[Thor Joachim Haga]

FSM # 3: January 11, 2001

For those of you who have followed my postings on this board, you should know my view on film music as an “independent” art form; film music as any other music genre and not simply a film tool. I really don’t want to start another thread on that again, though, as that horse was executed a long time ago.

However, based on the above “foundation”, I have assembled four criteria as to what I consider “good” [film] music, something I have also touched upon in previous threads, yes, but – as far as I remember – have never devoted an entire thread to. So here goes nothing.

[Film] music is “good” if it appeals to my…:

1) EMOTIONS

Perhaps the most obvious criterion. By triggering the basic moods in my body – happiness, sadness, anxiety etc. – the music tells me something, it does something to me physically. This is essential.

2) MEMORY

No, this does not mean memory as related to the movie, but rather memory of one’s own past. There are certain passages in certain scores that may resurrect a sensation or a memory (or both) that you had completely forgotten about. This is where SUBCONSCIOUS IDENTIFICATION with the music comes in.

3) IMAGINATION

It is crucial that the music “paints” in some way or other. This can be “inner films” forming narratives or “inner pictures” that evokes a mood. Or – as I remember from my own teenage years – you imagine yourself standing on the podium performing the music as if it was your own with a crowd consisting of awestruck relatives and friends, making the music “yours” and easier to dissect, which brings me to….

4) INTELLECT

The music must stimulate the right side of the brain – the analytical side – in some way or another. The music must provoke analysis (dissection). This can for example be exploring the music for intricate details and delicate structures and making sense of them all and how they are interrelated.

Note that the four criterias form a scale – from “heart” to “brain”.

If you think about it, you will see that these 4 criteria cover a vast amount of territory. You can put many things below these overarching categories.

Nevertheless, I’m certain there are a few criteria I have omitted, and I’m fully aware that the lines between the above-metioned ones are blurred.

In any case, a “good” score satisfy all the criteria, a bad score none. Some scores are linked more closely to one than the other (PLANET OF THE APES is more a number 4 for me, while BEYOND RANGOON fits nicely into 1 and 3).

Most of you will probably label a “good” score as one which WORKS in some way or other for the movie it was written for (and I have to agree with that). But let’s say you discard that opinion for the moment. What would YOUR criteria be? What “scale” would you use? How would YOU define what is good [film] music? Is it even possible to form objective criterions for such a subjective experience?

[GerateWohl]

Interesting topic. Especially because I would slice criteria for good score differently. I wouldn’t call my criteria catalogue complete but there are some things that I can already formulate.

Elevation
A good score elevates the action on screen. What do I mean by that? This goes maybe hand in hand with your emotion criterion. A good score makes the action on screen larger than life. It contributes to the aestetics of the film as an audio visual experience and in good cases it makes the whole more than the sum of its parts.
That is part of my trouble with Hans Zimmer. I have special memories of movies scored by him where I felt raþher distracted by his score and that it pulled it rather down than elevating it.

Style
I would say, I have a quite distinct musical taste. It happens rarely that I hear a score and think, I really don’t like that music but it serves the picture well. I really have to like the music as itself to call a score a good score. And the score is for me a crucial part of the movie experience. If I don’t like the score, I can still like the movie. But then it is a good movie with a bad score.

Balance
I really like a good wall-to-wall score. But there are also movies which are especially good, because the, have hardly any score. A clever ommission of music can have quite impressive effects. It must feel balanced. By the way, another thing that annoys me with some of Zimmer’s work. I find that especially intrusive in some Nolan movies like The Dark Knite Rises or, yes, the widely praised Interstellar where the omnipresent pulsing music managed to annoy me in some places.

I think, that’s it for now. If a fourth criterion comes to my mind, I will add it.

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Let me start with a quote from Tolstoy, because every Internet post gets an automatic quality buff when started with a quote from a famous Russian novelist:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

I use that because I love that quote and always wanted to use it, and now I finally got the chance. And the Film Score Monthly site and forum is down, so I get to spend my allocated forum time here instead. Which is why this may become a tad lengthy… For some reason though Thor’s “$1000 Question” inspired me to ponder about this today on my walk with my dogs, and to jot down my views on this.

Anyway, here is the parallel I want to draw with that quote:

Every great film score is great in its own way. I don’t think there is a universal formula, no checklist that guarantees greatness. In my view, many, or even all the things you mentioned — elevation, emotion, memory, imagination, intellect, style, balance — these are all valid, these can all be used to analyze and judge a piece of film music “great”, but another film score may come along that subverts all of these and be just as great.

