Film music vs. classical music
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Although it was past even his own first film score I think (Lieutenan Kije). By Prokofiew the earlier Scythian Suite probably would also qualify, sounds very filmic to me.
We probably can even go back to Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique?
I guess Peter and the Wolf qualifies as well?
In this thread, yes. But it premiered in 1936, so about 40 years too late for the ‘spin-off’ issue of pre-1896 works.
The most “classically filmic” composer before actual film music was probably Richard Wagner. Hands down. Much of his output is basically “just” (and I put that in quotation marks) film music, except the film was performed on stage. There is really nothing that distinguishes Wagner’s music from film scores, because the entire concept is already there: leitmotifs functioning as character tags, orchestral textures engineered for maximum atmospheric impact, and harmonic pacing designed to manipulate narrative tension. In fact, if you dropped Wagner’s music into a Hollywood fantasy blockbuster, nobody would bat an eye. (Heck, EXCALIBUR just did it and nobody did bat an eye.)
Film music per se isn’t really different from any other form of music that was already there, it’s not as if film invented or required a “new type” of music, but certainly Hollywood talkies all of a sudden required an enormous amount of dramatic music, and/or music otherwise suitable to enhance and support drama, so a certain type of music and “bag of tricks” would be used often and in many compositions simply because there were so many movies… and then, like other forms of music, some film music compositions were inventive and cross-polinated classical compositions again and vice versa. It’s not as if film music is a singular “genre” of music, it’s basically just a venue for composers to work in.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.
In any case the “Ring ohne Worte” (Ring without words) albim that Lorin Maazel recorded (and also arranged if I remember right) is a great “film score”. Although I like the dramatic element I am not really an opera lover or more specific the singing (not to speak that that Wagner’s are very long, too ;-))
Of course some musical techniques lend themselves to accomplish or represent certain things within film music, and since there is an abundant amount of film music composed (way more than any other orchestral music, though of course not all film music is orchestral), you will find these techniques especially often in film music. However, there are certain things that need to be unpacked here.
First of all, while film music is certainly “applied music,” being “applied music” says nothing about the type of music it is. All music used functionally is “applied music.” By definition. Opera, ballet, church music, melodrama, incidental theatre music, radio drama, video game music, and even Renaissance dance suites are all “applied.” Film music is simply one more instance of music that is “applied” to something.
Second, there is no clear boundary between “absolute” and “non-absolute” music. The term “absolute music” was coined by Richard Wagner, incidentally only to reject the idea of such music. For Wagner, all music should be about something, so he himself regarded his music explicitly not as “absolute music.” Still, if we’re talking about “absolute” vs. “non-absolute” music, all the aforementioned types of music I mentioned — opera, ballet, etc. — are not “absolute” music in the way that term is used, no more than film music is. The distinction between “absolute” and “non-absolute” music is not a musical one, but simply one of perceived or applied intent. There is no musical difference between so-called “absolute” and “non-absolute” music, because the notes, harmonies, rhythms, and structures do not change their nature depending on whether a piece accompanies or represents something or stands alone. The real distinction is functional, not musical: “absolute music” is simply music presented as if it has no external purpose, while “applied” or “programmatic” music is created or used in relation to something outside itself, be it drama, ritual, dance, film, narrative, or imagery. In other words, the boundary isn’t in the sound, the boundary isn’t in the music, but in the context and intention surrounding it. There is no actual way to distinguish a piece of film music from a piece of non-film music just by looking at it from a musical perspective. Without the context, there is no difference.
While a “piano sonata” has certain clear characteristics that define what it is and can be distinguished from “non-piano sonatas” more or less purely on musical terms, the same is not possible for film music vs. non-film music. Because there is no clear boundary between film music and any other type of music. Many film scores are written in symphonic, chamber, electronic, or minimalist idioms indistinguishable from concert works. In fact, if a piano sonata is composed for a film, it is both film music and still a piano sonata. Because what makes it film music is simply that it is written for film, nothing else.
“Trademarks,” as you call them, are tendencies, not defining properties. I would certainly agree with you that if you look at film music as a whole, you will find that certain “trademarks” may appear more frequently in film music than in some other types of music, but “more frequently” already establishes that it’s just a tendency, not a real border. There is no musical device in any genre of music that cannot (and usually has not) been applied in film music, and there is no musical device used in film music that cannot (and usually has not) been applied to non-film music. Because there is no such musical “identity” as film music, there is just music written for film. Of course, and so there is no misunderstanding, there is an enormous wealth of film music written, and as such you will find a lot of commonalities and recurring tropes and “bag of tricks” in film music, but again, none of these are suitable to draw distinguishing lines between film music and non-film music, because none of them are inherent to film music.
I think your argument confuses function, which can be more clearly defined and basically all film music has a “function” of sorts, with musical identity. A piece of music becomes “film music” only by context of use, by its “origin,” not by any intrinsic musical features.
