If I may quote from Mr. Aaron Copland:

quote:

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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-opera 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.

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Notice that he didn't include "Giving the audience a melody to hum." I'm not trying to twist Copland's words to say that themes aren't important, because I (and I'm sure he would) think they are. I'm just saying melody, per se, is not the most important part of a film score.

Kirk

Yup.

"I don't think composers should chain themselves down with the need to make every good part completely hummable."

They shouldn't, and they don't. Not an issue. Fact is that maybe the best/most respected/favored film composers not only create music that really makes a great motion picture experience but the music also makes for a worthwhile listening session on its own. A bonus--and thus we film music purists get the best of both worlds!

It wasn't NOT me because on on the first second of this year NOT the previous year I wasn't NOT drinking any beer, but but Sprite which isn't NOT beer and beer I don't NOT even like NOT, at all NOT. Champagne, which witch isn't NOT beer, I DO like, NOT the witch - besides witches don't NOT have NOThing to do with New Year (except THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK or THE WITCHES which ones I didn't NOT listen on New Year's Eve NOR NOT even Adam) - but I wasn't NOT drinking even champagne on the Eve NOR the Adam, only Sprite - on the night when I wasn't NOT listening any film music NOT at all.

I always start messing around in my own threads

And posshibly de lassht nail in de corfin, I repeat that film music doesn't HAVE to have a melody, but some films which COULD have a melody and DON'T would be better if they DID!

Graham, why so serious ?

Besides, you old funny guy you,
you didn't read close enough, because I said
I was BUT drinking Sprite which isn't NOT beer
- thus it IS beer, at least FOR ME it has almost the same effect,
which was what I meant when I was enjoying it also with some champagne on Eve, not Adam.
You should pay some attention to these things
before claiming I drank only beer

Please don't rest your case, at least not here,
because nowadays all personal belongings should not be left unattended.

KEN

[Message was also having some beer when it was left unattended with Ken and Graham and some crackers - thus it had to be straightened up]