That’s why I don’t have a template, or a checklist, or a set of rules for what makes a score “great”, and I find it hard if not impossible to talk about greatness in art — music or film or literature or paintings — without referring to actual works. I approach all art, and especially music, from the other direction.

Instead of measuring a (film) score against a pre-established score card, I just decide that a score is “great”, I just “recognize” a work or a piece of art as “great”, and then I ask myself: why. Why is that score “great”, or why do I consider it “great”. And then I peel away the layers and try to get to the core of what makes a particular score great.

Because film scores can be great for radically different reasons. Sometimes it’s musical architecture, sometimes captured atmosphere, sometimes audacity. I try to come to any new piece of music open minded, to stay alert for new ideas, new aesthetics, new ways music can fuse with image. If I began with rigid criteria, I’d risk missing a great piece of art because it did not fit in with my set of established rules. Or at least would fear it. So my process is the reverse: I judge a film score first, and then decide and try to decipher the underlying rules and ideas that made me come to that conclusion. Or at least which score card I pull out for it.

So I pick four examples of film scores I consider “great”, but for very different reasons.

There is BLADE RUNNER (1982) by Vangelis.
That’s just a highly atmospheric score. Vangelis didn’t write a dramatic underscore, this is not narrative music, it is music that lingers and fills the world of the movie like the smoky haze that drifts through Ridley Scott’s dystopian Los Angeles. It is synthetic, yet very organic… the music doesn’t “tell” you what Deckard feels, it just makes you feel what the city feels: neon melancholy, rain-soaked isolation, it’s a future that’s already tired of itself. (I love the movie, just like I actually love Dick’s book). BLADE RUNNER is music as part of the environment, it’s a soundscape, an immersive musical soundscape, that engulfs you.

Which is totally different from

Howard Shore’s THE LORD OF THE RINGS (2001-2003)
This is classic leitmotivic “Wagnerian” film music at its best. It’s epic and highly operatic. Where Vangelis captured the “mood” of BLADE RUNNER, Shore’s music is practically the novel… it is THE LORD OF THE RINGS told in music. It’s a masterclass in leitmotivic technique. Every culture, every character, every moral axis has its own musical DNA. You recognize it subconsciously when watching the movie, but the vastness and intricacy of the ideas became only clear to me when I read Doug Adams’ book about the music in context with many note excerpts. There are themes for cultures, characters, concepts… in fact, the titular Ring alone is represented by at least three different musical ideas (the “history of the ring” theme, the Ring seduction theme, and the evil Ring theme). Shore even uses musical semiotics, like the aleatoric textures for the Watcher in the Water (which is without clear form and shifting), an eight-note motif for Shelob (eight legs, eight eyes, eight notes… maybe on the nose, but fun). Howard Shore’s music does not just accompany the story; it tells the story. It’s really THE LORD OF THE RINGS in sound. Wagner probably would have approved.

And here’s another piece of greatness:

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1969) by Ennio Morricone
Morricone’s themes don’t develop like Shore’s, and the music isn’t just atmosphere like Vangelis’. Instead, the music here is often broad and bold, the music lingers, it stays with you long after you have seen the movie. Major characters get their musical soul, there is Jill’s beautiful, aching lyricism, the haunting Harmonica theme that ties Bronson’s and Fonda’s characters. There isn’t really much (though some) motivic interplay. Morricone (and Leone) here are after grandeur, myth, and emotional punch. “Big” music for “big”, archetypal Western moments. And of course: silence where silence tells more. Those opening credits with the creaking windmill… perhaps my favorite 10 minutes of cinema of all time. No music at all…

So… to get back to the original question… the “$1000” question… What makes film music great? I have no idea, or perhaps better, I don’t have a single set of ideas… or maybe I have too many ideas what makes a film score great. So when I think a film score is great, I configure my score card on the fly for that particular score. Maybe that’s how I tick… I think I learned something about myself today writing this.

PS: I said “four” but only came to “three” before I had to go… I may add the one I had in mind later, but I guess I made my point.

[GerateWohl]

Every great film score is great in its own way. I don’t think there is a universal formula, no checklist that guarantees greatness. In my view, many, or even all the things you mentioned — elevation, emotion, memory, imagination, intellect, style, balance — these are all valid, these can all be used to analyze and judge a piece of film music “great”, but another film score may come along that subverts all of these and be just as great.

