Its still Star Wars to me

True, and true. Sad but true. But I think what upsets me the most about being a film music fan is that feeling that our interest just "doesn't belong" in any layer of popular culture. Especially when it comes to public displays. There will always be rock concerts and classical concerts. EVERYWHERE. Any Joe can get to one easily in any major city.

But the rock world flips its nose up at us saying: "Oh you weirdos like that instrumental stuff without any words. You're too fancy for us, go away."

While the classical world flips its nose down at us!!! They say: "Your music is but a pale imitation of real music. Yours is popcorn music, not serious."

That leaves us perpetually stuck in the middle. Making film music concerts a rarity like pope's poop. Here in my town, whenever the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra does a "night at the movies" program (which they've done ONCE in three years), they dress it down like a "bonus" feature in the season. A crowd-pleasing extra. Something not serious. Something just for fun. You can tell by the way the advertise it. If I owned a music hall, it would feature all film music, all the time. I would DRILL into people's head that film music is serious music. I'd play North by Northwest until they could stand no more.

Classical music takes itself seriously and it's not shit by any means.

(it felt like the right emoticon at the time)

It just sounds like your view on jazz "fans" has been coloured by one bad apple D, I have a few friends who are seriously into jazz and I'm not exactly a slouch in that department myself, ALL of those friends are open to many other types of music including film scores.

Jazz is an incredibly wide spectrum of music and I don't pretend to know it all...I don't.

Reading on various boards over the years it strikes me that film score fans can be every bit as snobby and elitist as those they point the finger at. More open to different types of music my arse.

Interesting topic. Just to shed some light on the topic, at my school the music section is divided into one department for jazz/popular music, and one department for classical music. The professors from both sides don't get along at all, and the students of the two departments barely socialize with one another. In the school cafeteria at lunch time you'll often see one table for the classical students and one for the jazz/popular music students. Its crazy, like two completely different species. Part of the reason for this must be that the two sides are competing for the same funding, with the popular music studies often on the winning side, while classical studies and projects are often neglected because the people who have the money are mostly pop musicians themselves and don't care for classical disiplines. They wouldn't even let me rent an oboist for my woodwind sextet, or offer reasonable bi-instrument studies for pianists (the only bi-instrument available is piano...), while the jazz pianists got a cd production funded, and numerous concert projects, and pretty much whatever they asked for.

The real heart of the matter is however the fact that people don't respect each other. The popular music students act arrogant towards us (I'm on the classical side) and don't support us by attending our concerts. They think our disiplines are "boring" and that all a classical musician can do is read notes from a piece of paper. However, if you ask one of those students to play a simple invention by Bach, they are instantly ridiculed and exposed to the fact that students of popular music can't play even the simplest of polyphonic music.

Likewise, classical students aren't impressed by the technical skills of the jazz students. They seem lazy and are often tecnically inferior (they can play fast alright, but lack good sound production and intonation). All their music follows the same simple form patterns, and while they think they are being more creative than us and "improvising", their art is often bounded by even more rules than ours, and often results in the dullest clichés and movie-score ripp-offs. For instance last year there was a cd-production by the keyboard students called "music for an imaginary movie". I never heard it, but my composition professor said it was embarrassing how they were constantly ripping off John Williams' romantic film scores.

We're basically acting snobbish towards each other all the time, and the mutual lack of respect (and insight) is getting worse every year as the number of new applicants every year is increasing for popular music studies, and decreasing for classical studies. The reason for this is partly due to the fact that many of the applicants on the popular music side aren't serious applicants. They are rock-band members and primadonnas with a dream to become famous rock stars or appear on those "Idol" talent shows. Classical applicants are averagely more dedicated and often have pure intentions with their studies - simply because fame and glamour isn't a motivation to get into the business. Of course this argument doesn't keep the popular music professors from using the applicant numbers as an argument to increase the number of students accepted every year - at the expense of the number of study places on the classical side! And all the non-musicians in the faculty meetings - who don't have a clue - are agreeing with their unfair and biased rhetoric!

What a load of bollocks!

Yep, I of course admit I haven't been able to evade a certain degree of snobbism myself (I presume that was what you meant with the ?). At our Christmans gathering a few weeks ago my piano professor asked all the students if we had any contact with the jazz pianists. While most of them replied no, my reply was something like "well, I see them around but usually just meet them with a sceptic look every now and again" (It was a joke, mind you).

Hey mark, thanks for sharing. Snakker du om Norges Musikkhøgskole her?

Oh. Well, it's interesting because I've been involved with the Institute of Music at the University of Oslo many times (even though I was teaching Media Studies, several of my courses involved people and subjects from the music institute), and there was no "arrogance" or division like you describe it there. But perhaps that is because this is mostly a theoretical study, not really aimed at educating musicians.

Very true. Disney music has that sort of 'twinkle' about it that most can actually recognize. Though you can't always let your ears guide you, as it can be deceiving.

Well, I think it does. It's something between religion/spirituality and science, and doesn't really need any more description, no more than Hitchcock's "Mcguffins".

I don't think this particular aspect is in any way inferior to the "force philosophies" in the original.

Transferred from the other thread:



'Good' and 'bad' are in the eye of the beholder, anyway. I wouldn't necessarily say that the prequels are particularly good, but they're not bad either. I love everything from the visual canvases (filmmaking is so much more than just storytelling, as AVATAR recently proved) to the myth/political aspect that is even expanded further than the originals to the action setpieces to the atmosphere to character arcs. On the downside is a slight over-reliance on CGI here and there, some mediocre direction/acting, some kiddie stuff that is a little too kiddie, Jar-Jar and some awkward dialogue.

Steven, I agree with everything you said. My love of the CGI in the prequels does not translate in any way to a love of the films themselves. I just love eye candy, and I feel the same way about the good bits of CGI in the prequels as I would about nice eye candy in a video game. Or anything else that is especially nice to look at. But the films themselves, yes, they are awful. One of the most hilarious events of my life was watching Attack of the Clones for about the tenth times with some friends and making fun of practically every single line of dialogue! It is so bad its better enjoyed as a spoof of Star Wars than a real prequel.