Does Star Wars soundtrack count as classical music?

[kishnevi]

Just a few posts up on this page I suggested that based on my conversations, on anecdotes and on my reading on sites like this I felt that the idea of soundtracks as a gateway to classical was a myth. I contrasted the massive forty-year popularity of Star Wars with the still niche field of classical. I also said that soundtracks create a false and frustrating expectation of classical which in fact has the opposite effect. You disagree? What fuels this belief?

You may be right. But I don't think we should rule Star Wars music out.  Look at this forum: it includes everything from Perotin to Xenakis (and beyond).   I think you will agree with me that those film scores have more in common with a Beethoven symphony or Rachmaninov concerto than anything Perotin and Xenakis wrote. So if they are classical music, in its extended sense, shouldn't Star Wars?

[SimonNZ]

Just Star Wars? Or all "orchestral" soundtracks? Or all specifically John Williams soundtracks?

edit: heck, I may as well even ask: each/all of the seven SW film soundtracks?

[71 dB]

I think you will agree with me that those film scores have more in common with a Beethoven symphony or Rachmaninov concerto than anything Perotin and Xenakis wrote. So if they are classical music, in its extended sense, shouldn't Star Wars?

Exactly. 

I am listening to Yves Prin's Ephémères while writing this and I don't know why it is classical music, but Star Wars soundtracks aren't. Scores by John Williams are more entertaining (for most people at least), but so is a lot of classical music, especially opera and operette music.

[Monsieur Croche]

May I point out that Williams's film scores are performed by orchestras?

Which all by itself means it is far closer to classical music than 99% of what is on the radio these days.

Sure, you're correct that film scores are often a person's first exposure to the sound of a well-handled and performed symphonic ensemble. "Far closer to classical," yes, but no... So much of the expertly written film score material is, though 'original' a rehash of an earlier, and more 'original' classical work.

Instruments are neutral. and don't really define a genre.

If a grand piano is involved, would that automatically turn whatever genre of music is played on it, popular contemporary new-age, jazz, boogie-woogie, ragtime, etc. into "classical?"

Ditto for all instruments, a clarinet and violin can be and are used in Kletzmer and Bluegrass, the bands playing a Broadway musical, Some big band swing era music, and Classical.

It is what kind of music the instrument plays that makes for one genre category or another.


Best regards.

[The new erato]

I absolutely cannot fathom why this discussion is important or interesting enough to turn this into a thread of 38 pages ??!!?

I'll echo the Bard " A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet" - or in this case foul - according to you inclinations, the point being that the naming doesn't matter one bit.

[North Star]

Notwithstanding my agreement with erato...

You may be right. But I don't think we should rule Star Wars music out.  Look at this forum: it includes everything from Perotin to Xenakis (and beyond).   I think you will agree with me that those film scores have more in common with a Beethoven symphony or Rachmaninov concerto than anything Perotin and Xenakis wrote. So if they are classical music, in its extended sense, shouldn't Star Wars?

Using that argument, pretty much all music should be called classical music.

[SimonNZ]

I absolutely cannot fathom why this discussion is important or interesting enough to turn this into a thread of 38 pages ??!!?

Because "practice makes perfect" in a number of ways.

It's an idea that's going to be put to us again and again - not only the soundtrack thing, but the whole What Is Classical thing - and its kinda useful to test and refine the counter arguments into something close to a succinct one post reply, rather than a flailing inexact unconvincing multi-post argument. And its interesting to see what doesn't work and why, and becoming ever more clear about why we believe what we believe.

Plus there's always the possibility of hearing some unknown angle we hadn't considered, and maybe even being persuaded.

[71 dB]

Using that argument, pretty much all music should be called classical music.

Don't be silly. Nobody is suggesting Michael Jackson is classical music. I wouldn't even call a lot of orchestral movie soundtracks classical music, but John Williams has made some soundtracks (typically for movies with fantasy elements) which are classical music imo.

[Monsieur Croche]

Just a few posts up on this page.... I said that soundtracks create a false and frustrating expectation of classical which in fact has the opposite effect. You disagree? What fuels this belief?

