Has film music deteriorated?

~a brief defense of the status quo~

There is currently a generation gap in the world of soundtrack afficionados - on the one hand virginal teens who are just now getting into film music by the way of Hans Zimmer and co., and on the other hand middleaged connaiseurs who grew up with the remnants of golden age scoring and the then-blooming jazz influences in TV and movies in the 60's. The former group seems  to be constantly facing a wall of "everything-was-so-much-better-in-my-days"-isms from the latter in various foras, both off and online.

Frequent arguments against the standard and ideology of current film music seems to include aspects such as "over-scoring", "over-bombasticism", "anonymous, factory-produced and manipulative scores", "too much electronics", "too little dramatic sensibility" and so on.

While it would take me too long to dissect every single one of these arguments (especially since many, if not most, of them are possibly right on target), I will rather try to focus on several factors and variables that have to be put into consideration in order to get a proper overview of the current film music situation and to see if it has deteriorated gradually over the years.

Perhaps the most important of these variables is TECHNOLOGY, both related to film and music. 

Film first: While the cinematic experience always has aimed at an exploitation of the voyeuristic gaze of the spectator, early efforts at expanding the image were faced with limitiations regarding realism - the "washed.out" (frequently black/white) quality of the celluloid coupled with "muddled" sound quality (even stereophonic) made the experience more "dream"-like than realistic, and emotional identification with the onscreen characters did arguably not come about with image alone. As such, a necessary addtion was needed in the form of music, perhaps the most explicit of all nonverbal communication forms. The music thus took on the role of another, invisible character in the movie overall and was more prominent in the soundscape (Steiner's GONE WITH THE WIND or KING KONG, for example).

As technology progressed, better image resolution resulted in a higher penchant for visual details than earlier - for a postmodern audience with shifting foca, this was both a necessary and inevitable evolutional step. As a consequence, the "third" character of music was redundant or at least not needed to the same extent. Instead we saw a tighter relationship, a conglomerate, of the visual and aural artform - the music and film as blended into a coherent whole, a "gesamtkunstwerk". The best example here would be Vangelis' BLADE RUNNER, in which the sound effects, visual style and music interrelate to the extent that all are almost indistuingishable from each other.

Sound goes through a similar development. Although the cinema screen itself (usuallly) is two-dimensional, sound developers have always aimed at making the cinematic experience more realistic by adding an advanced, three-dimensional soundtrack. At first, there was mono. Then came the revolutional stereo, then Dolby surround, and lately we have all these digital versions of the same. It's a bit peculiar to notice, though, that even if the sound often emerges from loudspeakers behind the audience, the spectator unquestionably locates the source of the sound as coming from the screen (so in that respect, the hierarchy of image over sound is still unbroken).

Anyhow, as a result of improved sound clarity, increased hiss-less volume and "factory-made" sounds, what apparently loses out in the overall soundtrack is the music. The infamous "competition" between sound effects and music occurs (especially in explosion-filled action films), and the music has to bombastisize in order to be audible. Hence the previously mentioned argument against the state of current film music and that it merely works as "wallpaper" to the action. I have to take issue with this, though. The music in this respect has not deteriorated. Rather, it has adjusted itself to the present state of the cinematic approach to image  - a film with a strong and modern visual style and heavy sound F/X needs an appropriate musical sound in order to become the conglomerate of artforms it aims to be.

I'm not saying that all of the recent sci fi/action-films are - or should be - pieces of art, but to utilize a music style of the past in a modern film with a modern voice and a modern "tone" would be highly out-of-place and contradictory. The sentiment of how the visual and aural aspect should interact has changed, and we have to live with that. I'll get back to this below.

Music has also seen its share of technological advancements. Although experimention with electronics in film music started as early as the 1950's (Bernard Herrmann was one of the pioneers in this arena), it didn't really take off untill the late 60's and into the 70's when artists like Tangerine Dream and Jean Michel Jarre, the godfathers of electronic music,  showed us what could be done with a single synthesizer. In the mid 80's, Hans Zimmer was another pioneer in the area of blending electronic music with orchestra, a sound that has paved way for and influenced a lot of composers in the present Hollywood system.