Even some of the tangential arguments don’t hold up all that well. I really don’t think that film music must necessarily adhere to specific timings more strictly than ballet or stage music, as you claim. Quite the contrary. Especially ballet music has to be exactly timed; ballet music is full of exact cue points, tempo-locked choreography, and bar-accurate transitions. Likewise opera has precise timings for entrances, lighting cues, scenic changes, etc. Film timing is not inherently more rigid. In fact, many directors edit and cut their scenes to already written film music, such as Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America; two very famous film scores by a very prominent “film composer”, yet by and large composed with no rigid sync-points or timing in mind. Some film music is not directly timed or related to any specific action that happens on screen at all, but just sets a mood. There are no rigid timings Vangelis’s music for Blade Runner adheres to; it’s atmospheric.
And it’s a stylistic choice, not a musical or structural necessity to “get to the emotional point quickly,” and many film scores unfold very slowly, like Zimmer’s The Thin Red Line or Jóhannsson’s Arrival; they don’t strive to get to an “emotional point” quickly.
On the other hand, concert music can be extremely specific, immediate, and to the point. Like Strauss’s Don Juan, or Don Quixote, with extremely sharp and clear “descriptive” structures, a very specific narrative, compositions that come to the “emotional point” of a “scene” (as in Don Quixote) very quickly. I don’t see The Thin Red Line or Once Upon a Time in the West as more “unstable” or with more dynamic and sudden shifts than Strauss’s Don Quixote; quite the opposite is obviously true. So again, these arguments are all based on certain perceived or in some cases real tendencies, but can easily be countered by example. Because a tendency is basically just a statistical count of frequency and not suitable to actually distinguish one piece of music from another. And that was my point: film music is not inherently different from any other type of music; it is not even a “style” of music. Because, unlike a “piano sonata,” which can be musically defined, the definition of what makes film music film music is outside of the music itself. It’s contextual.
As far as Wagner is concerned, yes, he is an obvious “predecessor” to film music, but Wagner’s influence on film music is structural, not just musical. When you say that his music is used in film only as self-sufficient pieces, like pop songs in montages, that’s certainly debatable. The Wagner pieces in, say, the opening of Excalibur, were not different in “use,” in “applicability” than had the scene been scored with original music. In fact, the way the opening scene was shot, it “synced” and timed specifically to Wagner’s music. In Excalibur, the way Boorman inserted the Wagner music, for an unaware viewer, it would be impossible to say whether the music was synced to the picture or the picture to the music. Because, again, the difference is contextual, not musical.
I would also greatly object to the idea that “sync points” are a litmus test for film music, because lots of film music does not specifically “sync” with any points (and conversely, lots of non-film music actually does “sync” with points and concepts). That’s an arbitrary test, and one that can easily be used either way.
However, my main point was actually that Wagner’s influence on film music is structural and conceptual, not merely musical. Leitmotifs, harmonic language, orchestration, and dramatic pacing in orchestral film music owe a lot to Wagnerian practice.
Any music can be used in a montage; again, that’s not a property of the music itself. And any piece of music can be made to sync with film; again, that’s not a property of the music itself. It is not possible to distinguish on purely musical terms whether a piece of music was composed to sync to a film, or whether a film was edited to sync to a piece of music.
Case in point right here, the wonderful Dvořák animated sequence from the Italian movie Allegro Non Troppo, a childhood favorite of mine: Is this music composed to sync to picture, or is the picture designed to sync to the music? We can only know this from context, obviously, but we cannot conclude it from the music itself. That’s my point.
Enjoy either way, I loved this ever since I was a kid (the movie is basically Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto answer to Disney’s FANTASIA). Enjoy!
First of all, while film music is certainly “applied music,” being “applied music” says nothing about the type of music it is. All music used functionally is “applied music.” By definition. Opera, ballet, church music, melodrama, incidental theatre music, radio drama, video game music, and even Renaissance dance suites are all “applied.” Film music is simply one more instance of music that is “applied” to something.
True, but in most films the music is far more less the focus as in most other genres you cited, especially in opera and ballet. Film music nowadays often is rather secondary (theater music may be simiar). I think we can divide between
– Classic stage based music being live where the play is often following the music in concept
– New media music being primarily recorded where the music is added “on top”. These media usages dictate far more how the music is than the classic ones do.Exceptions proof the rule (like Leone or THIN RED LINE)
If Strauss’ DON JUAN has any abrupt quick changes these decisions are far more musically – it has no play attached – and not dictated by any scene or cut that is just to short to develop.
“get to the emotional point quickly,”
I think this is a citation, some composer actually said this. Don’t remember who. Might be in Tony Thomas’ book or somewhere else.
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.
I think this is a citation, some composer actually said this.
Really? That’s a bummer. I was always proud of coining that ‘idea’ myself.
The contention I have, and I strived to make that clear, is not that most film music is “unimportant” as pure music, that it is mostly secondary to the images or story, that a lot of it is clichéd (as in overused tropes) and in many ways “banal”. That is the status quo “as is”, and I don’t disagree with that.
The contention I have is that you cannot “reverse engineer” the argument. While you can say that a lot of film music is clichéd and banal, you cannot say that that being clichéd and banal is a (necessary, implied, or needed) pre-requisite or characteristic of film music.
