Regular Life

(If you are reading “Apartment Life,” then click here for Part Three)

This is the first in a sporadic series about music — an art form that makes me thankful each day that I did not inherit my grandfather’s hearing problem.

In one form or another, music permeates most cultures. Sometimes accompanied by dance, often not (lest ye violate some government-sanctioned religion), it can make us feel more alive, less alone, sadder, or happier in some intangible, very personal way. In ways visceral, emotional, and mental, music moves people in every demographic.

Besides just for aural enjoyment, music also exists to add an emotional kick to other media. This motive for making music has been around since the first prehistoric people played music for fireside stories, and evolved into classical scores for the stage. Today’s versions of that are movie and television scores. For decades it has been seen most prominently in movies, whose scores are instrumental (ahem) in the moviemaking process.

Rather than depend on commissions from Kings and Queens, as their classical music forefathers did, film and television composers get work at the whim of directors and production studios.

Done well, a movie score conveys the characters’ feelings we usually get only through reading. Other times, it is criticized for being manipulative. My mother, who is not quick to cry, can’t keep her eyes dry when John Williams’ sweeping theme plays behind E.T. and Elliot’s moonlit bicycle flight. No matter which side one chooses in the argument, without music that scene would have played out differently for millions of viewers.

When a movie’s critical or commercial success would have been impossible without its score, is it a testament to the composer’s brilliance, or the shortcomings of everyone else involved in the production? Even a low-budget horror flick like Scarecrow has an intriguing score by rising-star composer Vincent Gillioz. It was enough to make one writer watch several minutes before turning off the TV. In that case, it became clear that although music might make a watchable feature more enjoyable, it apparently can’t carry all the weight.

More popular and slightly different examples are the Star Wars films, old and new. The score for Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope won the Oscar in 1977. The only other awards were technical. Some say the more recent film scores would have had a chance, too, but Lucas chopped them up so much for the films that the finished product barely resembled what composer John Williams recorded.

Music can either help or hamper a film’s longevity. Scores recorded in the sounds popular at the time of filming can date a movie and, in some cases, make it unintentionally campy. It’s hard to take 1985’s Ladyhawke seriously, as user discussion on IMDB.com shows. Those recorded with traditional instruments found in classical music, however, tend to help a film bear repeated viewings decades later.

Will those scores we consider timeless hold up as long as works by Beethoven, Mozart, and Verdi? Only time will tell.

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