Classical vs. Film Revisited

by Steve Halfyard

The following is in response to columns by Filmbuff32 previously aired on Film Score Daily, on 11/10/97 and 12/4/97:

Filmbuff32's article starts its look at the relationship between "classical" music (or "art" or concert music: all terminology is problematic) and film music from an interesting but negative point of view - namely, that some would argue that film music, unlike classical music, is not a legitimate art form. This, in many respects, problematises his whole argument from the outset in that he then endeavours to prove that film music is a valid art form because it is essentially no different from classical music.

He bases this assertion on the idea that the materials, intentions and functions of film and classical music are essentially interchangeable; that the functional narrative of ballet music and film music is identical; that a variety of composers work in both film and concert/art music contexts; and he implies that we should not, therefore, allow context to define a genre as the "building blocks of the music are essentially the same." As an academic with an interest in both music/theatre works and film music, I find it difficult to agree with any of these points and feel that, in fact, Filmbuff32's argument actually diminishes film music rather than promotes it, although admittedly, with the best of intentions.

"The job of a composer, whether in film or the classical genre, is to create music which fulfils its function....these functions can be and have been synonymous and interchangeable."

The function of music operates at a variety of levels, some of which depend on one's relationship to the music, be it composer, player or listener. Filmbuff32 never really seems to tackle the idea of what functions classical or film music serve, although the idea of function is central to his argument. Function essentially refers to a purpose served by the music: in film music, this works at a both general and local levels, in which the music serves to illustrate, interpret and support visual and narrative elements of a film. The idea of 'function' in art music since the demise of the patronage system approximately 200 years ago operates at a more philosophical level concerning the relationship between art and the culture that produces it: with the exception of ballet (and, to a lesser extent, opera) art music of the last two centuries is not 'functional' in the same sense as film music. Most art music is, essentially, art for art's sake: with the exception of pieces written for specific circumstances (as film music is) such as weddings, funerals, state occasions or other events where the nature of the music is directly tied to the event it serves, it would be inaccurate to describe art music as functional per se. Film music is not, in point of fact, art for art's sake but art for film's sake.

This difference can also be seen in the way art and film music come to be written in the first place. In art music, the score gets written as a result of one of three basic processes: the composer wants to write a particular piece with forces and duration entirely of his or her own choosing, regardless of whether any one will ever play it; or is commissioned to write a piece but is given some flexibility about instrumental forces, although the duration may be stipulated; or is commissioned to write a piece for specific instrumental forces. In none of these scenarios is it likely that the composer would be given instructions as to the character of the music unless the event at which it was to played for the first time had some specific agenda of its own that the piece was required to serve (wedding, funeral, ballet, etc.). Whatever meaning the piece attempts to convey, it is unequivocally a personal expression of the composer's artistic intent.

Although the second two of these categories are likely to occur in film music, it is unlikely that a composer would sit down and write a film score without being asked to for a film that has not been made or will never be shown or where there is little chance of the music ever being added to the film itself. The only possible exceptions to this are situations where the composer is also the filmmaker or the example of one of my students who carried out a project which involved writing three completely different pieces of music for the same film extract as a means of testing the extent to which music influences our interpretation of the visual image when that image is otherwise ambivalent. Also, the composer may very well be given detailed instructions as to the character of the music to be written, although this in no way implies that the music written is in any sense "invalid." In both cases, film music, from the composer's point of view, does not come into existence simply as personal expression or as an independent entity in its own right (although it may become one subsequently) but solely because of the prior existence of a film.

This may seem a trivial point but it goes the heart of the fundamental difference between classical and film music, particularly in light of Filmbuff32's argument surrounding the (lack of) difference between Prokofiev's scores for Romeo and Juliet and Alexander Nevsky. He asserts that when writing the music for the ballet, Prokofiev "could not have developed the themes and progressions like a symphony because it would not make sense of what is going on with the dancers on the stage" and goes on to conclude that it is therefore functionally identical to Alexander Nevsky because of the way the music has to fit actions and visual images. Alexander Nevsky is in fact a doubly bad example: in the first place, the difference between the way a film music score fits to a visual image is exactly that - the music fits itself to the (previously existing) image. (Of course, there are instances where images are cut to the score, but this tends to occur when non-original music is being used, such as Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey); in classical ballet, it is the other way round - the libretto may come first, but the music is composed before the steps are created and the choreography fits itself to the music. It is surely a mistake to think that this difference in the order in which the various components of the finished product are created (with one adapting itself to the other) will have no impact on the nature of the second component. The choreography of Romeo and Juliet interprets Prokofiev's music just as film music interprets the visual images of a film. The second reason that Alexander Nevsky is a bad example is that it is atypical of the usual relationship between music and image in that Eisenstein actually did cut certain sections of his film to fit Prokofiev's score, which I think most film composers accustomed to having their music hacked around in the editing would agree is an unusual occurrence.

