Copland on film music

American composer Aaron Copland on the role of film music:

I was very fascinated by the medium because a composer can be a real help in the making of a film. The way you can prove that, of course, is to see a film before the public has seen it, in the studio room, and imagine what the music might be like that would accompany a particular scene. It might be a love scene and you think that if you add music to that it would seem even more touching and more emotional. And then, of course, you go away and you write the music ― not very far away, just round the corner on the lot ― and they bring in a symphony orchestra for you and we record the music. And then you have the great pleasure, and a rather nervous one in the beginning, of hearing your music played while that same scene is put on the screen. You’d be amazed at what music does to an emotional scene that you’re really interested in. The audience may not even know that there’s music going on. The easiest thing in Hollywood is to turn the music off so you can watch the scene without the music, then add your music and take the music away. And you’ll see how much more human, how much more touching, how much more emotional the whole thing seems to feel, even though the audience doesn’t even realise that music is being played in the theatre. They are so absorbed in the drama of it all ― and that’s the way it should be really, except for musicians. You see, musicians can’t ignore music and they know when the music is turned down right away. It might even get into their way because they’re so aware of it. So it could be a hindrance to a musician. But to the general public ― I don’t think they are sufficiently aware of what music does to make the cold screen more warmly human. More feelingful or more exciting. I mean in battle scenes, for instance. Whoever heard of an orchestra in a battle? You wouldn’t know the music was there. It just helps make everything more exciting and hectic etc.

Cited in: Dickinson, Peter (ed.) (2002) Copland Connotations: Studies and Interviews. Rochester: Boydell Press, p. 189.

Posted

in

by

Greg

Tags:

, ,

Featured Content

The Lord is my Light (Setting II) – Psalm 26 (27)
Title: The Lord is my light (Setting II) Text: Psalm 26 (27): 1, 4, 13-14. R. v.1 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
Hogarth on Chopin
“He accomplishes enormous difficulties, but so quietly, so smoothly and with such constant delicacy and refinement that the listener is not sensible of their real magnitude.  It is the exquisite delicacy, with the liquid mellowness of his tone, and the pearly roundness of his passages of rapid articulation which are the peculiar features of his […]
Tears in art
In art there are tears that do often lie too deep for thoughts. – Louis Kronenberger L. Kronenberger, Company Manners: A Cultural Inquiry into American Life, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1954, p. 42.
Lord, You Are Good and Forgiving (Setting II) – Psalm 85 (86)
Title: Lord, you are good and forgiving (Setting II) Text: Psalm 85 (86): 5-6, 9-10, 15-16 Composer: Greg Smith Instrumentation: SATB and piano Product medium: PDF score and part Sample:
The progress of an artist
What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. – T. S. Elliot, Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Steering the audience’s taste
The following advice appeared in the British Journal the Musical Times in January 1879: A young student wishes us to tell him what to do under the following circumstances: He has been carefully educated in music, for which he has considerable aptitude and an intense love; he is an efficient pianist, and knows most of […]
Jan Lisiecki on interpretation
My approach is to sit with the score and make my decisions about what Andante means or what piano means in a certain context; often you go back to recordings and find that nobody’s ever really played it that way. You ask yourself ‘Why is that? Did I misread or misinterpret something? Or is this […]
I need a better razor
Haydn reached London in the opening days of 1791. He passed his first night at the house of Bland, the music publisher, at 45 High Holborn, which now, rebuilt, forms part of the First Avenue Hotel. Bland, it should have been mentioned before, had been sent over to Vienna by Salomon to coax Haydn into […]
Capturing the pulse of the time
"I try to put the pulse of my times into my music and do it in a lasting way." – George Gerswhin Cited in: Greenberg, Rodney (2008) George Gerswhin.  New York: Phaidon Press, p.216.   '
On Artur Schnable’s playing
Artur Schnabel is a pianist unlike any other. One is conscious in listening to him of a powerful and original mind revealing unsuspected meanings and complications in music as familiar as Brahms’s Intermezzi and Beethoven’s ‘Waldstein’ Sonata. His tone is a rule dry in anything above a piano, but a sudden touch of the pedal […]