Post by Thomas MuethingGood film music must be good music first.
I think you choose to forget that good film music might be good for reasons
other than simply being good music to listen to out of context.
Music may be used to effectively build tension through a scene, or to
provide a leit motif that helps organize the film, to foreshadow or set a
mood, sometimes in a near subliminal way and sometimes in a way that
foregrounds the music itself.
Film music is part of its context, its place in the whole, first. That is
its birth and reason to be. When it is also delightful to listen to outside
that context, that's wonderful, but it's not necessary to its being great
film music. Unless you don't consider incidental and functional pieces
fully music somehow?
The truly great film scores,
Post by Thomas Muethinglike Bernard Herrmann's Psycho or Jerry Goldsmith's Planet of the Apes,
are supremely effective scores AND great music without the images.
These are good examples of great scores, certainly. Goldsmith is wonderful
with big brassy fanfare moments, and he keeps the action flowing and on
films like Tora Tora Tora and Patton. I am a great admirer of Herrmann and
mentioned his Cape Fear earlier in this thread, a score I find particularly
evocative of long drawn-out tensions and terrors as opposed to the more
staccato Psycho. Cape Fear is one of those marvellous Herrmann marriages of
music with set and scenary that seem almost synesthetic, like the caverns
and the music in Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
But Herrmann is also a master of incidental music in his films, and
Goldsmith understands very well how a leit motif, like that theme in Patton,
can help bring structure and form to an episodic narrative. These artists
have composed great scores because they understand that music may have
functions in film that are not considerations in songs or concert music.