Another argument is that "music is music regardless of context." The example given here is that a concert of Star Wars music is just as aesthetically pleasing as a Beethoven symphony, so they should not be regarded as functionally different. However, the fact is that there is a pronounced functional difference between the Star Wars music in a film context and in a concert context. What the concert goer listens to is not simply the film with all the dialogue and images removed: this would leave them with a concert of music 116 minutes in length where, among other anomalies, the volume increased and decreased erratically (corresponding to where dialogue was and wasn't being used in the film) and with various periods of silence, corresponding to the sections of the film where no music was being used. The music utilized in the film score is not simply transferred to the concert hall: it is manipulated into a form which renders it comprehensible in this different context. Fragmentary sequences are knitted together to form a coherent whole and the music is allowed to follow its own internal logic and the thousand natural variations that music is heir to in a live performance (it's phrasing, crescendos, ralentandos etc). It is quite simply not allowed to do this in a film context, where it is always regulated to some extent by the demands of the film itself. Moreover, even in the concert hall, the audience of a concert of music from Star Wars is probably never going to separate the music entirely from their knowledge and memory of the film: even without being visible, Luke, Leia and the Empire make their presence felt to everyone in the hall, while the audience for Beethoven will tend not to have similar collective associations between music and specific visual image.

Just as importantly, the concert goer does not listen to the music in the same way as the film goer. In the concert hall, the music is unequivocally the centre of attention: the concert goer is primarily a listener, with visual stimuli being secondary to the aural experience, the absolute reverse of the music listening/image viewing relationship in film-going. The concert goer is an active listener, the film goer a passive one. Context is everything: it defines the function of the music, and this function will change according to that context. The fact that the same composer writes film music and concert music in no way alters this fact: Vaughan Williams, in fact, showed an awareness of the difference when he produced the Sinfonia Antarctica, a concert work based on his score for the film Scott of the Antarctic, and the fact that other film composers have made versions of their film scores for concert hall performance also illustrates the fact that the precise material of the film score does not automatically translate into coherent live performance. Even listening to the music of a film on a soundtrack album is a different functional experience of the music than the one gained watching the film: if it were not, why would we bother buying soundtrack albums? We could just watch the video. However, the soundtrack experience is again not the same as the concert experience: there are no symphonies with 17 movements of between 1 minutes 13 seconds and 4 minutes 50 seconds duration each, and concerts of film music do not present the material as such.

Film music is not the same as "classical" music and I don't really understand why Filmbuff32 thinks it should want to be. Popular music doesn't want to be classical music, but that does not mean it isn't art; jazz,also, has its own contextual functions, separate from the classical but just as valid. To consider all film music to be "aspiring" to the condition of art music is, in some respects, quite insulting to the genre, denying it the ability to stand up to scrutiny on its own, internally defined merits.

It's also an oversimplification to think that all film music shares ideas of harmonic language, structure and orchestration with concert music - not only are a great many film scores not written in the particular orchestral, essentially 19th Century idiom to which Filmbuff32 seems to be referring, but the fragmentary nature of film music denies it the the kind of formal structures available to symphonic (or balletic) works that work in terms of continuous stretches of time lasting considerably longer than most film score cues.

Film music has its own contexts, it own functions, its own criteria, and the important thing is not to convince the world that they are the same as classical music's and therefore valid but that they are different and just as valid. There is always going to be someone saying "this is not art" and saying it of contemporary concert music as much as of film or popular music, but these are individual, subjective opinions. Film music is a growing interest among many professionals and academics and their increasing awareness of the validity of film music on its own terms will ultimately do the genre more good in terms of acknowledging its place in the arts than attempts to make it fit some other genre's definitions of artistic worth: Cinderella's sister, chopping of her heel to try and make it fit the glass slipper.

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