screaming in the mid-20th century.
I agree that film music today fills a similar role to concert hall music in earlier centuries, but there are some important differences. In a concert or in an opera, the music is the main point. We hear each overture, aria, entr'acte and finale as a complete piece of music. Even in a ballet, the dancing simply can't exist without the music and its silences. It's possible to think in terms of the action illustrating the music, not the other way round.
But, in a film, unless it's a film of an opera or a musical, we rarely hear a complete piece with its compositional structure intact. We hear fragments as background music, not front and center. Often that's even true with the end credits music, which may be an olio of popular songs or even a complete piece resembling an overture -- but these days it's more often a montage. Film is essentially a visual medium. It's a stage play with a soundtrack. What we see is way more important than what we hear.
In fact, as a film critic, even though I care about music, I often don't notice the score all that much unless it's notably outstanding (the first "Star Wars") or utterly atrocious ("The Meat-Eater," aka "Blood Theater," aka "Phantom of the Bijou," made in 1979, direct to VHS in 1986, never released on DVD -- and no, I promise, you do not want to rush out and hunt it down just because it's rare).
How often do we see concert programs devoted to film music? The concert hall is still the place to go for a "music first" experience. Often those film scores don't even exist as complete compositions. They're fragments written or even improvised (by a composer sitting at a synthesizer while watching the screen) as emotional background for individual scenes. The short pop songs get released, yes, but only the most famed of those composers (Williams, for instance) release longer-format music scores that a concert band or orchestra could rent and play -- and almost always those composers or their orchestrators prepare those scores months or years after the releases of the movies. Essentially those are new compositions *based on* the film scores.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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