[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Exactly. Film music has certain specific properties that other forms of music do not.

Yes, I never denied that. Just as opera music has certain specific properties that other forms of music do not. Yet these specific properties are not musical distinctions per se.

It’s a separateness that should be CELEBRATED, and not dismissed as just any other type of music.

I’m certainly not dismissive of film music. Obviously not.

The stance that “music is music” is rather belittling to all the different kinds of music out there.

So you are saying music is not music? Of course music is music. All music must function as music before it can hope to do anything else. Including supporting a movie.

One thing is that it must co-exist with the film’s sound track otherwise (sometimes even merging with it, sometimes standing widely apart from it).

That is again, not a musical but functional distinction.

Another is the split-second timings within scenes.

Again, that’s a functional but not a musical distinction, and in the overall “picture” of film music “split-second timings” or “Mickey-Mousing” aren’t even all that common. Furthermore, it doesn’t really make a difference if the split second timing is because the music fits to a scene, the scene is edited to the music, or even such a device is used without film (such as the snare drummroll and sudden orchestral “drop” to announce Till Eulenspiegel’s execution in Richard Strauss’ composition… could have been Mickey-Mousing film music, but it’s not film music at all.)

It’s the musical artform that is the most ADJUSTED to other external things.

That’s probably true.

That means you can easily have scores that work wonderfully in the film, but not so much as pure listening.

I have never encountered score that works “wonderfully” in the film, but not as pure listening, which is why I say it doesn’t exist. I sure have seen plenty of films with scores that were “okay” in that they didn’t go in the way of what’s on screen but were not interesting by themselves, sure, but none of them were “great”. There is no such thing as great film music that is not great music first.

I’m surprised this is even something to discuss – it’s always seemed to me as one of those “obvious” things that everyone interested in film music experiences once in a while.

That’s because we are not disagreeing about the “obvious” things, we’re disagreeing about the conclusions. We are not disagreeing what film music is and how it functions, we are disagreeing about whether a music that is merely serviceable in a movie can be considered “great”. I say no, it cannot.