Many a film score adheres to the criteria of formulaic pop tune construction:
~ An immediate presentation of something very catchy to the ear which then quite carries the listener along, taking no real time and demanding no real active concentration from the audience.
~ Severe brevity of length / duration.
~ Lots of wholesale repetition.
Film score segments very rarely have a duration even as long as the average pop songs aired on AM radio, pop songs running to near three minutes, often a bit less and rarely longer. The general sole exception to that running time in film music is the scoring under the opening or closing credits. Those may be like an overture, a potpourri of the main themes from the various segments.

Since film score segments run under or around a loose maximum of two plus or minus minutes, anyone with a steady listening habit within the genres brief pop songs and film scores can easily become accustomed to expect being instantly and somewhat passively entertained. The expectation of all being said and done within that brief length of time can get quite set, and later 'be in the way' of their comfortably following a three movement, twenty to thirty minutes long classical symphony.

Williams' music for the segment where Harry Potter rides a Hippogriff, scoring which accompanies a round-trip flight, lasts all of 01:37 [in this clip, from 02:05 - 03:42]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKbr3o36IpY
Contrast that to the time frame in which Wagner's Prelude to Das Rheingold, takes to unfold; this is one sustained chord with a rolling orchestral texture lasting ca. 04:20, i.e. just warming up before anything remotely 'catchy' is going to grab the listener.
Q: How many round trips can Harry make on the Hippogriff during the time it takes Wagner's  136 measure long orchestral drone introduction to arrive at the point where the Rhine maidens begin to sing?
A:  ca. 2.4763 round trips.

Williams' Star Wars Concert Suite lasts about 17:00, with only the final segment which includes a bit of re-writing and extension, mainly through repetition, at around 05:00. The balance of its few other segments, again via using a fair amount of repetition and bits of new bridging material, each run between 03:00 to about 04:00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEneq8fKpQw

Bernard Herrmann's theme music for North by Northwest is a brilliant display of great and catchy film scoring.  The theme catchy and its hemiola rhythm compellingly moves it right along. After a ca. 15 second intro the two-bar theme is stated, a complete head and tail unit, one bar for each. Herrmann repeats the two bar theme about 50 times over the course of its following next 03 minutes; it is constantly refreshed via very slight variations in the second of its two measures, and he strongly varies the orchestration each repetition, the timbrel texture constantly shifting. No wonder anyone who hears it will walk away from the film remembering that music -- they heard that two-bar theme about 50 times over the course of 03 minutes!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjkjF9OfMe0

This manner of composing relies upon an up front and quick hit attention grabber and lot of near literal repetition of those catchy themes over the brief course of but a few minutes. I should mention here that those more contemporary textural 'mood' bits of a score, more effect than catchy theme, also usually run no more than a couple of minutes.

This makes for a conditioning and expectations of what music 'usually is.' No other manner of listening is demanded when listening to those concert suites of film scores either, with their also brief and highly repetitive segments. Compare that to what a listener has to 'follow' in a Mozart piano concerto, with its double exposition before the soloist enters adding more activity and point of focus for the listener...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMjzPJacd6g
The exposition here is brief enough, ca. 02:40, then the piano enters. The first movement, without close together repetitions, progresses via developments and variations upon the basic subject matter / themes / tunes, and runs a total of ca 14:00, that duration already closing in on the last three minutes of the Star Wars concert suite, while the concerto has two more movements to go, all three movements clocking in at ca. 30:00.

Certainly, some who have come to classical with that acquired pop-film score listening habit to 'classical like' or other music, will have enough of an innate interest in the classical sound-world and will find that alluring enough to completely hold them through the very different musical terrain that is classical. For many others with the same habit of listening to the instantly catchy, highly repetitive pop and film score genres, well, Houston, there might just be a rather big attention span problem. (A.S.P.)


Best regards.