To avoid misunderstanding. The criteria that I came up with have no ambition to be a template for objectively great scores. It are just measures for my personal taste what I consider great. Others might see it differently. But after about 45 years of paying distinct attention to film scores in countless movies I have come to know what I like and what works for me.
For example I for my part was a little disappointed over Shore’s Lord of the Ring scores. I have come to like it over the years quite a bit after I got used to it.
But especially when it comes to the music for the orks and alike for this fantasy World I wished we got a score a little less conventional and more original, something more in the direction of Goldsmith’s Planet of the Apes, just in a more contemporary style.

[Malte Müller]

But especially when it comes to the music for the orks and alike for this fantasy World I wished we got a score a little less conventional and more original, something more in the direction of Goldsmith’s Planet of the Apes, just in a more contemporary style.

Although I did like it, I had the same feeling back then! Especially already loving POTA and also Rosenman’s LOTR although that could have used some IMHO unavoidable “celtic” stylings here and there.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

Some excellent posts by Gerate and Nick there. There really isn’t anything right or wrong about which criteria one uses (all the ones mentioned so far seem fine to me), but there’s always the strive to find some sort of broad, semi-objective criteria that can function as umbrella categories for more specific sub criteria. Re-reading that old FSM thread, I see a made a post a few months later, in June 2001, where I tried to use criteria I had picked up from a media criticism course I was attending, to film music. I DO still like these main criteria as overarching categories, although there’s much to be discussed and nuanced within them. Here’s what I said at the time:

————-

Since I’ve just completed a course in media criticism here at the university, I thought I’d resurrect this thread – to see if anyone is interested in further discussion.

The reason is simply that I have several new criteria to add.

The four criteria that I mentioned in the initial post have really to do with the SUBJECTIVE interpretation of the product; with the quality we attach to a product out of a simple identification with it. I’m still 100% behind that one and I think they cover a lot of ground.

However, one may also forward several socalled OBJECTIVE criteria; criteria that reviewers (should ideally) use when they’re talking about a certain film or film score to assess a legit dichotomy between ‘good’ and ‘bad’.

If one is going to use the same “type” or system of criteria that is applied to literary texts, one can separate between the following:

1) A MORAL/POLITICAL CRITERION

This has to do with the ‘attitude’ in the text; how ‘important’ it is in a political or ethical context. I find it hard to relate this to film music, though (although easily to film, of course).

2) A COGNITIVE CRITERION

This has to do with the ‘depth’ of the text – what the text has to offer intellectually. This one is basically the same as my no. 4) in the first post.

3) A GENETIC CRITERION

This is a criterion first and foremost attached to the text’s ORIGINALITY – whether in relation to other historical texts/scores or to the artist’s own output. Innovation.

4) AN AESTHETIC CRITERION

This is perhaps the most relevant criterion in a (film) music context. It has to do with the actual artistic expression.

It can be subdivided into three:

a) Complexity

The text/score has to offer more than one level of perception. Several text/score levels, several reader/listener levels, several interpretative levels etc.

b) Integrity

The score has to be ‘tied together’ in one way or other. Coherence. Unity (see Dan Hobgood’s recent FSDaily, although I have several issues with his point-of-departure). The MOTIVATION for certain approaches etc.

c) Intensity

There has to be a “hook” in the text/score, something that can emotionally engage the listener to continue listening. Vivacity. How “new” can a well-known phenomenon be described to attract interest? Attached to this is the theory of “audience expectations”.

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

There really isn’t anything right or wrong about which criteria one uses (all the ones mentioned so far seem fine to me), but there’s always the strive to find some sort of broad, semi-objective criteria that can function as umbrella categories for more specific sub criteria

Fully agree, because we look for patterns and meaning.
Though I think the evaluation of art in general and music in particular is basically subjective. I don’t see how anything can be evaluated objectively, as value is bestowed and not inherent, and as such always dependent on personal preferences.