This is a sound that has been severly criticized, as mentioned above,  for being "anonymous, factory-produced and manipulative" with no dramatic refinement. Once again, I have to argue: A modern visual style with detailed images does not (always) need the "third" character of strict, narrative music. Sometimes scoring the "essence" or "atmosphere" of a scene works better than evoking the inner turmoil of an onscreen character in a modern film - the present media-exposed and visually "hardended" audience grasps scenes without musical redundancy and is very critical towards over-emphasizing in general.

Additionally, regular orchestral performances have received better sound treatment through improved recording facilities, which again help them to prominence in the films.

Closely related to the issue of technology are the topics of ESTHETICISM and SENTIMENT, the present state of which I briefly mentioned above. One can argue back and forth whether it is the technology that has given birth to current esthetic value systems in films or if it's the other way around, and I won't give any definite answers, but it's easy to establish the fact that our view on films and how they should be made has changed drastically over the years, and is thus relevant in any evolutional discussion.

"They talked differently back then", one of my young relatives said to me once. "Back then" only referred to the early 80's, but he got the point across nevertheless. Throughout the 20th century, the social mode of conduct - the way we behave and talk - has changed. When you watch a film like CASABLANCA or a gritty cop TV-series from the 60's, you sense some kind of distance to the characters and the way they are profiled. In CASABLANCA, you might feel that Bogart and Bergman utilize certain phrasings and facial expressions that seem overly redundant or clichéed today. And as a rusty convertible races across the bridge in an urban 60's TV-series accompanied by a funky guitar riff, you might feel inclined to shout "cheese". These things seem to date themselves, but in actuality it is we who decide what is "hip" and present, and in so speaking date ourselves.

Whatever the current "mode of expression" or sentiment is at any given time, it obviously trickles down to and is manifested in the artistic products. When BEN HUR was made in 1959, the Hollywood sentiment focused on bigger-than-life scenarios. As - among other things - a response to the introduction of the competing medium of television, the cinema experience should be an EVENT, not only the screening of a celluloid product. This scope of  things called for a sympathetic and heroic star that the audience could identify with (Heston), stunning F/X and exotic sets and an overpowering, otherwordly score by Miklos Rozsa. This as opposed to, for instance, the  "New Wave" movement in France, with its twisted and film noirish view on society and with its jazzy underscores. This again opposed to the current, eclectic world of films that has "realism" as first priority - realism as reflected in colloquial speech and everyday manners - and the challenge to make these realisms successfully integrate into unrealistic scenarios.

The latter point is exemplified with Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR, a kind of update of BEN HUR. The characters in this movie act and behave as if they were present figures. This is not only motivated by the attempt of the producers to facilitate audience identification, but is also a result of our present film value system. Today's audience needs REALISTIC characters that never succumb to sentimental theatricalities like those so commonly used in the 30's and 40's. And if these overstated theatricalities happen to occur in new movies, they are appreciated for what they are, yet mocked at the same time for being just that(!).

Following this deduction, then, it goes without saying that a score like Rozsa's BEN HUR (marvelous as it is) would be very out of place in GLADIATOR. Hans Zimmer's score for this movie - a blend of electronics and orchestra coupled with a wailing solo voice - is just the thing this film needs to be "accepted" as a contemporary film. It underlines our present position in the history of social sentiment. This is not a deteroration. It is rather a musical document of the things we value in films today: believable characters, believable settings and  believable, causal narratives. And also our penchant for extreme detail in image and sound. "Clarity" is a word that sums it up nicely.

Well, let's move on to some more concrete variables.