[Szykneij]

I attended a concert last night that included Grieg's "Peer Gynt Suite" and Haydn's Symphony No. 100 ("Military"), as well as John Williams' "Harry Potter Symphonic Suite" and "Viktor's Tale" from "The Terminal" (a very engaging clarinet solo piece). Without getting into semantics, it was an enjoyable listening experience and a program that did not sound the least bit incongruous.

[North Star]

Many a film score adheres to the criteria of formulaic pop tune construction:
~ An immediate presentation of something very catchy to the ear which then quite carries the listener along, taking no real time and demanding no real active concentration from the audience.
~ Severe brevity of length / duration.
~ Lots of wholesale repetition.
Film score segments very rarely have a duration even as long as the average pop songs aired on AM radio, pop songs running to near three minutes, often a bit less and rarely longer. The general sole exception to that running time in film music is the scoring under the opening or closing credits. Those may be like an overture, a potpourri of the main themes from the various segments.

That might as well be a description of a ballet or an opera score.

[mc ukrneal]

I absolutely cannot fathom why this discussion is important or interesting enough to turn this into a thread of 38 pages ??!!?

I'll echo the Bard " A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet" - or in this case foul - according to you inclinations, the point being that the naming doesn't matter one bit.

That's because the argument is really about something else...

[amw]

I attended a concert last night that included Grieg's "Peer Gynt Suite" and Haydn's Symphony No. 100 ("Military"), as well as John Williams' "Harry Potter Symphonic Suite" and "Viktor's Tale" from "The Terminal" (a very engaging clarinet solo piece). Without getting into semantics, it was an enjoyable listening experience and a program that did not sound the least bit incongruous.

A "symphonic suite" or "concert paraphrase" or whatever derived from a film score is definitely classical music. I mean, it's being played in a classical concert as a continuous span of independent music, not as a cue for a film.

Film music is just a different art form. It's like asking if a play is a kind of movie. Um... no. It's a play. It might contain the same material, but it's its own thing. Debate over? I guess not.

That's because the argument is really about something else...

+1. Obviously film scores aren't classical, and classical isn't a film score. Why this has gone on for 38 pages is because of low art/high art stuff, I think.

[(poco) Sforzando]

A "symphonic suite" or "concert paraphrase" or whatever derived from a film score is definitely classical music. I mean, it's being played in a classical concert as a continuous span of independent music, not as a cue for a film.

Film music is just a different art form. It's like asking if a play is a kind of movie. Um... no. It's a play. It might contain the same material, but it's its own thing. Debate over? I guess not.
+1. Obviously film scores aren't classical, and classical isn't a film score. Why this has gone on for 38 pages is because of low art/high art stuff, I think.

I agree with most of this. Environment means everything. However one esteems John Williams or not (and I think he's a capable purveyor of effective music for the kinds of movies he scores), in the film environment his scores play a supporting function rather than the central role they would in the concert hall.

As I said perhaps five years ago on this thread, you can take music that works very well in a film, transplant it to the concert hall, and it can be thin and ineffective. Case in point: the NY Phil did a concert of film music that was telecast a couple of years ago; it was organized by Alec Baldwin, Martin Scorsese spoke, and one expected great things. But the Nino Rota music for the final scene of Fellini's 8 1/2, which I find delightful in the film, had little impact on its own.

Sometimes a concert suite derived from a film can make its mark as classical music, the best case I know being Prokofiev's score for Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky, which comes into its own when heard as a concert work in a way that I didn't find as striking in the film. (Notoriously, the score in the film was poorly recorded too, with a pitifully small instrumental ensemble.) I don't think either that Williams's scores become classical music just because a symphony orchestra plays them. They still are pretty much in a popular idiom. The score for Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a rare example of a film whose dialogue is set entirely to music, doesn't qualify in my mind as "opera" either; again it is written in a basically popular idiom.

[Monsieur Croche]

That might as well be a description of a ballet or an opera score.

^The 150% predictable rebuttal; you forgot the other 150% predictable rebuttal, "Classical composer's incidental music for plays."

