Movie Scores ... How important is the music, and who remembers it?

inkspot

inkspot

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When I went to the Houston Symphony's performance of the musical score of LLOTR/Fellowship of the Rings, with the movie shown on the big screen, I was blown away by the power of the music. It really proved how integral the music can be in setting a mood in a movie.

Prior to that, although I have seen all the LOTR movies a lot of times, I don't think I ever paid particular attention to the score, and I don't own it, by itself, as music to listen to. I do own the LWW and PC movie scores; I can't say what the difference is as I am sure the LOTR music is just as good and probably better.

So what do you think about movie scores? Do you buy them to listen to, just for themselves? Do you ever like the score of a movie that you didn't like the movie itself? Can you hum tunes from different movie scores? How important is the music? Does anyone ever remember the score of a bad movie? What movie had the best score?
 
I really enjoy listening to movie soundtracks. I especially like to listen to them while doing schoolwork, because they're less distracting than music with lyrics. I have the soundtracks for FotR, TinTin, Tangled, How to Train Your Dragon, Doctor Who season 5, and The Sound of Music, as well as some specific songs off itunes.

I think that overall, LotR soundtracks are some of the best. But I actually prefer the Doctor Who soundtracks to listen to on a regular basis, because they're less grim.

Music has great emotional impact, and when a movie has a good soundtrack, it will greatly increase my enjoyment. Sometimes, however, the music is forgettable. With some bad movies, I can easily forget them. But then, there are some movies (like Pirates of the Carribean) that I don't like, but have wonderful soundtracks which I enjoy on their own merit.

Can I hum the tunes? Well, yes, I know them well enough. But I can't carry a tune, so it might not be recognizable to anybody else. :D
 
This should be merged with the existing "Music Discussion" thread.

Boris Karloff, by the way, disliked soundtrack music.
 
I just saw The Artist and the score did an impressive job of advancing the storyline. It set the mood, anticipated plot twists, reinforced the action, and even defined personalities. Sometimes there were even some musical sounds that corresponded with the soundless talking of the characters. It was amazing-- even though the tunes were not all that memorable, they made all the difference :)

The score was like Perelandra's floating islands, supporting and moving along under the storyline to create a fantastic cinematic whole ... (and I loved the dog too)...

As for disconnect between scores and movies, I loved the score for Somewhere in Time but the plot was a little too sentimental and forced for me. Chariots of Fire had an amazing score that I like at least as much as the movie (maybe more?). Also I don't have a desire to see Joyful Noise the movie but I'm very curious to hear the score on CD.

Copperfox said:
This should be merged with the existing "Music Discussion" thread.

Boris Karloff, by the way, disliked soundtrack music.
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Although there is quite a bit overlap with Music Discussion, I think that thread covers a broader range of music not just movie scores, so I'm not sure about a merger.
 
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The Pirates of the Caribbean movies are the only movies I can think of in which I like the score and not really the movies [this is only for 2 and 3, not for 1 or 4; 4's music I didn't even hear over the oddity of the film itself...

And other movies, like How To Train Your Dragon, are ones that the score makes me like the movie better. But the score must be really, really good for that to happen.
 
Back to the Future is the first score that I actually hummed as a kid, Star Wars is the first score I owned however.
 
I have a very large extensive playlist of movie soundtracks/scores which I listen to often.

Really, though, when *in* a movie it takes a very good score for me to truly notice it.
The biggies there, for me, are:
How to Train Your Dragon,
the 2003 adaptation of Peter Pan,
The Lion King,
August Rush,
a couple of Hayou Miyazaki's movies (namely, Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky),
and LWW and the LotR movies of course.
 
Thanks y'all. I agree with Miss Reep that listening to movie scores as you study or read or do some other task that requires concentration is good. I had forgotten, I do own some PoTC scores; the music in those movies was very good I thought, and added a lot to the movie.

Benisse, that's a good point about "The Artist." I havent seen it, but our dog Barney looks a good deal like the dog in the film, and I read interesting things about it, so I think I would like to see it. In a silent film of course the music would have a big role.

It seems like movie scores are the "classical music" of our times ... Otherwise a composer would have a hard time getting anyone to listen to her new compositions, it seems to me, unless she slips them into a movie that everyone wants to see anyway.
 
I absolutely LOVE soundtracks! I have to say, most movies (LOTR, HTTYD, Contagion etc.) would be not even close to how amazing they are without the scores.

As for the scores themselves. I listen to them all the time! I have a soundtrack playlist that is slowly but surely growing on my grooveshark! My fav probably are all the POTC soundtracks! I LOVE how you have 1) The original soundtrack 2) The second with some new themes 3) The third with brand new themes and instruments (electric guitar) added 4) The fourth with the Mexican themes added!
 
Wow, that's very cool. I never really gave any thought to musical scores in movies until I was a grown-up, maybe in my 40's. I mean, when Star Wars IV A New Hope came out, everyone could hum that theme because everyone saw it about a billion times, and of course we all knew the shark's theme in Jaws and Indy's theme in Raiders of the Lost Ark ... but as for listening to the scores, for their own merits, I never even thought about it until more recently. I admire y'all for being so astute.
 
Benisse said:
Although there is quite a bit overlap with Music Discussion, I think that thread covers a broader range of music not just movie scores, so I'm not sure about a merger.
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As the creator of that thread, I must say that I made that thread with the ulterior motive, of the very purpose, of discussing film scores.

if any of you are interested in learning more about scores I would visit these sites (May contain content that is...less than stellar):

http://www.filmtracks.com/
http://www.filmscoremonthly.com/daily/index.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_score
 
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I love movie score. It is wonderful to listen to, especially when I'm doing my homework. I have quite a menagerie of score soundtracks and the only ones where I have the music for an entire movie series is Narnia.

This is what I have:

Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
LOTR: Return of the King
How to Train your Dragon
Pirates: At World's End

I like to just randomly start humming them too. Another habit of mine is to try and figure out what's happening at that point in the music. However I'm usually not too good at that unless I've seen the movie and heard the music many, many, many times (like HTTYD and LWW, sometimes ROTK). I think that music really makes a movie, without it the movie is just.... lacking. Sometimes you don't even notice it but the music just adds to the theme and feeling of the movie.... and it helps you tell when there's a good or bad part coming up.:p
 
Mozart said:
ometimes you don't even notice it but the music just adds to the theme and feeling of the movie.... and it helps you tell when there's a good or bad part coming up
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Agreed! Most of the time I don't notice the music, which is why they symphony was so cool when they played the score live, because then you really "heard" it, and you could feel how much it added to the mood!

But the only themes I can hum are the ones from my growing-up years that I saw a lot, like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars IV. I used to see movies over and over if I liked them -- these days I don't have time. I can hum the Shire/Frodo theme from LOTR though, because I've seen that so many times.
 
Someone has said that the soundtrack-writing business has TAKEN THE PLACE OF the former custom of composers writing symphonies for orchestras to play. This was in an article where the writer examined the use of Erich Korngold's musical score for mood-setting in Errol Flynn's classic Robin Hood movie.
 
I think it's true. At least, in my life I don't hear much about composers writing new symphonies, but almost every epic like LOTR has a symphonic score.
 
John Williams, actually wrote a symphony, he had it performed once, the critics cut it to pieces, and he scrapped it, and it has never been released, since then he has written alot of concertos and other concert pieces, but no full symphonies.
 
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