[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Since so many scores as heard in their accompanying films are already edited, cut, copied and pasted around, such as in ALIENS, PREDATOR and DIE HARD, these aren’t really comparable to a concert work or pop/rock album. The composer might have composed “wild cues” to be used anywhere or not written any music for a specific sequence, which then has cues tracked in from elsewhere.

Sure, that’s why I generally (“generally” referring to a “general” rule and tendency, not an “absolute”) tend to prefer to listen to film scores as the composer originally intended them to be, not how they ended up in the movie.

I would say most film scores are not very interesting to listen to as music, so it’s just select composers whose music really interests me. I tend to gravitate towards composers like Alex North, Jerry Goldsmith, Leonard Rosenman, etc., and these very much approached their film scores with classical music architectures in mind, so their scores generally benefit from being more or less listened to the way they were composed. That’s because their compositional background led them to compose their works “through”, and not moment by moment and scene for scene. As far as repetition is concerned, that’s a device like any other: if it serves the dramatic structure of the music, great, if not, not. But far too often I’ve seen carelessly produced soundtrack albums where obviously musically ignorant people re-arranged cues more or less like a pop album: a slow cue here, a fast cue there, and so on… get some variety, without regard to the actual musical structure. If, on the other hand, that’s done with some actual musical sense (like Christopher Young, for example, arranges his albums), well, I’m all for it.

Last, but not least, as I said: I think anyone can and should listen to music the way they want to. If people have fun editing their albums, go for it. If people have fun whittling down their albums, by all means, no one is stopping you. If people are only happy if their film scores are complete and chronological, that’s fine. If people are only happy if the film score is short (like an LP) and get impatient with longer works, fine too. Today’s digital world allows anyone to listen to music any way they want to, so that’s actually pretty cool. No more “one size fits all”.

I don’t fall in any particular “camp”, I just usually don’t invest the time to carefully analyze an album to re-arrange or edit or whittle the music… I either like what I hear or don’t. If I think an album is “too long”, chances are I won’t like it in shorter form either.

Last but not least, not all film scores are alike. There are the classically structured scores by people like Goldsmith or North, these tend to have a musical architecture that gets easily fractured if you carelessly re-arrange the cues (even though sometimes cues can be re-arranged for musical reasons… for example, the cue “The Landing” in Goldsmith’s ALIEN is one of the first cues in the movie and on the film score presentation, but it’s actually a “musical resolution” cue that — for purely musical purposes — should may be placed near the end, perhaps even the penultimate cue…. maybe I’ll make a playlist and try it out. Then again… I can just press “play” and place the cue towards the end on the fly. 🙂 ).

Then there are scores by Ennio Morricone, that are not always composed “dramatically” to picture but more themes and variations. You can often easily arrange those around, or skip some, or add some… and make your own albums out of them. Not all Morricone scores are always best when you listen to all cues in one sitting. I enjoy very much the way FSM presented DAYS OF HEAVEN, which out of the box already gave you three distinct variations to listen to the score (of which, ironically, the original soundtrack album presentation is the least interesting).

Some scores by Hans Zimmer are more “mood” setting pieces, there is no strict musical architecture, so the way Zimmer arranges his albums, often with long cues segueing into each other, I very much enjoy that, so his soundtrack albums are often not released compositions but arranged “concept albums”, which I enjoy very much.

So it all depends, it’s a case by case thing. I sure don’t mind if people enjoy editing their own albums. It’s just that I personally don’t have that particular time or inclination, and unless something jumps right out at me and screams “WRONG”, I prefer to spend my own time listening to music rather than editing it down to my own personal needs. But that’s just me.

Roger Ebert once famously noted: “no good movie is long enough and no bad movie is short enough”, so that goes for music as well as far as I’m concerned. No good composition (or album) is long enough and no bad composition is short enough.