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

I have one more… well, I got more than four, but I originally wanted to pick four examples, but didn’t get to finish what I wanted to write. So here is the fourth one I didn’t get around to writing yesterday (we went to the theater).
Phlip Glass’ KOYAANISQATSI (1982), which opened completely new doors of music for me. I was a teen back then, and had never heard anything like it before. I was already interested in both classical music and film music, I knew Wagner and Beethoven and Stravinsky, and even some Schönberg, even some Ligeti, and of course Morricone, Williams, Goldsmith for film scores… but here came something along I had never heard before.
A type of music that would be called “minimalist” (I didn’t know the term back then), but Glass music was repeating arpeggios, gradual shifts, hypnotic layering… if Wagner’s music was oil paintings and Stravinsky’s music was ink sketches Glass’ music was… mosaics.
I was still in school, but I had a summer internship at the German distributer for KOYAANISQATSI, Atlas film, and access to all the promotional materials, so I got the poster and LP and stuff.
Glass music was perhaps the type of “current” modern classical music that was not overly concept bound and abstract, nor was is it simply regurgitating neo-romantic paths… it was definitely something different. KOAANISQATSI back in the day was an experiment, it was a highly influential film, and Glass himself would go on to apply his techniques and compose some very impressive film scores for movies with a more “classic” narrative. We’re all used to minimalist sound and music by now, but back in 1982, the music KOYAANISQATSI was radical. Even today, when I listen to it, the music has not aged, not dated, the music is timeless. (And was partially used, very effectively, in both the trailer and the movie for Zack Snyder’s WATCHMEN.)
That was the fourth score I wanted to mention among my examples for “great” film scores. And this one was one that would have fit in no score card I would have had back ín the day.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

I started re-reading that thread on JWFAN about plagiarism after the subject was broached in the Quincy Jones thread, and while reading it, it occured to me how highly people out there in the big world rank the ‘originality’ (or the ‘genetic’) criterion mentioned above. So much so that it completely overshadows the other criteria. A shame, because they are just as important, sometimes even more. In fact, originality – however you want to define that – probably plays a LESSER role in evaluating a film score than, say, the ‘aesthetic’ one for me. Just a thought.

[GerateWohl]

The example of this Quincy Jones piece and Yup-Nub illustrates the issue with originality quite well. I as a listener probably found Yup-Nub more original before I had heard the Jones piece. So, to a large degree the evaluation of originality is a matter of knowledge on the listener side. And that makes originality a very weak criterion for musical quality.

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

Of course to a large degree the evaluation of originality is a matter of knowledge on the listener side. The evaluation of any piece of art, music or not, depends to a large degree on the knowledge of the listener. That’s why those who write professionally about it should have some substantial background knowledge. You cannot evaluate or appraise art without contextual knowledge.

I think originality is very important, I think that’s obvious. But I also think that “originality” is often misunderstood, especially when it comes to film music forums. People hear a snippet of a melody or theme from something else, or hear that a composer repeats certain elements he has used before, and dismiss a work as “unoriginal”. But “originality” is not a holy grail per se, and “originality” does not mean that every note must be new, never been used before, and every theme unprecedented. That would be ridiculous. Motives, ideas, concepts can and should be recycled and re-worked, originality is not about only using materials no one has ever used before, it’s what you build with them that matters.

A film score can borrow. A film score can recycle motifs, echo melodies, re-use parts and patterns and whatnot. In some sense, music works like a language, and languages thrive on shared words, sentences, and building blocks. If you’d dismiss every novel as unoriginal because it contains the sentence “he said” your shelf would be pretty empty. What matters is not that ever note is “original”, but what the composer builds with them. I love Jerry Fielding’s STRAW DOGS, which is obviously highly influenced by Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. Jerry Fielding freely acknowledged that (would be hard to deny though), but that doesn’t mean STRAW DOGS isn’t an original composition. It is. It’s not a rip-off or plagiarism, it is an original film score that used ideas and techniques from a classical (theatrical) piece of music as a basis for its concept. That is still original.

[Schilkeman]

Pop art trains us to value novelty over craft. I don’t know what makes good film music. There’s plenty of it I find perfectly serviceable in the film that I wouldn’t cross the street for if they were giving away copies for free. I like western art music, and I like composers who write closer to that style. Does that mean Zimmer is a bad film composer? I have serious technical issues with his music. It’s much closer to pop music than art, but it works in the film.

Now treating the music as separate from the film, I am much more critical, and find deficiencies in almost all composers not named Williams or Korngold. As I concluded elsewhere, there’s a difference between film-composers and composers-who-write-for-film, and that one stands on its own much better than the other.

[Malte Müller]

It’s much closer to pop music than art, but it works in the film.

