Importance of booklets and liner notes

I love a good booklet. What often irritates me is those booklets with more text about the film than the score. And those with dozens of pictures of the actors and none of the composer.

But of course, those 90s Varese albums with extremely little info were something special, lol. Just a few black and white pictures of an actor in the 4 page booklet.

They’re an important part of the appeal of physical media. I don’t go back and read them again and again, but might consult them for some information if I’m writing an article or something. Especially the Williams specialty label releases.

I particularly like Jim Titus’ work. He designed some CD-Rs for me some 20 years ago, but has since risen to fame, of course.

For soundtrack releases, not of much importance. They’re usually used as extensions of the promotional material and aren’t that interesting. For classical, and opera most of all, I find them essential to the experience. I moved from digital back to cds for that very reason.

I think I can echo most of what Nick has said here. I always appreciate an elaborate booklet with a well written essay, and I usually read it before putting in the CD. The background information on both the film and the score gets me into the mood – and sometimes even stoked – for listening to the CD.

But I’m of two minds about track-by-track analyses. That’s not really common anymore, though, although most of the FSM (and some of the other labels’) releases had them back in the day. On the one hand, it’s interesting to get an understanding of what the composer tried to accomplish in a given scene, and what he did to achieve it. But it really doesn’t enhance the listening experience itself. Also, it chops it up, since you basically have to put the player on pause between each track, to read about and get ready for the next. So I hardly do that anymore.

I sure have lots of film music where I haven’t seen the movie, so I appreciate good liner notes that tell me something about the movie and how the music is generally applied and functions within it.
As I said, I don’t think there is just “one right way” for liner notes. Track by track analysis can make a lot of sense, especially when the film score is composed to picture with a clear compositional and dramatic narrative that reflects certain key moments, or when musical concepts and devices reflect key ideas of the movie. Also, often times I haven’t even seen the movie, so a general outline about the function of the music within the movie can be quite interesting. On the other hand, there is a lot of film music that is composed completely different. When a film score is more composed with certain moods or themes or doesn’t have a symphonic/narrative structure, a track by track analysis isn’t really important.
I think by and large the best liner notes give you insights about the music that are not readily obvious or background information (about the movie, the composer, the time when the music was composed, etc.).

Same with operas, I appreciate if there’s a libretto and summary of what’s going on and why who is singing what, since most operas are hard to follow if they are sung in a language you don’t understand and don’t see what’s going on. BLUEBEARD’S CASTLE is such a case where good liner notes (with translated libretto and stage directions) really help to “put you on the journey”.

I have the Marco Polo recording of Dimitri Tiomkin’s RED RIVER on my desk here, that has really good notes. There’s an introductory note by the conductor (William Stromberg), short notes about Tiomkin, notes about how the recording came about, quotes by Tiomkin himself and Christopher Palmer, notes about Howard Hawks and the movie, what Hawks was trying to accomplish and how that aligned with Tiomkin’s music, as well as a detailed track by track analysis of the complete score. That’s a lot packed into 30 pages or so.

Yes, that’s true of course. Whereas classical music albums always (even in LP days) came with extended liner notes, the original soundtrack album releases usually didn’t have any. But that is because for the most part, especially in the 1970s to the 2000s, the “Original Soundtrack Album” was a promotional tie-in product. There is no room for a (critical) assessment, overview, and background information about the music or scoring process. That was not the audience these albums were made of. That’s like the “making of” featurettes on current movie releases often feature little more than a few actors telling each other how great working together was. It becomes more interesting when older movies get remastered releases, when you find sometimes very interesting features, background stories, etc. (With THE HEART OF DARKNESS documentary being almost as interesting as the movie APOCALYPSE NOW itself.)
So on those older soundtrack albums, you may get a nice note from the director (if you’re lucky), or nothing but a few stills and album credits. They were more produced like “pop” albums, where you usually only get a few stills of the artist and credits (and if you’re lucky, the lyrics of the songs, always liked that), more isn’t needed.
Though it’s been a while that I bought a soundtrack CD of a then more or less concurrent movie release… not sure… maybe INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY was the last one.