Film Music

~To be enjoyed independently?~

In fear of over-generalizing, there are two fractions of instrumental film music lovers:

1. The ones who enjoy film music as just that - film music indelibly attached to the movie itself, and which cannot be judged outside the screen. These usually buy soundtracks because the music reminds them of the movie, or rather, the MOOD of the movie overall or on a given point.

2. The ones who listen to film music as regular concert/classical music. They usually buy soundtracks simply because it's good music, not necessarily married to the film for which it was written.

I tend to put myself in the second category. The reason for this, is that I consider the soundtrack, released seperately on a CD, a work of art itself. The music might have been written for the screen, and in so speaking functioning like any other aspect of the moviemaking process, like photography, editing, casting, directing, acting etc.

But when released independently in a different medium, the score is "REBORN" (to use religious terms), and becomes something else - a conglomerate of emotional music excerpts, which, when bound together on a soundtrack, makes for an often pleasant musical voyage, similar to regular classical music.

So, why don't I just listen to classical music? Well, perhaps it has something to do with the "specificness" of a score - the fact that the music is written to enhance a specific mood in a specific scene. As such, it might be more concrete (but not always) and definitely more "unstable", which I consider a diversifying assett.

Still, I agree on the notion that the only way to ANALYZE film music as film music is in the context of the movie itself, of how it works with/against the visuals.

But when I dim the lights, make myself comfortable, crank up the volume and put on a score like, say, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, BATMAN or PLANET OF THE APES, it is not to relive the movie in any way (in fact, most of the soundtracks I own are to movies I have not yet seen), but rather to lean back and suck in the emotions of the music from beginning to end, without even looking at the track titles.

And it's a great rush.

Bonus Track:  Arguments Rephrased!

The following is a transcript of a letter I mailed to the prestigious film music magazine FILM SCORE MONTHLY in July - 2000 and which was published in their belated August issue:

"Dear Mr. Editor,

I am concerned. I am concerned because I sense a certain trend in FSM that does not appeal to me: While I realize that it has always been FSM's agenda and point of departure to focus on film music as related to the FILM itself and not so much on film music as a stand-alone experience, I feel this agenda has been taken to its extreme over the last few issues. I am referring to the recent PHANTOM MENACE issue that boasted a film-fetishistic overview of every second of music included in Lucas' sci fi extravaganza (I skipped this one). I am referring to the (otherwise excellently written and intellectually stimulating) articles by Guy M. Tucker on music in PAPILLON and JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH. I am referring to some sarcastic kicks in editorials and regular features both off and online, and an over-focus on FILMS in your CD reviews. Just to mention some. The sole saving grace in many instances have been Jesus Weinstein's music-specific and technically termed CD reviews. I love those. But, you might ask, why is this trend so bad in my opinion?

Well, see if you can follow this little deduction: 

A composer, inspired by the visuals of a film, writes specific music for a scene. Now, please remove the visuals (release the score on CD). The music, "reborn" in a different, aural medium (the CD), has "enveloped" the visuals and is in actuality a dramatic tone poem. It differs from classical music only in its "specificness" or "on-targetness"; in other words that it required a specific visual scene to be born in the first place (no, opera and ballet usually has [had] the music written IN ADVANCE of the performance). I would go so far as to say that film music SHOULD be considered a SEPARATE entity on par with any other music genre, and NOT a simple film appendix or an artistic sub-process of the over-arching film production. I realize that I am in the minority here, but I wish I weren't. 

Now, I'm not saying that it can't be intellectually interesting to analyze film music as heard in the film - of how it works with/against the visuals/action (the Tucker articles should prove that), but there's so much more to the enjoyment of music than intellect: emotion, memory, imagination. At least the latter two, I feel, can only be stimulated through listening to scores away from the movie.

To be even more blunt, I don't think film music should be called film music as such, but rather "visual music" or something more generic like that. I never read track by track analyses, I barely even look at the track titles when I listen to film music. To me it is, and has always been, film MUSIC first, then FILM music.

Well, the topic of independent film music is really worthy of an entire article (want one?) and a skimpy letter like this can only scratch the surface. But I hope I got my point across nevertheless.

Is this indeed a conscious trend I see? A trend towards extreme focus on film music as only related to films?

Yours sincerely,

Thor J. Haga"