[Nick Zwar]

So if you are saying that there are special characteristics as MUSIC that sets film music apart from other types of music, and that these are thematic urgency and abrupt changes, I have to say, no. Film music may employ these more frequently, but there is not a single musical device that is not to be found in non-film music and vice versa, so gain, I’d have to say that these are not really musical distinctions. I mean look (or listen) to a piece like Edgar Varèse’s Amériques, with it’s sudden mood shifts from serenity to aggressive rhythmic dissonance on a dime.

But maybe we are not that far apart.

I think we both would recognize most film scores as film scores. Give us an album, blindfolded, not knowing what’s on there, and we could probably identify that it may be a film score. Not all the time, not always correctly, but often, simply because we are familiar with how film scores are usually constructed, composed and what they try to accomplish. So we are not disagreeing there. We are both agreeing that certain patterns, mood shifts, certain musical devices, perhaps even a certain length of cues, with thematic material related to other cues, are often very typical for a film score. So we agree that’s there and true. Pick any random (orchestral) film score neither one of us knows, and a random orchestral classical score neither one of us knows, blindfolded, and chances are, even if we don’t know the music, we could correctly identify which is which.

The only thing we seem to disagree on, it seems to me, that you seem to insist that there are any specific musical attributes that are more or less unique to film music, while I say that there are not. It’s just that certain specific musical attributes are particularly frequently applied and used in film music. That is, for me, a difference.