Extensions...

So, courtesy of Reed and Michael there's been somewhat of an ongoing discussion on one of my recent postings about film music, modern music and academics (and the snobbery that's attached to the latter 2). I thought I would bring the discussion to the main forum, so-to-speak, and continue to elaborate here.

I think part of the problem academics have with film music is that most of them - smart as they are - don't understand/can't comprehend that it's not meant to be a stand-alone art form. It has to be approached on its own terms rather than as a piece of concert music. If it's eventually capable of functioning as concert music then all the better. (I would love to hear a 50-60 minute work for chorus and orchestra based on The Matrix.) Film music is supposed to be subservient to the picture and heighten the drama (something we're actually starting to get away from - like in the late '60s - because some people think that drum loops are music).

But let's look at some of the "academic" arguments against film music. They say film music has no form. Not so. The film itself is actually the form. Creative composers have often been able to work within this medium to utilise traditional formal structures (albeit on a smaller scale). Michael Kamen wrote in so-called "classical forms" every opportunity he got writing sonatas, theme and variations (which is what film music essentially is), baroque dance forms, etc. and he was brilliant. They say it's restrictive. Perhaps it is, to an extent. In some regards, however, film music has been way ahead of the curve (nowhere has this been more evident than in the use of technology in music). My favorite fallacy: all film composers are hacks who don't have any understanding of "real music". Okay, try these on for size. John Williams studied at Juilliard. Jerry Goldsmith studied at USC and LA City College. Basil Poledouris has degrees in music composition and film(!). James Horner studied with Malcolm Arnold at the Royal College of Music in London. Marco Beltrami studied composition at Yale. Don Davis and Bruce Broughton both studied composition at UCLA. Elliot Goldenthal studied with Aaron Copland and John Corigliano at the Manhatten School of Music. David Raksin and Alfred Newman studied with Arnold Schoenberg. Bernard Herrmann studied for a time at Juilliard. Miklos Rozsa received a doctorate in musicology from the Leipzig Conservatory. Among the heavy hitters in contemporary film music Danny Elfman remains one of the few who has received little or no classical training. And his music is incredible (if anyone even mentions the word "ghostwriter" I'm gonna scream). I think that's enough. Finally, my favorite argument. They say it's bad music. While I'm certainly not going to disagree that there is a lot of bad film music it has to be taken in perspective. There's a lot of bad music in any genre. There's a lot of bad classical music. Has anyone heard Beethoven's Battle Symphony lately? I didn't think so. You know why? Because it's not very good. Jerry Goldsmith once said something on a DVD commentary about the amount of music one has to write for a film. He said that if he wrote 10 good minutes of music per film then he was, more often than not, happy with the result. With as little time as most composers are given to write music for film, it's unrealistic to expect that every note should be an artistic achievement.

The influence of film music has been very much what I would consider a double-edged sword. In many cases, it has actually done much to further the general public's acceptance (mostly on a subconscious level) of modern music. This leads me to one of my theories of modern music that I've had for a long time which is a concurrence with something Michael wrote. When the general public is exposed to "modern" music in conjuction with another artistic medium (more often than not a visual stimulus) they are far more likely to accept what they hear than if they were hearing it for the first time as a piece of "pure" music (God how I hate that term). Think of how many seminal pieces of 20th century music began life as ballet rather than concert music; Stravinsky's The Firebird, The Rite of Spring, Debussy's Jeux and Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe were all ballets first. Even Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (awesome) was originally intended to be staged as a ballet as well as a concert piece. And Stravinsky may not have scored any films but his style was a major influence on film scoring during the golden and early-silver ages of Hollywood. At the same time I think that (aside from what influence pop music has had on the current generation of composers) film music has had more to do (either intentionally or unintentionally) with the "return to tonality" in concert music than any other musical genre.

The influence of Philip Glass has more to do, I think, with the medium of film itself rather than his music. In a sense it hearkens back more to Stravinsky and riffing on an ostinato than it does Philip Glass (In a manner of speaking Glass is just taking Stravinsky's ostinato technique to an extreme). This particular technique suits film pretty well because directors and editors, more often than not, are recutting a film up until the last possible minute (even as or after the music is recorded) and from a technical standpoint it's easier to write an ostinato figure with a slow harmonic rhythm so that you can trim a measure (or 10) here or half of a measure there and lose as little as possible of the original intention of the music.

Any more thoughts? Or have we exhausted this one?