The Importance Of Movie Music

[WilliamVance]

Music can make or break many films in my opinion. As musicians we are probably a bit more biased, but i'm sure there are many non-musicians out there who would feel as you and I do.

One more recent movie that had some very nice music was the Lord of the Rings. I really liked the lighting of the beacons in The Return of the King. Very intense playing going on in that scene.

[RyanSchultz]

The tuba/bass trombone part during "lighting on the beacons" is really cool. I didn't notice it when I first watched the movies but definitely noticed it when I played it with SSO. 'great "high tuba" writing.

[MartyNeilan]

Movies and Music -

2001: A Space Odyssey

Picture it for just a second without music.

'nuff said.

[Tom Holtz]

The music is crucial. This is why John Williams is booked solid with composing gigs for basically the rest of his life.

When he was a recipient at the Kennedy Center Honors a few years ago, the Washington Post ran an article about him. The reporter noted that the interview was on the clock, as was just about every aspect of JW's life. He kept track of every minute of every day, and had his assistants help him do this. The reason? It seems that if you add up all the composing/scoring gigs he does, figure out how much film there is for which he has to compose music, and divide it out equally during a calendar year, JW has to compose, on average, about two minutes of music every day. Every single bloody day. It took a year to set up five days for JW to come out and conduct us in 2003. At the time of the article, if I remember correctly, he was booked solid for the next three years.

JW (and others!) wouldn't get that busy and that in-demand if their work wasn't absolutely 100% essential to the survival of the motion picture.

[phoenix]

I cleaned my VCR heads and watched it again and got close to crying with the music playing.

You know you were crying, you don't need to hide it...

[windshieldbug]

It's not JUST movies... it's life in general (altough it IS good to see people like JW finally get in proportion to what they give... ).

[Rick Denney]

150 years from now, when most of the "modern" and "post-modern" composers are considered some weird late 20th-century bit of academic foolishness, movie music will stand as the great orchestral music of our time. Our musical sophisticates are just too snooty to see it. They think it's derivative (and what music isn't?), or (horrors!) commercial, or simplistic.

Most of what they hold against movie music composers would have just confused the great composers of the past. Vaughan Williams didn't mind writing movie music. Neither did Prokofiev (or any of several other high-end composers from early in film history). And few composers before that would have given a second thought to writing dramatic music for pay.

In the future, composers like Williams, Broughton, (Elmer) Bernstein, and so on will loom large in musical history books.

Not that I have an opinion on it or anything.

Rick "who thinks the best composers get the best pay, and the movies pay" Denney

[Dean E]

Film music was featured one evening on a German radio channel, "Bayern 3," while I was there on Army reserve duty a short time ago. The music was beautiful; made a three-hour, apre ski drive pass quickly; and left me with a burning desire to buy the 24-track re-release of the Dances with Wolves CD.

I've heard credit paid to Harvey Phillips' work for encouraging film score composers and arrangers to use tubas to great advantage.

[ken k]

The fist time I realized this was watching Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then I started watching old movies with scores by Korngold, Bernstien (Elmer not Leonard), Rozsa. Great stuff. I agree with Rick Denney on this one. It really is the operatic music of today.

The same goes for the broadway musicals. Works like Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Wicked, Sondheim's musicals, etc. This is the opera of our era. Granted there is a lot of schtick on Broadway, but i am sure there was alot of bad opera written back in the 1700 and 1800's too. We don't hear about that stuff anymore obviously.

ken k

[LoyalTubist]

Most Hollywood movies have very similar sounding soundtracks. I can usually correctly guess the musical lines before the story lines in most movies. (It's also true in New Zealand movies.) I can miss the credits and know that the score was composed by John Williams.

By the way, in my humble opinion, John Williams' most interesting soundtrack he did was for the old 1960s SciFi TV series, Lost in Space. The Johnny Williams listed in the end credits is John Williams.

[prototypedenNIS]

Movies and Music -

2001: A Space Odyssey

Picture it for just a second without music.

'nuff said.

lesson learned from this movie, pay and notify the composers that you're using their music... It really offended some of the Polish composers...

Movie music is basicly modern opera music.
Same with video games... some videogames have excellent music... some not, but trends are growing to pay videogame composers more and expect more.

[tofu]

Not only does the music "make" the movie but it seems the commercial as well these days.

Even the music in cartoons really helps make the story. Imagine Cartoons without the music.

I've heard some pretty good tuba parts (and playing) not only in the movies, but in cartoons and commercials as well.

[Rick Denney]

Well duh.

Yes, you may be a follower of the Reticent Genius.

Rocco "who?" Denari