With all the back and forth argumentative points that are raised by the OP, it is a heavy irony that most film score composers do not identify themselves as other than film score composers, because they very well know the difference between straight-ahead classical and what they write for films.
It is almost always the less experienced listener who readily thinks of film scores, "Oh, it sounds like classical. It must be classical."

Listen to the complete original soundtrack of Star Wars, or the Star Wars concert suite.
Then listen to Ralph Vaughan Williams' original sound track from Scott of the Antarctic and compare it to 'the suite' he made from it, his Sinfonia antartica.

Listen to the complete original soundtrack of Star Wars, or the Star Wars concert suite -- doesn't really matter which -- next to:
Stravinsky ~ Petrushka / Le Sacre du Printemps / Les Noces / Orpheus, the complete ballets, not the suites.

Ravel ~ Daphnis et Chloe

Debussy ~ Jeux

Listen to Bernard Herrmann's Theme music from North by Northwest next to:
Mozart ~ Overture to Marriage of Figaro

If, after some serious hours and hours of listening to classical in general, the listener can not discern some very major differences between what they hear in almost all sound track scores and 'classical,' they need more hours and days and years of listening to heaps of classical, because that is how one learns to make the distinction between the genre and film score 'classical like' music.


Best regards.

[Monsieur Croche]

A "symphonic suite" or "concert paraphrase" or whatever derived from a film score is definitely classical music. I mean, it's being played in a classical concert as a continuous span of independent music, not as a cue for a film.

Well, no. Just no. Your construct is a model of rationale, not logic.

Film music is just a different art form.

That is much more like it. Suites from that different art form are most often not classical, regardless of the performing ensemble, their stage costume, or the venue.

b]Obviously film scores aren't classical, and classical isn't a film score.[/b] Why this has gone on for 38 pages is because of low art/high art stuff, I think.

How does this hold up against the rationale in your first above quoted paragraph? I.e. there, cleaning up the film score, putting it in a tux, letting it out on stage in a 'classical music venue' is based upon only the context of where it is performed... and that somehow alters its genre? Isn't it still film music and not classical, dressed up for a night out? The clothing is not the music, lol. What you first said is obvious is not, it seems, as obvious even to you.

High middle low is far less the point than discerning distinct genres, like recognizing one novel as literature, another good novel as a more popular thing, or distinguishing the difference between a novel, a graphic novel, and a comic book. Any of those can be excellent; they're just fairly distinct genres.

Setting the graphic novel or the comic book on the shelves where literature like Balzac, etc. are housed does not change the graphic novel or comic book into that other genre of literature, any more than a film score suite transported to a live venue concert hall where classical is usually performed becomes, magically by context of where it is performed, other than film music.

[71 dB]

+1. Obviously film scores aren't classical, and classical isn't a film score.

Have you ever seen a Kubrick movie?

[The new erato]

Have you ever seen a Kubrick movie?

The music in Kubrick movies weren't composed for them, only used by a savy director, so obviously falls outside this discussion.

[amw]

How does this hold up against the rationale in your first above quoted paragraph? I.e. there, cleaning up the film score, putting it in a tux, letting it out on stage in a 'classical music venue' is based upon only the context of where it is performed... and that somehow alters its genre? Isn't it still film music and not classical, dressed up for a night out?

It's all just fucking music. Whether it's film, classical, jazz, rap or gagaku, while there may be certain stylistic conventions or whatever, the only actual difference is in how it's put together. Film scores are written differently from classical scores. But arranging a film score into a classical score is certainly possible? Like it's not a film score if there's no film, no cues and etc?

Yes you can take the same music and dress it up differently and the genre will change, this isn't a new thing. People have been turning classical pieces into jazz standards and pop songs and film scores for ages. That's why I say it's a high art/low art thing—it's of course perfectly acceptable to turn high art into low art because that's seen as raising the level of discourse, whereas trying to turn low art into high art? Know your place, peasant!!!

[jochanaan]

Many of us, including some with considerable knowledge and experience in music, recognize that the term "classical music" is imprecise and insufficient to describe the music we love. How then can we say that any kind of music is, or is not, "classical"? Especially when classically trained musicians cross genres all the time?