I re-post it here because I know not everyone visits that particular forum.

Enjoy.

Aaron Copland on Film Music

[The following article was written by the composer for the New York Times in
1949.]

The next time you settle yourself comfortably into a seat at the neighborhood
picture house, don't forget to take off your ear-muffs. Most people don't
realize they are wearing any--at any rate, that is the impression of composers
who write for the movies. Millions of moviegoers take the musical accompaniment
to a dramatic film so much for granted that five minutes after the termination
of a picture they couldn't tell you whether they had heard music or not.
To ask whether they thought the score exciting or merely adequate or
downright awful would be to give them a musical inferiority complex. But, on
second thought, and possibly in self-protection, comes the query: "Isn't it true
that one isn't supposed to be listening to the music? Isn't it supposed to work
on you unconsciously without being listened to directly as you would listen at a
concert?"
No discussion of movie music ever gets very far without having to face this
problem: Should one hear a movie score? If you are a musician there is no
problem because the chances are you can't help but listen. More than once I've
had a good picture ruined for me by an inferior score. Have you had the same
experience? Yes? Then you may congratulate yourself: you're definitely
musical.
But it's the spectator, so absorbed in the dramatic action that he fails to
take in the background music, who wants to know whether he is missing anything.
the answer is bound up with the degree of your general musical appreciation. It
is the degree to which you are aurally minded that will determine how much
pleasure you many derive by absorbing the background musical accompaniment as an
integral part of the combined impression made by the film.
One's appreciation of a work of art is partly determined by the amount of
preparation one brings to it. The head of a the family will probably be less
sensitive to the beauty and appropriateness of the gowns worn by the feminine
star than his wife will be. It's hopeless to expect the tone-deaf to listen to
a musical score. But since the great majority of movie patrons are undoubtedly
musical to some degree, they should be encouraged not to ignore the music; on
the contrary, I would hope to convince them that by taking it in they will be
enriching both their musical and their cinema experience.
Recently I was asked rather timorously whether I liked to write movie
music--the implication being that it was possibly degrading for a composer of
symphonies to trifle with a commercial product. "Would you do it anyhow, even
if it were less well paid?" I think I would, and, moreover, I think most
composers would, principally because film music constitutes a new musical medium
that exerts a fascination of its own. Actually, it is a new form of dramatic
music--related to opera, ballet, incidental theatre music--in contradistinction
to concert music of the symphonic or chamber music kind. As a new form it opens
up unexplored possibilities, or should.
The main complaint about film music as written today in Hollywood is that so
much of it is cut and dried, rigidly governed by conventions that have grown up
with surprising rapidity in the short period of twenty-odd years since the
talkies began. But, leaving the hack composer aside, there is no reason why a
serious composer, cooperating with an intelligent producer on a picture of
serious artistic pretensions, should not be able to have his movie scores judged
by the same standards applied to his concert music. That is certainly the way
William Walton in ~Henry V~, Serge Prokofieff in ~Alexander Nevsky~ or Virgil
Thomson in ~Louisiana Story~ would want to be judged. They did not have to
lower their standards because they were writing for a mass audience. Some day
the term "movie music" will clearly define a specific musical genre and will not
have, as it does nowadays, a pejorative meaning.
Most people are curious as to just how one goes about putting music to a
film. Fortunately, the process is not so complex that it cannot be outlined
here.
The first thing one must do, of course, is to see the picture. Almost all
musical scores are composed after the film itself is completed. The only
exception to this is when the script calls for realistic music--that is, music
which is visually sung or played or danced to on the screen. In that case the
music must be composed before the scene is photographed. It will then be
recorded and the scene in question shot to a playback of the recording. Thus,
when you see an actor singing or playing or dancing, he is only making believe
as far as the sound goes, for the music had previously been put down on film.
The first run-through of the film for the composer is usually a solemn
moment. After all, he must live with it for several weeks. The solemnity of
the occasion is emphasized by the exclusive audience that views it with him: the
producer, the director, the musical head of the studio, the picture editor, the
music cutter, the conductor, the orchestrator--in fact, anyone involved in
scoring the picture. At that showing it is difficult for the composer to view
the photoplay coldly. There is an understandable compulsion like everything,
for he is looking at what must necessarily constitute the source of his future
inspiration.
The purpose of the run-through is to decide how much music is needed and
where it should be. (In technical jargon this is called "to spot" the picture.)
Since no background score is continuous throughout the full length of a film
(that would constitute a motion-picture opera, an unexploited cinema form), the
score will normally consist of separate sequences, each lasting from a few
seconds to several minutes in duration. A sequence as long as seven minutes
would be exceptional. The entire score, made up of perhaps thirty or more such
sequences, may add up to form forty to ninety minutes of music.
Much discussion, much give and take, may be necessary before final decisions
are reached regarding the "spotting" of the picture. In general my impression
has been that composers are better able to gauge the over-all effect of a
musical accompaniment than the average non-musician. Personally I like to make
use of music's power sparingly, saving it for absolutely essential points. A
composer knows how to play with silences; knows that to take music out can at
times be more effective than any use of it might be.
The producer-director, on the other hand, is more prone to think of music in
terms of its immediate functional usage. Sometimes he has ulterior motives:
anything wrong with a scene--a poor bit of acting, a badly read line, an
embarrassing pause--he secretly hopes will be covered up by a clever composer.
Producers have been known to hope that an entire picture would be saved by a
good score. But the composer is not a magician; he can hardly be expected to do
more than to make potent through music the film's dramatic and emotional values.
When well contrived there is no question but that a musical score can be of
enormous help to a picture. One can prove that point, laboratory fashion, by
showing an audience a climactic scene with the sound turned off and then once
again with the sound track turned on. Here briefly is listed a number of ways
in which music serves the screen:

1. Creating a more convincing atmosphere of time and place. Not all
Hollywood composers bother about this nicety. Too often, their scores are
interchangeable; a thirteenth century Gothic drama and a hard-boiled modern
battle of the sexes get similar treatment. The lush symphonic texture of late
nineteenth century music remains the dominating influence. But there are
exceptions. Recently, the higher grade horse-operas has begun to have its own
musical flavor, mostly a folk song derivate.
2. Underlining psychological refinements--the unspoken thoughts of a
character or the unseen implications of a situation. Music can play upon the
emotions of the spectator, sometimes counterpointing the thing seen with an
aural image that implies contrary of the ting seen. This is not as subtle as it
sounds. A well-placed dissonant chord can stop an audience cold in the middle
of a sentimental scene, or a calculated wood-wind passage can turn what appears
to be a solemn moment into a belly-laugh.
3. Serving as a kind of neutral background filler. This is really the music
one isn't supposed to hear, the sort that helps to fill the empty spots between
pauses in a conversation. It's the movie composer's most ungrateful task. But
at times, though no one else may notice, he will get private satisfaction from
the thought that music of little intrinsic value, through professional
manipulation, has enlivened and made more human the deathly pallor of a screen
shadow. This is hardest to do, as any film composer will attest, when the
neutral filler type of music must weave its way underneath dialogue.
4. Building a sense of continuity. The picture editor knows better than
anyone how serviceable music can be in tying together a visual medium which is,
by its very nature, continually in danger of falling apart. One sees this most
obviously in montage scenes where the use of a unifying musical idea may save
the quick flashes of disconnected scenes from seeming merely chaotic.
5. Underpinning the theatrical buil-up of a scene, and rounding it off with
a sense of finality. The first instance that comes to mind is the music that
blares out at the end of a film. Certain producers have boasted their picture's
lack of a musical score, but I never saw or heard of a picture that ended in
silence.