In German we often use the terms “E-Musik” (E is short for “ernst” so this stands for “serious music”) and “U-Musik” (U is short for “Unterhaltung” so this stands for “Entertainment music”) I personally like those or really divide between “pop” and “art” music rather than of course subjectively good or bad. Which as mentioned above does sometimes result of knowing a bit about what else is out there already.

[Thor Joachim Haga]

I think we have something similar in Norway – ‘kunstmusikk’ (art music) as separate from ‘underholdningsmusikk’ (entertainment music) or pop(ular) music. There’s also the term ‘bruksmusikk’, which is taken from the German ‘gebrauchsmusik’ and often used on film music. The latter somewhat derogatorily, perhaps, but it is technically correct.

[Malte Müller]

Yes, `gebrauchsmusik’ (meaning “applied music”) in contrary to “absolute music” (meaing the “concert” or “art music”) are also commonly used terms. Although “Gebrauchsmusik” as “U-Musik” has a strong lower rank connotation to it.

[Schilkeman]

In German we often use the terms “E-Musik” (E is short for “ernst” so this stands for “serious music”) and “U-Musik” (U is short for “Unterhaltung” so this stands for “Entertainment music”)

In music school we learn there are three kinds of music, Art, Pop, and Folk. In life, I’ve learned there are two kinds, Interesting and Boring. Of course, what we find interesting correlates directly with how much we know about something, so as I’ve gotten older, and as my ears have gotten better (even if some of the finer points of theory recede from my memory) it’s become mostly all Art all the time.

[Nicolai P. Zwar]

I never subscribed to the German split between E-Musik and U-Musik. Not in school, not now. It’s bollocks really.
First, the terms are misleading. Is all E-Musik “serious” and not entertaining? Is all U-Musik entertaining but not serious? That’s ridiculous. Apply that literally and Peter Gabriel’s Biko becomes E-Musik while Prokofiev’s First Symphony becomes U-Musik. Because one is more about being “serious” and one is composed primarily as an entertaining exercise. But no one uses these labels that way. Because these terms are ill advised and, in my view, come from a misguided intention to place one “type” of art above another. Note: I am not saying you cannot do that, I am just saying the way it’s been done has been misguided.
Because it is the same intellectual dead end as “Hochliteratur” vs “Unterhaltungsliteratur”, a dividing distinction that you will not find in that way in the Anglo-Saxon literature. I reject this divide because both distinctions smuggle in an evaluating hierarchy that cannot reasonably be upheld. At the core is a misunderstanding of art itself. Music and literature do not carry inherent value. Value is created in perception. Value lives with the listener, the reader. Exclusively.
So I used to search for a better lens, and found it (years, nay, decades ago, but still) when Leonard Bernstein nailed it in his Young People’s Concerts: The main difference between classical music and pop music, or jazz music is Western classical music is fixed. Written down. That is the main distinction. And it matters.
Because that fixation, those black dots on white paper, ironically unlocks a level of creative freedom pop music does not have. Because that Western classical music tradition enabled musical compositions and constructions of unprecedented complexity. A symphony can arc across an hour with precision and complexity no jam session could dream of. Pop thrives in the moment, it is tied to the performer. Classical thrives in architecture, in structures refined over years. Again, all borders are fluent, but this is still by far the clearest and best defined divide between classical and pop music.
Because it is not about “higher” or “lower”, and I think that is important. Not because you cannot divide and distinguish between “higher” and “lower”, of course you can and you should, but that distinction should be apart from definition. It is highly problematic if you impose evaluating terms on definitions, because evaluations are inherently subjective, but definitions should strive to be applicable and “true” regardless or personal perception.

So I had my issues with these terms as far back when I was in school, and now that I have read many more book since then and heard a lot more music since then, I think that way even more.

[Malte Müller]

I never subscribed to the German split between E-Musik and U-Musik. Not in school, not now. It’s bollocks really.
First, the terms are misleading. Is all E-Musik “serious” and not entertaining? Is all U-Musik entertaining but not serious? That’s ridiculous.

Fully agree, I never liked those terms, too. There is sort of good or bad work. Sometimes that judgement may depend on what it was made for or my current scope of knowledge as already discussed above.

[GerateWohl]

The funny thing is that the terms E- and U-Musik origined in a time when the so called entertainment music was particularly more complex and ambitious than some of the serious music today.

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