[Nicolai P. Zwar]

But here the composer chooses it by musical means and not because the film demands it.

Yes, but that distinction requires extra musical knowledge, it is not obvious from the music itself, which is why I mean it’s not a musical characteristic. If you play that sequence to someone who does not know the music, the person could easily assume it was written to accompany a film and even hit precise spots.

Great topic btw even if we might not come to a conclusion 😉

The “conclusion” is simply that we may have different points of view of what we might consider “great”. Which is fine of course.

If a film score somewhat works inside the movie, but is trite, bland, unoriginal, uninteresting, boring, or whatever else that may prevent it from being appreciated as music on its own, I personally will not consider that film score “great”. Or even “good”. It may serve the movie in perfunctory way but is not interesting or valuable as music on its own. That’s probably the majority of film scores, but I’d never consider any such film scores “great” or even “good”. They are at best serviceable. Nothing per se wrong with being “serviceable”, but “serviceable” is far removed from “great”.

If, on the other hand, a film score works inside the movie, but does so in a fresh way that’s not trite, not bland but vivid, not unoriginal but inventive, not uninteresting but engaging, not boring but compelling, or (again) whatever (I just used the opposites of what could make music uninteresting as music), then it becomes automatically interesting as music per se and may be considered “great” or at least “good”.