[Thor Joachim Haga]

I think you’re nuancing yourself out of some basic characteristics of film music, Nick.

We can discuss which terms to use, of course. If you don’t like ‘applied music’ vs. ‘absolute music’, we can use ‘concert music’ (also encompassing stage music) vs. ‘media music’ instead, or some other variation thereof.

It also isn’t particularly fruitful to look at film music that behaves as more self-sufficient pieces á la classical pieces (like the THE THIN RED LINE example….or, in fact, any ‘setpiece’ in a film that opens up to more freeform styles of music)…as these are not really representative of what we generally associate with traditional film musical “behaviour”/narration. They are an intrinsic part of many movies, but they ARE exceptions. You speak of ‘tendencies’, and I think the overarching dominant tendencies in film music are behaviour of a particular kind.

It’s really about how it behaves within a set time and space (an unmovable time and space, unlike various types of stage music, for example). It moves more quickly from one thing to another. There isn’t time to muck about, to ornate too much. As I touched on earlier in the thread, these are ATTRACTIONS to me, i.e. a reason why I generally prefer film music over classical music. But it’s also what opens it up to prejudiced criticism from the hoity-toity classical elite, which erroneously label it ‘simplistic’ or ‘functional’ or ‘without its own value’.

And yes — then there ARE concert music pieces that move dangerously close film music in both structure and style. I’m not familiar with Strauss’ DON JUAN, but that’s probably one of them. Interestingly composed just a couple of years after film was a thing. That’s actually the types of scores I were after in that thread, the ‘prototypes’.

I think it’s important to maintain film music’s value as ITS OWN ARTFORM, with every nut and bolt that comes with it. Not just music that ‘happens’ to appear in a film. But then also to recognize the traditions that came before it, and how they were incorporated into film music once original scores became a thing.