MUH112 Film Music Response
Rachel Daugherty
I think the separation between composers of Hollywood and concert hall composers is very interesting. After learning so much about the music that comes from Hollywood, it seems to me that some of the disrespect that the concert hall composers have for Hollywood composers is born somewhat out of ignorance. I do not see how someone could fully understand what composers like Alfred Newman do and how hard they work and not completely respect them for it. We talked in class about how Bernard Hermann and Miklos Rozsa were the only two film composers who were respected outside of Hollywood, yet it seems that all the great classical composers of the past are extremely respected and looked up to by all film composers. I think composers should have mutual respect for each other. Obviously, very few composers are successful in both Hollywood and the concert hall, but I think both jobs are equally challenging.
We watched a clip from The Forbidden Planet that demonstrated the use of the very first completely electronic film score. What was interesting about the score, however, was that it did not sound like a typical musical underscore at all. It was more like an underscore of sound effects. I do not think people walked away from that movie humming a tune they picked out. They probably walked away humming the song from High Noon though. I liked the song playing in the beginning during the credits, but I thought it was a little awkward when the song came back several times during the movie in small fragments. It did not seem to fit with the rest of the score very well.
I was really surprised to read in the book that 3-D motion pictures have been around since the 1920’s. For some reason, I have always thought it was a relatively new idea. The book said that the novelty of 3-D wore off pretty quickly and the genre pretty much died, yet we still have 3-D movies come out from time to time even now. I guess it is one of those things that has to be done in moderation. If it only happens every once in a while, it will always be a novelty. Overdo it, and it turns into something not so special.
Something I read about in the book, we talked about in class, and we watched in a movie is the use of jazz scores in films. Jazz was viewed in such a different way in the 1950’s. In the book they talk about it being used to depict the “seedy” side of life, and today jazz is associated with elite society. Funny how much things change in fifty years.