[Thor Joachim Haga]

We briefly touched on track-by-track analyses (in liner notes) in this thread, and while searching my “back catalogue” at FSM for the ongoing ressurection series (sadly, many of the topics I’ve created over the years are met with a “404” error when I click them….I hope they fix that!), I stumbled on to one called “Lashing out at Track-by-Track Analyses!” from 2001. While I laugh at some of the prose here, from 24 years ago, the sentiment pretty much stands, so I re-post it here:

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Most of you thought I was nuts when I lashed out at expanded releases. I probably won’t make a better case for myself when I’m now directing a kick against track-by-track analyses – at least the way they’re executed nowadays – in CD booklets and magazine issues. You don’t have to be a genius to understand that the two critical views are connected, though.

So, while trying not to regurgitate what has been said about a million times already (on the topic of FILM music vs. film MUSIC), I’ll explain.

You all know that I consider the film score album a separate entity that has nothing whatsoever to do with the film. As such, I even consider track TITLES superflous…Well, not exactly, perhaps, but the only purpose of track titles is, for me, that they work as a reference when I’m talking to guys like yourselves. A purely PRACTICAL function, in other words (that’s why I love Elliot Goldenthal’s music-style titles, like “adagio”, “lento” etc.). When I have purchased an album, I read the titles perhaps once, then never again.

No surprise, then, that I consider track-by-track analyses even MORE redundant and highly skippable. This is how they are written and why I think they don’t work:

PRESENT STATE:

Track-by-track analyses in most CD booklets and magazines nowadays are unfortunately limited to a purely DESCRIPTIVE level. They describe what is going on visually in a given scene and then proceed to describe what type of music is played and with what instruments etc. This is analysis in its purest “biological” form (dissecting the pieces of something). But only rarely do they move BEYOND that, to an attempt to describe how the film works in the visual context, of how it comments on the film symbolically, of how it “captures” or “creates” etc.. The consequence for the film MUSIC fan is that the analysis merely links the music to the film in a fetischistic manner. The consequence for the FILM music fan is that it simply tells us what we already know, what we already can gather from watching the film. Either way, it becomes void and redundant.

My “solution” to this can be separated into two scenarios:

FUTURE SCENARIO 1:

Describe the tracks in MUSICAL TERMS only (the way Luscious Lazslo does it here at the board), eschewing any mention of the film itself! This I would love, but highly doubt its feasability. It’s a minority approach that few will condone. Unfortunately.

FUTURE SCENARIO 2:

Elevate the analysis approach of the “present state” with ONE level, i.e. tell us how the music WORKS in a given scene, what it does to the overall narrative, what is its motivation etc.? Since this would still link the music to the film too firmly, I would probably still skip it upon purchasing an album, but this way it could at least become useful should I once decide to analyze a certain film and its music myself, and then see what someone else has written about it.

Don’t misunderstand me now: There is nothing wrong with track-by-track analyses per se! Just they way they’re written, or rather: the principle that dictates them (‘description only’).