[Thor Joachim Haga]

While film music is not a ‘genre’, it IS a type of music (‘applied music’) with its own set of trademarks. So I take issue with the contention that it’s just interchangeable with ‘absolute music’. That’s relativisim taken too far, and downvalues the idiosyncracies of film music as an art form unto itself. Some of those trademarks or “gimmicks” are accentuated versions of things that already exist in concert music (tenuto strings for suspense, stingers, mickey-mousing etc.), some have to do with structure and immediacy. I tend to say that film music often has to get to its emotional point quicker, with less time for ornamentation, because it adhers to specific timings that are more specific than even ballets and incidental music for the stage (necessarily, because film isn’t live). Film music is generally more “unstable”, and has more dynamic, more sudden shifts.

So the interesting thing for me, in that thread I linked to, were those pieces before the advent of film, that were as close as possible to what was to come. It would probably need to be late romantic, and works with a very specific narrative.

You mentioned Wagner, and I certainly agree that he’s a natural predecessor to film music. But the interesting thing is that whenever his music has been used in films, it’s usually his more self-sufficient piececs that stand out, kinda detached, in film sequences (like montages) similarly to a pop song. Whether it’s “Ride of the Valkyries” in APOCALYPSE NOW (and many other films) or the pieces in THE NEW WORLD and EXCALIBUR. Off the top of my head, I can’t remember an example where they’ve used a more film music-like Wagner piece for a dramatic sequence, with synch points and everything. That would be the TRUE lakmus test, I think.