Fair comment.

Lou Goldberg

You raise an interesting question….‘Is the apparently increasing popularity of soundtrack albums leading to film composers tailoring their scores for album consumption as well as the movie?’ Or, are more film composers later reworking their scores for the album, as Goldsmith did with FIERCE CREATURES – he created a film score, and then embellished it for the album. The trouble with this is we then end up with two different pieces of music – the film score and the album, and maybe the album would satisfy nobody – the purist might regard the album as a travesty, whilst the average Joe on the street still might not find enough musical meat on the album to warrant a stand-alone listen. As far as I am concerned, I have no problem with the composer tailoring his film score for the album, but only after the score has been composed for the film with only the film in mind. Without Goldsmith beefing-up his FIERCE CREATURES score, the album would have been even less substantial than his SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION. With FIERCE CREATURES, the nature of the movie did not allow the film composer to create anything other than a fragmented and slight score, but there was enough thematic material there for Goldsmith to create a lovely album – I’m glad he did. To me, a film composer must make some effort to amend his score for the album if he truly intends his work to be consumed as a stand-alone listen.

I think that the nature of the movies themselves will have to change before the film composer can effectively revolutionize the purpose and scope of film music. Personally, I wouldn’t like to see the effectiveness of the dramatic score compromized in any way, particularly for album consumption. Perhaps the movies are changing and are becoming more conducive to the composing of album-friendly film music. If that is the case, I would very much welcome it. Perhaps as the public’s perception of what a film score is continues to improve, the film composer (and the filmmakers) will feel more inclined to create a more musically interesting and thematically cohesive film score, as well as later bolstering, editing and expanding upon the music to further improve the music’s worth on the album.

Certainly the nature of film music itself is changing. You’ll hate me for saying this Lou, but I believe it is composers like Zimmer who enthusiastically apply popular stylistics (all part of the CMS thing) to their scores, and are thereby increasing public awareness of film music. Not since the days of the movie musical has film music been so in touch with the general movie audiences, and I see Zimmer as a prime mover in this.

And it is this greater public acceptance of, and interest in film music that will help to fuel further changes in film-scoring and movie-making approach. I should point out that I do not believe this spells the end of the orchestra in movie scores – far from it. But it will be the more proficient and regular use of popular stylistics and instrumentation in film scores that may hook the average cinema-goer, and this will lead to a far greater appreciation of other facets of film composing….including the orchestral score.