[Thor Joachim Haga]

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 want to push it all towards independence. That’s easier with free-form concert music than music that is composed to fit certain external mechanisms. But over the years, I’ve become pretty good at listening to it as its own thing, regardless of what the music is composed for. It’s tricky with things like STAR WARS, but even here, I’ve reached a point of ‘independent listening’ by now.

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.

Again, that’s where we disagree — and we keep going in circles on this. A great film score isn’t always great listening music. UNDER THE SKIN is a great film score; a use of the tool that is film music. THE TERMINATOR is a great film score – often merging with the industrial sound design of the film. But industrial bangs and clangs do not constitute great listening music for me, or do low-register drones. I’m simplifying a little bit in my descriptions of these scores, but the point remains the same. I don’t like to listen to them, but I enjoy them immensely in the films.

We can agree or disagree about the merits of these scores as standalone listens, but there is no rule that says “a great film score is always great music”.