Related to the film production itself, one should mention the RIGID TIME SCHEDULES and MARKET-ORIENTED system that haunt the current film world. Great pressure is put on the post production team to get the film finished in time. Stupendous costs run for each passing minute, and that pivotal summer weekend is approaching rapidly, the days that the "suits" have decided for premiere. The days that the movie is expected to recoup some of its insane investments. The composer is part of this team, and the pressure to compose a fullborn, artistically viable score that supports the movie in a few weeks time can be overpowering. This pressure was not present to the same extent in the early days of film music.

The composer is also liable for REPLACEMENT if a "test audience" finds the score unappropriate, or if the big brotherish "suits" find it too heavy for an audience to grasp. This was usually not the case with the contract-bound film composers of the past.

Then there's also the "TEMP TRACKING" (using previously recorded music as temporary score to "guide" a composer), whose sole intention seems to be a robbing and underestimation of the composer's creative abilities. This was an unknown factor in the "golden age" of cinema.

Now, I will not deny that these things (and more) represent a sorry, recent trend in films and film music, and more credit is thus due to today's film composers for creating what they do. Because I DO think that they - despite the aforementioned obstacles - create great scores. Let me explain:

The forte of today's film compositions lies primarily in its ECLECTICISM:

You see, today's situation in film music is no different than in any other branch of contemporary art: it is branded with the terms "post-modernism" and "deconstruction". We really have everything everywhere all the time, to the extent of being spoiled.

We see film composers pop up all over the place, SANS EDUCATION. As opposed to the rigidly educated, classically trained composers of the 30's (Korngold, Steiner, Newman, Tiomkin, Waxman, Herrmann et. al.) that toiled steadily under contract at the many film studios, we now have John Smith and his recently acquired Yamaha-500 synthesizer who sets up his own film score studio in his condo basement. This is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it provides the film music community with an immense wealth of musical raw material and tough competition. More composers are "produced" than earlier, and although a lot of them end up being hacks, the crop of excellence remains with those that have the "gift". Take Danny Elfman. Here's a guy who has come out of rock'n roll and grown into one of the most innovative and original musical voices in Hollywood. A child of the film-sensible generation, he has required no particular training in classical compositon to be where he is today.

But the "cool" thing is that Elfman is only one version of the current, totally eclectic film music "style". Today, we have John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Maurice Jarre, Elmer Bernstein, John Barry etc. that maintain the classical tradition of the golden era and onwards. We have Hans Zimmer (and his MV employees), James Newton Howard, Christopher Franke etc. that nurture the electronic blends. We have guys like Elliot Goldenthal, the aforementioned Elfman and John Corigliano who incorporate contemporary, dissonant classical music into film scores. We have those truly original composers that create completely uncategorizable music based on odd instrumentations such as Thomas Newman and Mychael Danna. We have the "updated" classical sound as represented by Alan Silvestri, Michael Kamen, Joel McNeely or David Arnold. We have the rock, pop, blues and jazz artists that venture into film music terrain now and then, and utilize the style they know so well. The list goes on.

It is this allencompassing range as a concept that is the true strength of current film music. It manages to be original and identifiable historically through the voices of innovation, and at the same time showing off all styles that history has served us. Incredible.

Now, you might have noticed that the point of departure in this article is the Hollywood system and frequently the action/sci fi film. This is not incidental. By arguing for the continued validity (and often excellence) of this system and genre, I am defending the greatest "beast" of them all. The other current directions in present film music and films - the independent films, the dogme films, the visual artfilms etc. are easier to defend as concerns originality in a historical perspective, and thus speak for themselves, I think. So by defending the status quo in Hollywood, I am defending the status quo in general.

So, there it is. I have tried to mention a few variables such as technology, sentiment/estheticism, film production turmoil, composer pressure then and now and eclectism as a foundation for my thesis that film music has not deteriorated, but rather adapted itself to the presence.

And with all these soundtrack releases that pour down on us from above - reissues and restorations of old scores, isolated DVD music tracks and separate score releases for almost every commercial film released, just to mention some - it is really good to be a film music afficionado today. Almost too good to be true, in fact.