[Nicolai P. Zwar]

But that’s only relevant for the creative process. For the receptive process, as audience, it’s irrelevant. A piece of music is not going to become better because the composer had all the freedom he wanted while composing, and it’s not going to be worse because it’s composed with the constraints of the film.

Not better or worse, but the experience of it may differ a bit.

Not quite sure I follow you.. I thought you are the one who tries to disassociate the film from the music as much as possible when listening, so how does it even influence your experience listening to the music if it’s been composed for a movie or not? I, on the other hand, don’t try to disassociate the film from the music when listening to it at all, it just sometimes happens (if I like the music but not the movie or I haven’t even seen the movie, the disassociation aspect comes naturally), sometimes not (STAR WARS or THE LORD OF THE RINGS scores are tied to their source material just as Strauss ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA).
But often, when I hear a film score, the fact that it is a film score does not influence my perception of the music at all.

Then it’s serviceable only. Not great. Not even good.

How so? Where do you get this reduction to ‘serviceable’ from?

Serviceable for me is if a film score that “hits the marks” mechanically, hopefully doesn’t get in the way, but doesn’t have anything to offer beyond its mere function. Music can be serviceable but uninteresting.

But to be great, film music has to be more than serviceable. I think a litmus test for a “great” film score is that it carries its own weight, that it stands on its own two legs, so to speak.

A serviceable “film score” is a film score that is carried entirely by the film. So the film is basically “done”, and the music is plastered on top here and there to kit a few scenes together, a sort of sonic adhesive. It’s the images and sound who do the heavy lifting, and the music itself is only there because the filmmakers fear its absence, so to speak. The music itself isn’t really good, it’s just preventing silence. It gets its meaning from the images.

A great film score, on the other hand, doesn’t need the film to carry it. It has its own musical spine, ideas, colors, gestures, a point of view, that adds to the movie. A great film score doesn’t just fill silence, it creates meaning. A great film score doesn’t work as adhesive, but it adds structure. A great film score works with the images, transforms the images, it’s not music that is serviceably just pasted on top of them.

A great film score can always survive without the picture because it wasn’t written merely to patch holes. It has musical intent, dramatic intelligence, it has some spark of originality that is not dependent on the edit or the images. A great film score is always great music, and great music can always stand on its own.