Likewise while you can say that film music is often composed to sync to specific scenes or images — which obviously is true — you cannot derive particular musical characteristics from that, or distinguish it musically from works that do not have to sync to specific images or scenes. Hence my example with the animated sequence up there. It’s impossible to say if the image syncs to the music or the music syncs to the image, unless you have contextual knowledge. (Obviously, the music was composed long before the movie.)
There is a wonderful Jerry Goldsmith score, one of my favorites, A PATCH OF BLUE. I picked up the LP sometime in the 1980s and it became quickly one of my favorite film scores ever. There is a cue in there, “Bead Party”, which I always particularly loved. It was jazzy, upbeat, and very syncopated. Now it’s a great piece of music as music, it’s excellent. When I eventually saw the movie, I noted that every syncopated click with the castanetes/wood blocks literally synced with an image of a beat on a string. Now this is hyper-synchronized music with sometimes three or more “sync points” within a second, I have no idea whether the music was composed to accentuate every beat, or the film was edited to take advantage of every syncopated “click”, but that’s the thing: without contextual information it is impossible to know, because the cue is absolutely musical (and terrifically so, the music just “flows”), yet also perfectly synced to the image. You can’t “reverse engineer” how it was done, because whether a film is synced to the music or the music is synced to the film is not a characteristic that can be readily asserted without contextual knowledge.
As far as exceptions proofing the rule, I would have to say that first of all, since I consider the vast majority of film music comparatively bland and uninteresting, the very scores I focus on tend to be “exceptional”. By their nature.
Secondly, the exceptions are part of my argument. I readily (and literally) conceded that some of the “idiosyncrasies” Thor mentioned can be perceived as tendencies, but, and that is what I said: “a tendency is basically just a statistical count of frequency and not suitable to actually distinguish one piece of music from another”. Let’s not forget the exceptions abound, there are plenty of such “exceptions” in my collection. So many in fact that it is easy to demonstrate the impossibility of “reverse engineering” a “framework” from statistical tendencies to examine individual film scores, because that framework would be distortive and by its nature would probably not do justice to the music. That’s my actual point.
I do get the general intention. It’s all not that easy. As we already said somewhere here there is a many bad opera, ballet etc music as there is bad film music. I guess in the classical world many of the bad works are simply forgotten and don’t appear. Probably as musch as some lesser known classical composers who probably would deserve to be heard more often but history has sorted out literally… (But who should listen to all that when? ;-))
Side note to PATCH OF BLUE since Goldsmith is one of my favorite composers. This is somehow one of his scores that never fully clicked with me.
But you can’t construct the identity of something based on exceptions. Yes, there are plenty of scenes in films where music takes on a more freeform, “fluid” role. We all know the sequence in E.T. where Spielberg edited to Williams’ music, for example. But most of it – the MEAT of it – is working on more of a micro level within scenes, and even more importantly – within the scenes’ synch and editing points. That automatically gives the music a special form of structure. Even moreso than tone poems, ballets, singspiele and what-have-you.
In deciding what something IS, you have to look at the ‘dominant tendencies’, to use your own words. There’s no reverse engineering in that. In most cases, however it’s been edited and synched up, it’s fairly easy to recognize what is originally a film cue and what is originally a classical cue. Even in that YouTube clip you posted.
Would you agree, Nick, that film music is its own artform?
I don’t object to and have no problems with terms such as “absolute music” or “applied music,” or “concert music” or “media music” or whatever.
What I do object to, and that is my own contention, is that these distinctions are not musical; they are not in any way describing musical differences, but only and exclusively contextual differences.My contention is that the self-sufficiency of music has nothing to do per se with the contextual cause of its origin. My contention is not that these differences aren’t real, but that they are not musical. And it’s obvious to see they are not, as so far not a single actual musical difference between film music and non-film music has been laid out.
I also object to the idea that such film scores as Once Upon a Time in the West or The Thin Red Line are in any way less representative of film music than… exactly what other film scores? I don’t even understand that line of reasoning. I can easily name dozens and dozens of film scores to underline my point. What exactly is your point? What exact film scores are you referring to? These two are highly acclaimed film scores.
(Of course, could be and I concede that perhaps my entire film score collection is exclusively made up out of non-representative exceptions, as why would I listen to music that cannot self-suffciently stand on its own as music?)I have mentioned film music examples specifically tied to picture and scenes, I have mentioned classical music pieces that have been tied to picture and scene just as much, I have named examples of film scores that are not tied to any specific scene, and I could easily name dozens of classical music examples which are specifically tied to “scenes” with clear “stingers” but don’t have to correspond to any scene. I think it’s not fair to dismiss all that as “exceptions” without providing counter examples that (according to you) represent the “rule” then.
The “exceptions,” and I put that in quotation marks because there are so many “exceptions” that it underlines my point: there are some statistical tendencies in film music, but there is no musical distinction between film music and any other type of music. Not one. Not a single one. And I have the examples on my side.
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