We have merely skimmed the surface, without mentioning the innumerable
examples of utilitarian music--offstage street bands, neighbor's girl practicing
her piano, etc. All these, and many others, introduced with apparent
naturalistic intent, serve to vary subtly the aural interest of the sound track.
Perhaps it is only fair to mention that several of these uses come to the
screen by way of the long tradition of incidental music in the legitimate
theatre. Most workers in the theatre, and especially our playwrights, would
agree that music enhances the glamour and atmosphere of a stage production, any
stage production. Formerly it was considered indispensable. But nowadays only
musical comedy can afford a consideral-sized orchestra in the pit.
With mounting costs of production it looks as if the serious drama would have
to get along with a union minimum of four musicians for some time to come. If
there is to be any combining of music and the spoken drama in any but the barest
terms, it will have to happen in Hollywood, for the Broadway theatre is
practically out of the running.
But now perhaps we had better return to our hypothetical composer. Having
determined where the separate musical sequences will begin and end he turns the
film over to the music cutter who prepares a so-called cue sheet. The cue sheet
provides the composer with a detailed description of the physical action in each
sequence, plus the exact timings in thirds of seconds of that action, thereby
making it possible for a practiced composer to write an entire score without
ever again referring to the picture. Personally I prefer to remain in daily
contact with the picture itself, viewing again and again the sequence I happen
to be working on.
The layman usually imagines that the most difficult part of the job in
composing for the films has to do with the precise "fitting" of the music to the
action. Doesn't that kind of timing strait jacket the composer? The answer is
no, for two reasons: first, having to compose music to accompany specific action
is a help rather than a hindrance, since the action itself induces music in a
composer of theatrical imagination, whereas he has no such visual stimulus in
writing absolute music. Secondly, the timing is mostly a matter of minor
adjustments, since the over-all musical fabric is there.
For the composer of concert music, changing to the medium of celluloid does
bring certain special pitfalls. For example, melodic invention, highly prized in
the concert hall, may at times be distracting in certain film situations. Even
phrasing in the concert manner, which would normally emphasize the independence
of separate contrapuntal lines, may be distracting when applied to screen
accompaniments. In orchestration there are many subtleties of
timbre--distinctions meant to be listened to for their own expressive quality in
an auditorium--which are completely wasted on sound track.
As compensation for these losses, the composer has other possibilities, some
of them tricks, which are unobtainable in Carnegie Hall. In scoring one section
of "The Heiress," for example, I was able to superimpose two orchestras, one
upon another. Both recorded the same music at different times, one orchestra
consisting of strings alone, the other constituted normally. Later these were
combined by simultaneously re-recording the original tracks, thereby producing a
highly expressive orchestral texture. Bernard Herrmann, one of the most
ingenious of screen composers, called for (and got) eight celestas---and
unheard-of combination of Fifty-seventh Street--to suggest a winter's sleigh
ride. Miklos Rozsa's use of the "echo chamber"--a device to give normal tone a
ghostlike aura--was widely remarked and subsequently done to death.
Unusual effects are obtainable through overlapping incoming and outgoing
music tracks. Like two trains passing one another, it is possible to bring in
and take out at the same time two different musics. ~The Red Pony~ gave me an
opportunity to use this cinema specialty. When the day-dreaming imagination of a
little boy turns white chickens into white circus horses, the visual image is
mirrored in an aural image by having the chicken music transform itself into
circus music, a device only obtainable by means of the overlap.
Let us now assume that the musical score has been completed and is ready for
recording. the scoring stage is a happy-making place for the composer. Hollywood
has gathered to itself some of America's finest performers; the music will be
beautifully played and recorded with a technical perfection not to be matched
anywhere else.
Most composers like to invite their friends to be present at the recording
session of important sequences. The reason is that neither the composer nor his
friends are ever again likely to hear the music sound out in concert style. For
when it is combined with the picture most of the dynamic levels will be changed.
Otherwise the finished product might sound like a concert with pictures. In
lowering dynamic levels, niceties of shading, some inner voices and bass parts
may be lost. Erich Korngold, one of Hollywood's top men, put it well when he
said: "A movie composer's immortality lasts from the recording stage to the
dubbing room."
The dubbing room is where all the tracks involving sound of any kind,
including dialogue, are put through the machines to obtain one master sound
track. This is a delicate process as far as the music is concerned, for it is
only a hair's breadth that separates the "too loud" from the "too soft". Sound
engineers, working the dials that control volume, are not always as musically
sensitive as composers would like them to be. What is called for is a new
species, a sound mixer who is half musician and half engineer: and even then,
the mixing of dialogue, music and realistic sounds of all kinds must always
remain problematical.
In view of these drawbacks to the full sounding out of his music, it is only
natural that the composer often hopes to be able to extract a viable concert
suite from his film score. There is a current tendency to believe that movie
scores are not proper material for concert music. The argument is that separated
from its visual justification the music falls flat.
Personally, I doubt very much that any hard and fast rule can be made that
will cover all cases. Each score will have to be judged on its merits and, no
doubt, stories that require a more continuous type of musical development in a
unified atmosphere will lend themselves better than others to re-working for
concert purposes. Rarely is it conceivable that the music of a film might be
extracted without much reworking. But I fail to see why, if successful suites
like Grieg's ~Peer Gynt~ can be made from nineteenth century incidental stage
music, a twentieth century composer can't be expected to do as well with a film
score.
As for the picture score, it is only in the motion picture theatre that the
composer for the first time gets the full impact of what he has accomplished,
tests the dramatic punch of his favorite music spot, appreciates the curious
importance and unimportance of detail, wishes that he had done certain things
differently and is surprised that others came off better than he had hoped. For
when all is said and done the art of combining moving pictures with musical
tones is still a mysterious art. Not the least mysterious element is the
theatregoers' reaction: Millions will be listening but one never knows how many
will be really hearing, so the next time you go to the movies remember to be on
the composer's side. Remove those ear-muffs.

quote:

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Originally posted by JJH:
well dammit, now I need to get that book.

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It's well worth it's money. You'll find chapters about Copland, Rozsa, Waxman, Gold, Steiner (both), Korngold, Salter, Kaper, Tiomkin, Addison, Delerue, Victor Young, Herrmann, North, Raksin, Friedhofer, Alfred Newman, Elmer Bernstein, Mancini, Fielding, Goldsmith, Rosenthal, Rosenman and Williams, all consisting of an introduction, an article by or interview with the composer, and list of the scores he has done.

quote:

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NP: Hollow Man - Just keeps getting better and better with every listen!

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I couldn't agree more! this is a totally underrated Goldsmith effort.

It may not be the prototypical Goldsmith action effort, but damn the music is great, and the way it is sequenced, even with a couple cues missing, makes for a terrific album overall.

NP -- The Saint of Fort Washington, JNH